From Hoop Dreams to Reality

The events of Gerald Brown’s first season on the Pepperdine basketball team were enough to make any freshman’s head spin.

He felt like a giddy kid as the Waves made their way through the 1994 West Coast Conference tournament, beating San Diego in the championship game, in large part because of Brown’s eight points and two steals in a second-half comeback.

The victory earned Pepperdine a berth in the NCAA tournament opposite heavily favored Michigan, which still had four players from its “Fab Five” freshman class of the 1991-92 season.

Going against such stars as Juwan Howard and Jalen Rose seemed like a dream to Brown, who nonetheless kept his cool and scored four points in helping the Waves battle the Wolverines down to the wire before losing in overtime, 78-74.

“I got a steal and layup and played some pretty decent ball for a rookie,” Brown recalled. “The year before I was just one of those kids rushing home to see the Fab Five on TV. To get the opportunity to play against them, I liked that a lot. It was a real good experience.”

Two years later, Brown’s situation at Pepperdine has changed dramatically. No longer the wide-eyed freshman playing behind a talented senior class, he is the undisputed leader on a team that has experienced hard times in the past two seasons.

Since the near-upset over Michigan, Pepperdine has changed coaches twice--most recently two weeks ago when Tony Fuller abruptly resigned--and has posted records of 17-28 overall and 6-14 in conference play.

The Waves have suffered from defection--five players transferred after last season--and a lack of depth this season because of injury and illness.

Nothing, though, seems to faze the quiet, modest Brown.

“It’s been a tough road, but I’m still here,” he said. “I’m just living, playing and doing what Gerald Brown has to do for his welfare.”

Nearly everyone on the team refers to Brown as a leader by example, a role he quickly assumed last season when the Waves slipped to 8-19, their worst record in 17 years, and Brown averaged 16.5 points, earning a place on the all-conference first team.

“I just handled it,” Brown said of having the leader role thrust upon him as a sophomore. “I was looked upon as one of the vets in my second year, when I really still had milk behind my ears.”

Growing up fast on the basketball court has helped Brown develop into one of the conference’s most respected and feared players. The 6-foot-3 junior guard was named conference player of the week after leading Pepperdine to road victories over Santa Clara and St. Mary’s last weekend, a sweep that may have salvaged the Waves’ season.

Pepperdine, 9-9 overall and 2-4 in conference play, entered last weekend with a five-game losing streak and shrinking confidence, Brown said.

“We were getting to the point where you start to wonder, ‘What are we doing wrong?’ ” said Brown, whose team plays Portland (12-6, 3-3) at 5 p.m. today and Gonzaga at 7 p.m. Saturday at Firestone Fieldhouse. “You have a tendency to start doubting yourself.

“But we’ve just been sticking with it and not giving up. If we do that, we think we can do some damage in this conference.”

Brown helped the Waves reverse their fortunes last weekend by averaging 24.5 points--on 63% shooting--and eight rebounds against Santa Clara and St. Mary’s. He scored Pepperdine’s last four points in a 72-69 come-from-behind victory over Santa Clara last Friday, and came back Saturday to score 31 points on 10-of-14 shooting in an 88-78 victory over St. Mary’s.

He leads the conference in scoring with an 18.8 average, including 22.2 in conference games, despite frequently facing defenses designed to stop him. He has scored in double figures in 34 consecutive games dating to 1994.

“I think there are several conferences in the country that have a player like Gerald, who has the ability to step up and take over a game,” St. Mary’s Coach Ernie Kent said. “He is a tremendous athlete and a tremendous competitor, and he has great basketball instincts.”

Pepperdine interim Coach Marty Wilson doesn’t know how the Waves would get along without Brown.

“He means everything to us, because he knows what we need and expect from him,” Wilson said. “We need him to score, rebound, defend and give us some leadership, and he’s been doing all of that.”

Santa Clara point guard Steve Nash, last season’s conference player of the year, has received the most publicity of any player in the league and was the subject of a recent article in Sports Illustrated. The 6-3 senior is projected to be a high NBA draft choice.

But Wilson says Brown rates favorably with Nash in overall skills.

“If Gerald isn’t the No. 1 player in the league, he’s got to be a close second, because he can do it all,” Wilson said. “A lot of [publicity] is politics. Steve Nash has gotten a lot more exposure than Gerald Brown because his team has won.”

