Anteater Feeling the Heat : UCI’s Brown Must Deal With Pressure of Being Nation’s Three-Point Leader

Chris Brown was the No. 1 three-point shooter in Oklahoma when he was a junior at Muskogee High, but he thought of himself as “just another player on the varsity squad.”

The main man at Muskogee was Brown’s cousin, Lynnwood Wade, who went on to play at Southwest Texas State, where he led the team in rebounding and scoring.

“He’s only 6-4, but he can post up, shoot the three, handle the rock, rebound, play defense,” Brown said. “And now he’s playing pro ball in Holland.”

Brown led the nation in three-point shooting last season at UC Irvine, making an average of 4.7 a game, the third-highest total ever in Division I. But in his estimation, Wade, is still the man.

Wade is being paid to play basketball.

“Ever since elementary school, my goal was to play basketball, in junior high, then in high school,” Brown said. “Some of my friends played football or did other things too, but for me it was always just basketball.

“In high school, I always wanted to play for Georgetown, you know, everybody wanted to play for the big-time school. Then last season, when we played Georgetown, I was running down the court right past John Thompson, and I just kind of looked over at him, and I was like, ‘This is unbelievable.’

“I don’t think I ever really believed that this little country boy from Muskogee would be playing in a game right in front of Georgetown’s John Thompson. It was a dream come true.”

The rest of the dream will unfold over the next few months. Is a sweet jumper enough to propel him into pro basketball? Brown isn’t counting on wearing a multimillion-dollar NBA salary cap. He wants only enough money to eat, sleep and play basketball. Anywhere. Any time. All the time.

“There isn’t a night that goes by when I’m sitting at home that I don’t think, ‘This could be my last six months of basketball,’ ” Brown said. “But I’m just praying, hoping to be blessed with the opportunity to play the game I love and make some money.”

The journey to that personal promised land is a long way from over. Brown faces a senior season fraught with soaring expectations, a minefield of obstacles and plenty of pressure.

“Everyone is going to be very pumped up to guard him,” Irvine Coach Rod Baker said, “so Chris needs to work on his mental toughness. It’s not that he will fold up or shy away. If he has any problems, it will be because he’ll try to do too much.

“I’m confident we can get him his shots, but he needs to be patient, or it’s going to be a long season.”

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Tonight it begins--about a two-hour drive from Muskogee, where it began--in the 11,100-seat Lloyd Noble Center at Oklahoma. Brown’s family, former coaches, teammates and friends will make the pilgrimage to see the local boy who became the best outside shooter in college basketball.

It’s a mantle Brown wears a bit uncomfortably off the court. But with basketball in hand and a view of the rim, everything is easy. He pops up effortlessly and flicks his wrist--sometimes from yards beyond the three-point stripe--and often the ball finds the net.

Brown, who averaged 17.4 points last season while attempting only 21 field goals that weren’t three-pointers, made 122 of 301 three-point shots. That earned the Anteaters the same amount of points as a guy shooting 61% from two-point range.

But Brown, who wasn’t academically eligible until the Anteaters’ fifth game last year, won’t be sneaking up on anyone this time around.

“It didn’t matter if we were in a zone or playing man-to-man,” said New Mexico State Coach Neil McCarthy, recalling the afternoon Brown made nine three-pointers and the Anteaters upset the Aggies. “And it didn’t make any difference anyway, because he was covered on most of those shots.”

Brown may have more trouble shaking off the invisible pressures than he does shedding, or more often shooting over, defenders.

Early in practice this season, his touch was off, and the disgust showed. Baker likes to say that “Chris Brown is a game shooter, only some days is he a practice shooter.” But Brown knows he was pressing.

“Yeah, there’s a lot of pressure on me,” he said. “But I’ve realized that I have to relax and go with the flow. I can’t let this start messing with my game. I learned that early, feeling like I had to come out here and make every shot when practice started this year.

“You know, you’re the best three-point shooter in the country, you can’t miss.”

Brown knows his coaches and teammates are counting on him to make four or five three-pointers every night. And he knows that extending opposing defenses is as valuable as the points.

He also knows he can’t turn to friend and former point guard Lloyd Mumford anymore.

“Last year, when everybody looked at me to score those threes, I didn’t see it as being all on me,” he said. “I looked at it as being on Lloyd. He was the senior. He was the point guard. He was the leader. I looked up to him to tell me what to do.

“Now, there’s a lot more pressure on me. Lloyd is gone and I’m the senior.”

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Brown has rounded up most of the Anteaters’ 50-ticket allotment for tonight’s game, “but there’s a lot more people than that coming,” he says, smiling. His older brother, Cedric, attends Oklahoma, so he’ll walk over. His mother is coming from Memphis, his grandmother from Muskogee.

“I’m really excited about going home and playing in front of my home crowd,” he said. “I haven’t been back home since the summer of ’93. It’s been a long time.”

And tonight will be the kind of “pressure” he relishes.

“For some reason, the bigger that kind of game is, with my family there, I play better,” he said. “I hope I’m not jinxing myself. But when it’s happened before, I’ve done good.”

A victory over Oklahoma would go beyond a personal triumph for Brown, who is also feeling the pressure of helping return the Anteaters to respectability. It’s a trip started last March when they went all the way to the Big West tournament title game before losing the automatic NCAA spot to New Mexico State.

After suffering through a 7-19 regular season, which included a humiliating 4-14 conference mark, the Anteaters are painfully aware just how precious each victory is.

“I think this team has more heart than last year’s team,” Brown said. “We’re not talking about just doing good in the Big West, either. We’re talking about winning the conference and the tournament. This is what we have the ability to do, and I feel like we can do it, we will do it.”

What better place to start than this close to home?

“I think being back, seeing all my relatives and old friends, will be good for me right now,” Brown said. “I think it will help me remember, help me get back to where I came from.”

And focus on where he’s going.