Two Faces of Bobby

Bobby Braswell is two-faced, and proud of it.

When he took charge of the Cal State Northridge men’s basketball program in May, Braswell’s face wore a broad smile. Young and energetic, starting his first job as a college head coach, Braswell spoke about how returning to his alma mater fulfilled a dream. He talked about preparing his players for life, not just basketball.

He said all the right things and gave everyone in the room a warm, fuzzy feeling about the direction of Northridge basketball.

Great guy, that Braz.

A few months later, practice began. And Braz introduced his alter-ego, Coach.

Coach has the demeanor of a drill sergeant. He spends three hours a day during practice intermittently screaming and looking exasperated.

a “Stop walking while I’m talking!”

“Just bring the damn ball up the court! I don’t need you to be Magic Johnson!”

“I don’t have one big guy who’s thinking today!”

Assistant coaches, managers, even maintenance men, are his targets.

At the end of a typical afternoon session, Coach lines the players along the baseline and grabs the day’s laundry list of transgressions. Mistakes such as failing to box out or failing to make an easy play are charted. As Coach runs down the list, the offending player’s entire team--they are split between black and red in practice--is required to run sprints.

As they run, Coach stands with one eye closed, peering down the imaginary finish line, formed by his hand in a karate-chop position.

He checks to see that they finish in an allotted time. If they are a split-second late, Coach bellows: “Did . . . not . . . make . . . it! Run it again!” The players groan.

A few minutes later, practice is over. Coach gathers the players at center court, where they stand in a circle holding hands. Coach delivers a short motivational speech and some housekeeping announcements. Then the players, some still panting, head for their water bottles and the locker room.

Coach smiles, and asks if anyone wants to come over to his house for dinner and some TV.

“Just let me know now,” he says, “and I’ll get some more food.”

Braz is back.

*

At least Braswell’s personas are easy to predict.

The tough guy, Coach, shows up on the basketball court. The nice guy, Braz, is everywhere else.

“There has to be a separation,” said Braswell, 34, who coached his first Northridge home game Wednesday night, a 77-57 victory against Cal State Dominguez Hills. “The players at Cleveland and Long Beach and Oregon used to say, ‘Coach Braswell is like a crazy man. In practice he’s all over you and then after practice is over he’s wrestling with you and hugging you.’

“I don’t want anything we are angry about or upset about in practice to be carried off the floor. I want these guys to be able to come into our office and sit down and talk about anything they want and not have to worry about me being upset with them because they didn’t get enough rebounds in a game or box out in practice.”

Northridge players first learned about Coach in August, when they began individual workouts. In the first four months, Braz was all they knew.

“I figured we’d just shoot some free throws and some jumpers and call it a day,” point guard Trenton Cross said. “Then the first day we were out doing dribble moves and defensive stuff and this and that and I was like, ‘Whoa.’ And it was only an hour. I didn’t know you could do that much stuff in an hour.

“He’s going to challenge you. Every time you step on the court he’s going to demand you do your best and then better.”

The tough-love approach has been a trademark of Braswell’s coaching ever since, at age 23, he took over the Cleveland High program, which played in two City Section finals in his four seasons.

“I think that [approach] led to a lot of success at Cleveland, not that I was a great coach or anything like that, but I think that the kids will play hard for you and will do anything you ask them to do when they know that you care about them and love them,” Braswell said. “The players understood that no matter how hard I was on them, and as demanding as I was on them, I think they realized that I cared about them and that I’d do anything for them.”

Braswell never figured he’d be a coach until after he already was one.

After playing football and basketball at Cleveland, he had a football scholarship to Howard University in Washington. But his father had a stroke and Braswell chose to stay close to home, attending Northridge and not playing any sports.

During his freshman year, Braswell’s former Cleveland coach, Greg Herrick, asked him if he would be his assistant and junior varsity head coach. Braswell accepted, and he wound up coaching guys he had played with a year earlier. After five years as an assistant, Braswell was promoted.

“I never thought about coaching at all,” Braswell said. “I wanted to get into broadcasting. Now that I look back, that just shows me how God was dictating and directing things in my life way back when I wasn’t even sure what I was going to do.

“That’s why I believe I’m in this business for a purpose. This is not only a job for me, but it’s always been a ministry for me. It’s an opportunity for me to be around young people and help young people.”

