Hoop Hysteria : the Unbeatable Ventura Pirates, Led y a Charismatic Coach, Inspire Rabid Following

Arriving on the run and breathless, Marty MacNair gawks at the long line snaking around the building. Hundreds of fans, motivated by forecasts of a sellout, came early to buy tickets and get good seats, even if it meant standing outside on a raw night in Ventura.

“Look at this line,” MacNair muttered. “I’m not waiting in this line. This is crazy. It’s raining. It’s cold. And we just had an earthquake. Why aren’t these people at home? What is this anyway, a Beatles reunion?”

No, just an appearance by the Fab Five, otherwise known as the Ventura College men’s basketball team.

Bringing college basketball mania to the normally placid beach town, the practically unbeatable Pirates are ranked No. 1 among California community colleges and are one of the top jaycee teams in the nation. Beaten only twice in 31 games this season going into Wednesday night’s game, they draw the largest crowds in the county for an indoor event--sports or otherwise.

Stocked with imported prime-time players destined for Division I college basketball and the National Basketball Assn., the Pirates play crowd-pleasing, fast-break offense and relentless pressure defense, but their entertainment repertoire goes beyond slam dunks and blocked shots to include a sizzling pregame show.

With a deejay ratcheting the volume on a 900-watt stereo system, the players perform a series of choreographed basketball drills set to hip-hop and rap, their precision chorus-line routines a mixture of MTV and Las Vegas. Aside from allowing players to practice moves they will use in the game, the high-stepping production number energizes fans.

“Their warm-up is the best show in town,” said MacNair, a 48-year-old Ventura pharmaceutical salesman and die-hard fan. “For three bucks, you can’t beat it.”

DEMANDING COACH

Show time and winnin’ time, concepts introduced by the Lakers during the reign of Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, have been cloned by Pirates’ ringmaster and head coach, Philip Mathews, 43. An intense man, the son of an Air Force warrant officer, Mathews arrived here in 1985 and began winning conference titles that turned a sleepy, losing basketball program into the hottest ticket in town.

But Mathews not only created the mania, he became a key performer in it.

A charismatic figure, impeccably dressed in Armani suits, Mathews himself puts on a show during games. Prowling the sideline, glaring, scowling and screaming at his players, Mathews has a fixation on perfection and a short fuse. His team motto, “We play hard,” is considered a sacrament. During a game this season, he pulled all five starters, marched them into a hallway while the game continued and tongue-lashed them for lollygagging; the Pirates went on to win by 30 points.

But despite despotic tendencies and public tantrums, Mathews has endeared himself to players, fans and the community. His approval is no doubt a byproduct of a remarkable record: an 82% winning record, eight straight conference titles, 129 wins in the last 143 games. But Mathews also earns respect with a warm, gracious post-game persona.

“I’d heard these horror stories about Coach Mathews,” said star player Brandon Jessie, a 6-foot-5 forward. “They went: ‘The coach is crazy. He yells. He gets in your face.’ Then I met him and knew the horror stories were true. But I’ve learned that coach yells at you to get you disciplined. You have to listen to what he says, not his tone of voice.”

Mathews’ most redeeming feature--indeed, his primary marketing tool--is his hard-nosed emphasis on academics. Players of the Pirates’ caliber don’t go to junior college by choice. Dismal high school grades preclude them from going to four-year colleges and made junior college a mandatory stop: Under NCAA rules, a two-year associate of arts degree becomes an automatic ticket to Division I, a necessary step on the long journey to the NBA.

The team’s success in attracting blue-chip players--the Pirates’ poster boy is Phoenix Suns’ rising star Cedric Ceballos, Ventura class of ‘88--hinges on Mathews’ reputation for taking academically challenged jocks and turning them into students. In his eight full seasons, 48 of 53 players graduated and transferred to four-year schools, including all seven sophomores from last season’s 37-2 team. This team’s 13-man squad is also on track to graduate; last semester, the players had a cumulative grade-point average of 2.7, with three of them making the honor roll.

“My kid had a problem with grades in high school, so (a friend) told me I should check out Phil Mathews,” said Brandon Jessie’s father, Ron, a former All-Pro Rams’ receiver who lives in Huntington Beach.

While some coaches pay lip service to academics, Mathews goes out of his way to keep players’ noses in the books, expecting more from them than the rest of the student body. He also goes out of his mind if they suddenly turn into Beavis and Butt-head: He has been seen chewing out players in the middle of campus.

Mathews makes players attend daily study halls and he checks their grades every three weeks. To get each player’s attention, Mathews has developed a unique mentor program that pairs players with faculty members for once-a-week meetings.

Although Mathews once benched a star player for missing a class, his players neither mind his no-nonsense policy nor think it’s excessive.

“You gotta see where coach is coming from,” says point guard Joey Ramirez, one of five Division I prospects on the team. “He wants to make you fulfill your potential.”

Mathews also wants his players to be straight arrows. “Ventura knows the Pirate basketball team,” Mathews says. “That’s why our kids must be on their best behavior and must be role models.”

And if they step out of line, Mathews goes for the jugular: “He threatens to call their momma,” said Becky Hull.

Hull is Mathews’ accomplice in the fight against sloth and illiteracy. A 41-year-old mother of twins, she is the college’s academic athletic adviser, cajoling and guiding players through the perilous jungles of academia.

“I’m alongside them all the way, pulling or kicking them up the hill,” she said.

Hull gets the players’ attention with the admonishment: “Do it the Becky Hull way, you get your goal. Do it your way: Who knows?”

The goal is graduation and enough credits to transfer to a major basketball factory. “Coach doesn’t want to say he guarantees the players will graduate,” said Hull, “but if a player comes here and does what he’s supposed to do in the classroom, he will graduate.”

