Phillips Finds Home on the Plains : College football: Once-troubled Southland prep star thrives as Nebraska I-back and finds stability in Lincoln.

Sometime tonight, Ty and Christine Pagone will take Lawrence Phillips to dinner in Lincoln, Neb.

They will talk about Saturday’s game, about Phillips running the ball for the Cornhuskers against UCLA. And about the game last Thursday, when Phillips gained 175 yards against Texas Tech.

And they’ll reminisce about when Phillips was at Baldwin Park High and about what he had to do to get to Lincoln. They’ll laugh some, and then their voices will lower when they remember.

Phillips will say thanks. Again.

“I owe them,” Phillips said. “If it wasn’t for (the Pagones and Baldwin Park Coach Tony Zane), I don’t know where I’d be. It was either football or I don’t know--probably nothing.”

He hadn’t really been in trouble, but he hadn’t been far from it when he showed up in Zane’s office at Baldwin Park in the summer of 1991. It was only after investigating that Zane and Ty Pagone, Baldwin Park’s assistant principal, learned how close Phillips had come to the point of no return for a teen-ager.

“He had a tough family background,” Zane said.

More like no family background. Ask Phillips where he calls home, and he says “probably the boys home” and then amends that to say California. He had lived in Inglewood, then at 42nd and Central in South Central. Then 103rd Street.

The law said he had to go to school, but it was easy to skip weeks at a time. The court decided that he needed the stability of a boys home in El Monte. Then one in West Covina.

An aunt lived down the street from Baldwin Park High, so he moved there and told Zane he wanted to play.

“We checked him very closely because we didn’t want any trouble with the CIF,” Pagone said. “We went to the house and saw his clothes in the bedroom.”

They talked to his social worker. Then they checked his transcript.

“He was barely eligible,” Zane said. “He had no core courses, and we knew we had to get him back on track.”

Phillips had taken courses designed to get him a diploma, but little else, and in about two practices Zane saw that he had the potential to play college football.

It was time to accelerate his education.

“I think he was suspicious of us at first,” Pagone said. “I told him in my office that God had given him a gift that my kids didn’t have, and that he was going to use it. We were pretty hard on him. We counseled him, guided him and occasionally kicked his butt.”

Said Phillips: “They were stern and I got frustrated with them sometimes. I would just say, ‘Leave me alone, I’m going to do it,’ but they stayed on me.”

He played safety, then slot receiver. By the season’s second game, he was a running back. He gained more than 1,000 yards as a junior, and that brought the college recruiters. A quick look at his transcript sent many of them away.

“When he saw the interest in him, I think a light went on,” Zane said. “He saw that we were right, that he could go on and play football at a higher level.”

Still, there was catching up to do. He had moved back to the Tina Mack Boys Home in his senior year, and, with classes from 6:50 a.m. to 4 p.m., his days were full. Recruiting visits to USC, Arizona State, Illinois, Washington State and Nebraska claimed time too.

Zane picked him up every day, sometimes getting him out of bed.

But he passed his courses, and scored high enough on the Scholastic Aptitude Test to satisfy NCAA entrance requirements. Phillips could look at a wider world.

“I was a big USC fan, and I would have liked to see him playing there,” Zane said. “But there was a new coach (John Robinson) and there was turmoil there. I think he also thought about where he had lived, close by SC, and that he could have problems going back.”

Said Phillips: “A player was shot there at practice not long before.”

While on the practice field at USC, Jon McGee, who is now at Arizona, was hit in the arm by a stray bullet from a fight a quarter-mile away.

George Darlington, Nebraska’s defensive back coach and Southern California recruiter, had an answer for that.

“Darlington said, ‘Lawrence, we’ve had one homicide in Lincoln in the last five years,’ ” Zane said.

Darlington clearly wanted Phillips.

“It’s unusual, but we were only recruiting four I-backs the year we went after Lawrence,” Darlington said. “You usually recruit about six to get one.”

Phillips was impressed, mostly with the Nebraska linemen.

“He came back and said, ‘Coach, you should have seen them,’ ” Zane said.

That Lincoln was a fair distance from Southern California seemed a blessing to Zane and Pagone, and they steered him to Nebraska.

“It was a chance for him to get away from a lot of the negative things he had in his life,” Pagone said. “And Nebraska, that’s where you want to be as a running back, isn’t it?”

It has been.

Phillips was listed as third-string as a freshman last season and was suspended for the first game because of fighting.

In the second game, he ran for 80 yards and a touchdown in 14 carries against Texas Tech, working behind starter Calvin Jones--who is now a Raider--and Damon Benning. Jones was injured, and Benning struggled in the third game, against UCLA in the Rose Bowl. Enter Phillips, who rushed for 137 yards in 28 carries.

When Jones returned, Phillips’ playing time was limited, but he still finished the season with 92 carries for 508 yards and four touchdowns, then added a touchdown in the Orange Bowl against national champion Florida State.

Jones opted to try his hand at the NFL after his junior season, and Phillips beat out Benning for the starting spot during spring drills.

“I think he took his game to a new level in the spring,” Coach Tom Osborne said. “Right now he shows the potential, I think, to rank with some of the better running backs we’ve had here, and we’ve had some fine ones here.”

For low-key Osborne, that is being effusive. Phillips has joined an I-back legacy that includes Roger Craig, Mike Rozier, Jarvis Redwine and others who went on to the NFL.

The haul has been long, and none of the yards he has gotten at Nebraska have been as tough as those in Southern California.

“(Pagone and Zane) kept me on a straight line,” Phillips said. “I remember when they were getting me in at Baldwin Park, Coach told me, ‘We’ve gone through a lot of trouble here. I hope you’re worth it.’ ”

He has been, and that’s something else Pagone will tell Phillips at dinner tonight in Lincoln, Neb.