Said Kent: “I think Steve Nash has dominated the conference in terms of publicity because of the success Santa Clara has had on a national level. But there is no doubt that Gerald Brown is one of the top five players in the conference.

“He can control [a game] by himself if he has one of those special nights. He is a tremendous shooter, and has the ability to put it down and go to the hole with it as well.”

Brown had perhaps his most special night Dec. 23, when he made 14 of 16 shots, including all four three-point attempts, to score 35 points in an 80-76 victory at San Jose State.

“He probably could have drop-kicked the ball in, that’s how much of a zone he was in,” Wilson said.

Wilson said one of Brown’s strengths is that he doesn’t back down from anyone.

That includes two years ago when former Wave standout Doug Christie, then with the Lakers, brought the Lakers’ Anthony Peeler to Pepperdine for some pickup games. Brown was matched against Peeler, Wilson said.

“Gerald wasn’t fazed in the least,” Wilson said. “He held his own against [Peeler].”

Weighing a sturdy 210 pounds, Brown is one of the conference’s more-physical guards. Although he has a nice touch from the outside--he leads the Waves in three-point shooting percentage, having made 23 of 49 attempts (46.9%)--he can play inside on offense as well as guard bigger players. He ranks third on the team in rebounds.

“There’s not a guard in our league who can guard him down low,” Wilson said. “He’s solid as a rock. I’ve gone against him a few times in practice, and I think I’m fairly strong, but he gives me trouble too.”

Brown’s teammates say he earns their respect by the example he sets in practices and in games.

“I pick up his attitude,” said freshman forward Eric Griffin. “He always wants to win. He does the little things, like take a charge or grab a rebound. . . . He doesn’t jump the highest, but he always manages to score. He’s not the greatest athlete, but he works real hard.

“That’s what I pick up from him, his work ethic.”

Forward Bryan Hill, who rooms with Brown, says his friend knows how to get into the flow of a game without forcing the action.

“He comes through all the time,” Hill said. “It won’t seem like he’ll have 31 [points] at the end of a game, and then you’ll get the stat sheet. He’s just quiet about it. . . . He waits for his opportunities, and when they come, he takes advantage of them.”

Wilson said he and his assistants, Carl Strong and Jon Wheeler, feel Brown is too unselfish, passing up scoring opportunities to get the ball to teammates. But the complaints are relatively few.

“He’s probably the most consistent, steady guy I’ve been around,” said Wilson, in his sixth season as a Wave coach. “He ranks right up there with Dana Jones.”

A former North Hollywood High star, Jones was a starter for the Waves from 1990 to 1994 and is the school’s all-time leading rebounder and second-leading scorer.

Brown grew up in Watts, living in the Jordan Downs housing project, before his family moved to Phoenix in 1985. Both of his parents, Gerald Sr. and Wendelene, were born and raised in Arizona before moving to Los Angeles.

“It was a good move for us,” Brown said. “It was in ’85 when a lot of the gangs started to get dangerous in that area.”

But if Watts was dangerous, Brown found Phoenix to be peculiar at first.

“The main thing that was funny to us was that the neighborhood we moved to in Phoenix didn’t have any sidewalks,” he said. “You had to walk on the side of the street. We had a weird feeling with that coming from Los Angeles.”

Brown, 20, is the oldest of five brothers, including two sets of twins. Keitrick and Keith are 18, and Jerome and Jeremy are 16.

The all play basketball but none matched Gerald’s exploits. He was named Arizona prep player of the year in 1993 by the Arizona Republic after leading Carl Hayden High to the state 5-A Division title as a senior, averaging 22.5 points and 7.6 rebounds.

Brown was recruited and played his first season with the Waves under Tom Asbury, who left after Brown’s freshman campaign to become the coach at Kansas State.

“They had to do what was best for them,” Brown said of his former coaches.

With Pepperdine suiting up only eight players, it has become difficult to recover physically after each game. Brown leads the team in minutes, averaging 36 a game.

“We only have eight players, and sometimes we’ve only been playing seven,” he said. “It’s hard, but somewhere we’ve been coming up with the strength and ability to keep playing these games.”

After returning home from last weekend’s road trip, Brown said football was the last thing on his mind on Super Bowl Sunday.

“I just wanted to lay out all day,” he said. “No TV. No nothing. Just eyes shut.”