A Knight of Old

Through acts of attrition, Brevin Knight begins the college basketball season as the nation’s best point guard--a title he’ll share when Kansas’ Jacque Vaughn returns from his wrist injury.

Knight is a certain first-round draft pick in next June’s NBA draft.

So why the strange looks from the boys back home?

Knight is so quick, the best defense against him would probably be flypaper.

“He’s a gnat you want to swat, and he doesn’t go away,” Stanford Coach Mike Montgomery says of his star guard.

After Knight’s 27-point, nine-assist, two-steal performance in Stanford’s second-round loss to Massachusetts in last season’s NCAA tournament, Massachusetts Coach John Calipari commented: “Brevin Knight dribbles under his legs, then he dribbles under yours. Then he scores.”

After Knight led a near upset of the Dream Team last summer as a member of the U.S. 22-and-under select team, heck, Charles Barkley almost paid him a compliment.

Yet, Knight hears the talk in the street games back home in New Jersey:

If you’re such a great player, how’d you ever become a senior?

And what can Knight say? That he passed up NBA money for an education? You think that story’s going to fly?

Take a long, last look. Knight and Vaughn are the last of a breed, destined for college basketball’s tar pits.

Both are great. Both are seniors. Neither is in the NBA.

In an era when the best players barely make it through freshmen orientation before turning pro--if they decide to attend college at all--Knight is a guard out of time.

He returned for his senior season, wearing his varsity jacket and Scarlet Letter.

“In a lot of peoples’ minds it is, yes,” Knight says when asked if the S-word is a stigma. “Because people tend to think that those that are good enough leave early and those that stay all the way through stay because that’s their only option. But I think there are a few of us out there that still value education to the point where we want to get it done now.”

This is what college basketball is up against; the best of its lot having to explain why they’re still singing alma maters.

Knight might have been gone too, if he didn’t have so much left to prove. To himself. To his mother and father. To Seton Hall.

Unlike great guards before him--Allen Iverson, Stephon Marbury, Jason Kidd--Knight was not the high school phenom looking at college as a rest stop en route to the NBA.

In fact, Knight’s memories of college recruitment were mostly crushing.

Imagine growing up in East Orange, N.J., the biggest Seton Hall basketball fan who ever dribbled. Knight’s father, Melvin, played for Bill Raftery at Seton Hall. His mother, Brenda, works for the university.

As a kid, Brevin attended Coach P.J. Carlesimo’s basketball camps every year before becoming a star at . . . Seton Hall Prep School.

Imagine the heartbreak when Seton Hall didn’t call.

Knight can rationalize now. Yes, he was lightning-quick, but he was 5 feet 8 and 140 pounds. It was 1992, a time when the Big East was in full macho-mode. Seton Hall had already landed Danny Hurley. It didn’t need Brevin Knight.

Still, it hurt.

When it so happened that Seton Hall popped up on Stanford’s schedule in Knight’s freshman season, the guard had worked himself into a frenzy.

“The first time we played them it was just revenge,” Knight says. “I just wanted to do well because they didn’t recruit me. I think that made me play as bad as I did. I was horrible my first game.”

On Dec. 22, at the Meadowlands, Stanford will play Seton Hall for the third time since Knight arrived.

Nothing personal, though.

Montgomery was thrilled to get a player of Knight’s abilities, but even he was concerned with size.

“He was small, no question,” Montgomery says. “I’d never had a kid that small before. I’m sure a lot of other people looked at him and said, ‘Wow, he isn’t very big.’ Because he wasn’t.”

But Montgomery couldn’t be picky, coming off a 7-23 year in 1992-93, his only losing season as a head coach.

He wasn’t wild about playing a string-bean freshman at the point, but every time Montgomery watched Knight play, he noticed something.

“It became evident that if you were on Brevin’s team, you were going to win,” Montgomery says. “It didn’t matter how that happened, it just happened, time after time after time. All of a sudden, we said there’s something more to this thing.”

Knight’s size, it turned out, wasn’t a problem. He didn’t break in six pieces the first time he drove the lane.

In fact, Knight has started every game, 85, since he arrived at Stanford.

He brought his tough, jaws-flapping East Coast game west and became a star.

It wasn’t easy. He and Montgomery were at odds at first. Knight was an improviser, the coach more of a tactician. But the two eventually found common ground, and the result has been seasons of 17-11, 20-9 and 20-9.

Unlike Iverson at Georgetown, Marbury at Georgia Tech and Kidd at California, it took time for Knight to grow into his game.

“One thing none of us can put a finger on is heart,” Montgomery explains. “How do you describe that? Everybody might describe it a little bit differently. You can’t measure the size of a guy’s heart and how he’s going to take what he has and what he’s going to do with that.”

What Knight, now 5-10 and 173 pounds, has done is this:

Last year he averaged 15 points, 7.3 assists, 3.6 rebounds and 2.1 steals per game for the Cardinal. He set or tied five school records. He is the school’s record-holder for assists and steals.

He came to the program when it was down and lifted it up.

Not all the way up, though.

It’s another reason he came back. That and his mother.

When Brevin discussed turning pro, and determined he would probably be drafted in the middle of the first round, only one of his parents would listen.

“My mom hated it,” Knight says, laughing. “She didn’t want anything to do with the talk about it. My dad was able to talk about it, because he’s open-minded. My mom was: You go to school, go to high school, do well, and you go to a good college, graduate, go from there.”

Mom was right. But even in Brevin’s mind, there was unfinished business at Stanford.

“I haven’t won at this level,” Knight says. “We’ve won games, but I haven’t won a championship of any sort. I haven’t won a Pac-10 championship, and haven’t come close to winning an NCAA championship.”

