A Presence Inside at Northridge : College basketball: Confident and brash, 6-6 forward Damion Morbley can rebound and score.

It took exactly 11 seconds for Damion Morbley to open the eyes of Cal State Northridge basketball coaches.

The first basket of the Matador season was a thunderous dunk by Morbley, temporarily quieting the nearly 10,000 fans at Nevada Las Vegas’ Thomas & Mack Center.

Morbley scored the first nine points of the Northridge season. He had 17 in the first half against UNLV.

Sometime during that 20-minute span, Northridge coaches realized they had recruited more than just a good offensive rebounder who could score on put-backs. Morbley throws down dunks one minute and swishes 16-footers the next.

“He’s been the biggest surprise on the team,” said Mike Johnson, a Northridge assistant.

Morbley, a 6-foot-6 forward from Orange Coast College, leads the team with averages of 19 points and 7.6 rebounds. He also is shooting a team-best 53.1%.

“I saw [at Orange Coast] he was pretty athletic and he was very aggressive on the offensive boards,” Coach Pete Cassidy said, “but I didn’t think he’d shoot as well as he has.”

While coaches might not have been sure about Morbley’s scoring ability, Morbley had no questions.

“You’ve got to come into the game thinking no one can guard you,” he said. “I don’t fear anyone. If you are 7- feet, 7-3, 6-9, I don’t care. I’ll go up against anybody.”

Morbley has been one of the few pleasant surprises for the Matadors during a frustrating 1-5 start.

But even Morbley has experienced forgettable moments. He was suspended for a game Dec. 2 because the previous day he was late for practice. The following Monday, Morbley was absent from practice altogether.

He came back the next day and explained to Cassidy that he had to take care of “family business.” He has not started since but has played in all three games.

Morbley is expected to return to the starting lineup tonight when Northridge plays Northeastern Illinois at 7 in Matador Gym. He and Cassidy say the problems have been resolved.

“Everything is taken care of,” Morbley said. “I feel that Coach did the right thing by not letting me play. I may not have agreed with the way he has played me [since then]. But the only thing I can do is come out and do something productive when I’m in the game.”

Morbley leads the team in scoring even while averaging only 27 minutes a game. After Cassidy kept him on the bench for the first 15 minutes of the Dec. 5 Pepperdine game, Morbley scored 18 points in 17 minutes.

“He puts the ball in the hole,” Cassidy said. “That’s his biggest asset. . . . He wants to score, sometimes too much. He can’t get away with some of the things here that he got away with in junior college.”

Morbley played at Orange Coast College after starring for two seasons at Pomona High.

Morbley lived with his father in South Central Los Angeles. But as he entered his teens, he decided there were too many hazards in Compton, so he decided to move in with his mother in Pomona.

His senior year at Pomona he averaged 24 points and 18 rebounds. During one game, he scored 30 points, grabbed 30 rebounds and blocked 10 shots.

Even then, though, he was making an impression beyond the stat sheet. “He did things with style,” said Ed Taylor, his coach at Pomona. “I guess you’d call him flamboyant.”

But he received only passing interest from Division I schools because of his grades. He was set to attend Chaffey College, but in the summer before his freshman year, he changed his mind and went to Orange Coast.

“I wanted to get away from Pomona,” Morbley said. “I thought Pomona was just this little town, but Pomona was bad too. Pomona was worse than L.A.”

After two years at Orange Coast, Morbley became the Pirates’ all-time leading rebounder and second-leading scorer. He was recruited by Northridge, Eastern Washington, Northern Arizona, Southern Utah and Washington State.

On his visit to Northridge, Matador coaches handed him a letter of intent and told him to talk it over with his father on the drive home.

Ten minutes later, Morbley was back in the office, the letter signed.

The moment Morbley handed the letter back to Cassidy, the Matadors had a player who has turned out to be among their most valuable.

On a team devoid of much of an inside threat, Morbley has been the one player able to consistently drive to the basket, making layups and drawing fouls.

“If you go to the hole, you will get to the free-throw line,” Morbley said. “If you go up and dunk on someone and get a foul, that’s even better--if you can humiliate someone.”

Much of Morbley’s success and his willingness to drive to the basket comes from his confidence. “I don’t care what your name is, if you are an All-American or what,” Morbley said. “I don’t care. I am going to try to tear you apart.”

Though Morbley oozes confidence, start questioning him about being Northridge’s most dangerous weapon, the go-to guy, and he backpedals like Deion Sanders.

“If that’s the way people want to look at me, so be it,” he said. “But me, personally, I’m not caught up in that. I came here to help this program win games, to help turn this program around. Just like all the other guys.”

But before the Matadors played Stephen F. Austin last week, Lumberjack coaches made it clear to their players that Morbley was the guy to stop.

“Man,” Morbley said. “I hope teams don’t see me that way. I’ll be getting double-teamed all the time.”

Sorry, Damion. You brought it on yourself.