In nearly nine years at the college, Hull said she has seen the most devout underachiever transform under her tutelage and Mathews’ iron hand. “There’s no such thing as a dumb jock,” she said. “There are only athletes who haven’t been brought up to their potential. They were never challenged academically.”

With Hull, three assistant coaches and Athletic Director Jerry Dunlap backing him, Mathews has cornered the market on jaycee basketball in the state. The team is odds-on favorite to bring Mathews his second state championship.

“Coach Mathews,” says Oxnard College Coach Ron McClurkin, “runs the finest basketball program among California community colleges.”

But Mathews has caused a few ripples along the way.

TACTICS CRITICIZED

When he arrived from Cal State Fullerton, where he had been assistant coach, Mathews found a team made up primarily of local players. The Pirates had also posted nine straight losing seasons. Mathews brought in players from outside the county, even outside the state--violating, in spirit, the community college concept. Although fans reportedly grumbled at first, their mood changed radically as winning became a team habit. Today, only four players are home grown--and Mathews is unapologetic.

“This is America,” Mathews says. “You can go to school where you want. The community is used to winning. You have to pick players who can play.”

Mathews has also shocked and reportedly angered fans by swearing at players during games, his booming voice reaching sensitive ears in the stands. “He had to learn to curb his mouth,” one fan said. “Now he’s pretty much under control.”

Mathews was married last July to Margie Holland of Oxnard. This is a life change that many assert has calmed him down this season, an assertion he denies. “I’ve heard that marriage mellowed me,” he says, “but I don’t think my players would say I’ve mellowed. I demand as much as I always have. Maybe I’m just not as demonstrative as I once was.”

Mathews’ aggressive personality extends to his coaching tactics, a no-mercy approach that sometimes leaves opposing coaches steaming. After suffering a 105-62 loss to Ventura recently, Cuesta College Coach Rusty Blair was furious, saying: “They try to blow you out, to embarrass you, and leave nothing.”

Blair says Mathews lacks sportsmanship. “He’s obviously got a very powerful team and doesn’t need to rub it in against people less fortunate.”

Blair slammed the Pirates, saying: “I don’t like Ventura. I don’t like anything about them. They’re arrogant from the chief on down, and including the people in the stands.”

BOOSTER MANIA

Yes, the fans.

“We’re known as pretty brutal fans--we get in people’s faces all the time,” Hull admits.

The fans are arrogant on purpose, a right bestowed on them by their team’s top ranking, several fans said. Before a recent game against Moorpark College, hordes of Ventura fans, supposedly bored watching the opposing players warm up, lounged in the stands, preferring to read newspapers.

They may be smug and mischievous, but “they aren’t ugly or unruly fans,” said Moorpark Coach Al Nordquist. Neither is the Ventura College gym a godless “snake pit,” he said. “A place like New Mexico State is a snake pit. You can’t hear. The fans do things to distract the players. Ventura has great fans.”

Even a preseason Midnight Madness practice drew an astounding 1,000 fans (Cal State Northridge, by comparison, had 470 fans at its late-night workout).

Averaging about 2,000 in attendance at home games this season--highest among jaycees in the state--the Pirates had standing-room-only crowds for three games at their gym, the largest indoor venue in the county with a 3,500-seat capacity.

Road games also attract Ventura fans: An estimated 400 to 500 travel to Glendale and Santa Barbara on so-called rooter buses. At games at Oxnard and Moorpark, Mathews says, “our fans are probably in the majority.”

Hard-core fans belong to the booster club. A hundred strong, the club raises money for the team--about $40,000 a year from charity games and sports auctions--and members shepherd the players, taking them into their homes for the holidays. The boosters are headed by Leonard Hull, Becky’s husband, who walks around during games recruiting boisterous fans.

“The neat thing about the club is that it’s a resource of people from all walks of life who are there for the basketball program,” Leonard Hull said.

Mathews may have resurrected basketball at the college, but he certainly didn’t invent it. The college has a history of fan support and outstanding teams going back to the 1940s. Starting in 1949, the team won at least 34 games for three seasons; in the early ‘70s, Ventura had four consecutive seasons of 20 wins or better.

When the 1950 team came in second at the national tournament, “The booster club bought us new sport coats and paraded us through town in convertibles,” recalled James Cowan, who played for the Pirates then and went on to become county superintendent of schools. “We were the biggest thing around.”

Bigger than teams in the Mathews era?

“Prior to Phil, we didn’t have this kind of basketball mania,” said Chad Ishikawa, a booster who has been a counselor at the college since 1973.

The mania will no doubt continue as long as the Pirates keep steam rolling the opposition, a strong probability according to opposing coaches. “Players from all over the country are coming to Mathews now,” Oxnard’s McClurkin says. “He can sit back and decide who to accept. He’s getting great players and he teaches them to play very hard. That’s why they win.”

Ventura has a dynasty in the making. “The beat will go on,” Mathews predicts, but fans realize it all could go away if a major college came looking for a new coach.

“Initially, people thought he’d use this as steppingstone,” Marty MacNair says. “He hasn’t, but there’s still a fear he could leave anytime.”

Mathews, with his wife expecting in June, insists he’s “not going anywhere. It would have to be an unbelievable offer. I’m happy here.”

Pirates Under Mathews

OVERALL CONFERENCE W L Pct. W L Finish 1993-94* 29 2 .936 5 1 - 1992-93 37 2 .949 8 0 1st 1991-92 33 5 .868 8 0 1st 1990-91 30 5 .857 8 0 1st 1989-90 26 10 .722 11 3 1st 1988-89 28 6 .823 12 2 1st 1987-88 23 10 .697 11 2 1st 1986-87 31 4 .885 12 1 1st 1985-86 17 10 .629 8 4 1st (tie) TOTALS 254 54 .825 83 13

* As of Feb. 16