Largely because of Knight, Stanford figures to challenge UCLA for the Pac-10 title this season, despite losing four key seniors from 1995-96--Darren Allaway, Dion Cross, David Harbour and Andy Poppink.

Knight is more optimistic about the college game than most. He says the mass exodus of star players to the NBA will not kill the game.

“College basketball will survive,” he says. “It’ll be good year to year. It might be more competitive. Now we’re going to have to bring some other people up and put them on TV a lot, so you get those ratings again.”

Knight came to some conclusions, about the game and himself, as a member of last summer’s 22-and-under amateur team, coached by Montgomery.

With college stars such as Iverson, Marbury, Marcus Camby and Antoine Walker having turned pro, Montgomery’s team was left with only one true superstar, Wake Forest center Tim Duncan.

Last July, at the Palace of Auburn Hills, Montgomery’s team faced the U.S. Olympic “Dream Team” in what was supposed to be a fun little tune-up exercise.

It wasn’t funny when the kids jumped out to a 59-42 halftime lead on Barkley and Co.

The Dream Team rallied to win, 96-90, but the game was a coming-out party for Knight, who slashed his way past such luminaries as John Stockton, Gary Payton and Penny Hardaway.

Knight finished with eight points, five assists and four steals, an effort that left his confidence soaring.

“Sky high, sky high,” he says.

For Knight, the event was almost surreal.

“Sitting in the locker room is when it really hit me,” Knight recalls. “Coach was putting up the names: Stockton-Knight. O’Neal. Malone. He’s putting up all these NBA all-stars and then here goes these college players’ names next to it.

“Then, we get on the court, and we’re out there shooting around, and here comes Shaq coming out of the locker room. Olajuwon, David Robinson. Now it’s like, this is really going to happen.”

Knight said the game was more of a clinic.

“There wasn’t the normal trash talk that you get into in a usual college basketball game,” Knight says. “There was more instruction: ‘Don’t do this, watch this move, you’ll learn this sooner or later.’ ”

Later, as Knight reviewed the tape, he found his eyes riveted on Utah’s star point guard Stockton, who, like Knight, had known basketball rejection.

“I got the sense after watching him that he was always in control,” Knight says of Stockton.

And when Stockton didn’t have the ball?

“He was always moving, setting screens for people here and there,” Knight says. “And whenever I turned my head, he always made a cut. I like the way he tried to pressure every time. I mean, he never backed down, no matter how many times I went by. The next play, he was right there.”

Stockton and Knight will soon meet again, in the higher league.

But what’s the hurry?

*

* PEPPERDINE: Coach Lorenzo Romar hopes to prove he was correct in leaving UCLA for the Waves. C6

* LOYOLA MARYMOUNT: The Lions are a little younger and a lot less fearsome without center Ime Oduok. C7

* WEST COAST CONFERENCE: The race promises to be a wide-open shootout, with no clear-cut favorite. C7

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

A 12-Pack of Point Guards

Stanford’s Brevin Knight heads a deep and talented group of point guards in college basketball this season. Listed after Knight (by class and alphabetically) are 11 other point guards who figure to make an impact:

Player, School: Brevin Knight, Stanford

Yr.: Sr.

Ht.: 5-10

Pts.: 15.5

Ast.: 7.3

Comment: Knight holding court as nation’s premier point guard.

*

Player, School: Kiwane Garris, Illinois

Yr.: Sr.

Ht.: 6-2

Pts.: 15.4

Ast.: 3.9

Comment: Can dish it out in physical Big Ten.

*

Player, School: Edgar Padilla, Massachusetts

Yr.: Sr.

Ht.: 6-2

Pts.: 8.9

Ast.: 6.7

Comment: He’ll be a 40-Minuteman for UMass again this season.

*

Player, School: Jacque Vaughn, Kansas

Yr.: Sr.

Ht.: 6-1

Pts.: 10.9

Ast.: 6.6

Comment: When Vaughn is on, Jayhawks have no peer.

*

Player, School: DeJuan Wheat, Louisville

Yr.: Sr.

Ht.: 6-0

Pts.: 17.7

Ast.: 3.9

Comment: DeJuan who takes DePres sure shots for Cardinals.

*

Player, School: Kenya Wilkins, Oregon

Yr.: Sr.

Ht.: 5-10

Pts.: 13.7

Ast.: 5.9

Comment: Has playing style right out of Wild Kingdom.

*

Player, School: Andre Woolridge, Iowa

Yr.: Sr.

Ht.: 6-0

Pts.: 13.1

Ast.: 6.0

Comment: Hawkeye fortunes are dyed-in-Wool.

*

Player, School: Dominick Young, Fresno State

Yr.: Sr.

Ht.: 5-10

Pts.: 12.9

Ast.: 6.6

Comment: Tark’s shark when game is on the line.

*

Player, School: Earl Boykins, Eastern Michigan

Yr.: Jr.

Ht.: 5-7

Pts.: 15.5

Ast.: 5.8

Comment: Duke had Blue Devil of time with him in the NCAAs.

*

Player, School: Aaron Hutchins, Marquette

Yr.: Jr.

Ht.: 5-10

Pts.: 14.0

Ast.: 7.0

Comment: Drives opponents crazy with array of moves to basket.

*

Player, School: Kareem Reid, Arkansas

Yr.: So.

Ht.: 5-10

Pts.: 12.9

Ast.: 6.6

Comment: Kareem of SEC point-guard crop as freshman.

*

Player, School: Shawnta Rogers, G. Washington

Yr.: So.

Ht.: 5-3

Pts.: 10.5

Ast.: 5.2

Comment: Can run circles around that TV commercial bunny.