Which is why Braswell’s relationship with his Cleveland players was unlike that between most players and coaches. He instituted what he now calls the “open refrigerator policy,” meaning his players were always free to drop by the Braswell house to talk, watch TV, or just check what was available to eat. Braswell took his players bowling, took them to movies, “stuff that a lot of high school coaches just didn’t do with their guys,” he said.

Eddie Hill, who played for Braswell for 1 1/2 seasons at Cleveland and is now one of his assistant coaches, said he once stayed with Braswell for about three weeks while he was having trouble at home.

“He really provided a parental-type figure for kids that often needed it,” Hill said.

Said Braswell: “My job never ended when practice was over. I was always thinking about these guys on the weekend. There wasn’t a weekend that we weren’t doing something together.”

After Braswell’s third season at Cleveland, he was offered an assistant job at Long Beach State, but he turned it down because he didn’t feel he could help college athletes as much as he could high school players.

“That’ll never happen again,” Braswell told his wife, Penny, after turning down the job. “I’ve probably just thrown away my only chance at a Division I situation.”

Penny replied: “Honey, God will take care of you if that’s where he wants you to be.”

A year later, Long Beach came calling again. This time, Braswell left Cleveland. Upon hearing that news, Hill cried.

Braswell went with some trepidation to Long Beach, worried that he couldn’t forge the same relationships with the players there.

“But you know what I found out early? These guys are no different than high school players,” Braswell said. “They have the same needs that high school kids have. They need someone to care for them, someone to give them attention, someone to kick them in the butt, someone to hug them. They’re young people and sometimes we tend to forget that because they are 6-8 and 6-9 and playing Division I basketball.”

In Braswell’s three seasons at Long Beach, the 49ers made two NIT appearances. Players he helped recruit also led the team to an NCAA appearance in 1992-93. But they did it without Braswell, who by then had already been scooped up by Oregon.

Jerry Green, a Kansas assistant who knew Braswell from recruiting former Cleveland standout Adonis Jordan, called Braswell out of the blue during the 1992 NCAA tournament. Green said he was about to be hired as coach at Oregon, and he wanted Braswell to be his top assistant.

In a matter of days, Green had flown Braswell and his wife to Minneapolis for the Final Four, and then to Eugene for a tour of the campus. The deal was finally sealed by Penny, who returned from the hotel gift shop and blurted out: “Honey, we gotta move here. They have no sales tax.”

In four years at Oregon, Braswell helped engineer a turnaround almost identical to the one he had been a part of at Long Beach. In his last two years, 1994-96, the Ducks made their first NCAA tournament appearance in 34 years and had their first back-to-back winning seasons since 1986-88.

Braswell seemed to be building his resume toward a major-college job. But when Northridge came calling after it fired longtime Coach Pete Cassidy, he leaped at the chance.

“I think this is the greatest job in the world,” Braswell said.

Many coaches might disagree. Northridge has never been above .500 since moving to the Division I level six years ago.

Braswell sees things differently. “I think we have an opportunity to build something very special in this valley,” he said. “The Valley is very dear to me because of the years I spent here. . . .

“Just having an opportunity to take over a program where a lot of people don’t think you can get it done and trying to get it done is a challenge that every coach likes to have. . . .

“Some jobs you take over that are already established, but here I think if we can get players in here and get this thing turned, we will be able to see the results of our work.”

*

So far, so good.

When Northridge lost by just two points to Nevada Las Vegas on Saturday night--after losing by 24 a year ago--it was clear that Braswell has lit some sort of fire under the team.

Despite needing four walk-ons to play significant roles, despite playing amid 13,066 hostile fans who were so loud you could feel it, and despite playing a talent-laden team that figures to make the NCAA tournament, Northridge never let up and never seemed intimidated.

All of Coach’s screaming, all the sprints, must have worked.

“You’re not going to hear a complaint from me,” said guard Gerald Rhoden. “I like [the discipline]. I wanna win, period. And he has to be strict for us to win. It’s going to work.”

But when the UNLV game was over, Braz’s contribution also was clear.

Not long after Cross had made an errant pass for a turnover with 4.9 seconds to go and the Matadors down by one, throwing away Northridge’s chance for an upset, the 5-foot-11 point guard emerged from the locker room to face reporters.

Joining him was Brady Mertes, whose arm was draped around Cross’ shoulders. It was as if Mertes was there to show anyone who cared to blame the defeat on Cross that his teammates still supported him.

“[Braswell] talks a lot about family and in the beginning I really didn’t understand what he meant because we never had it here,” Cross said. “I thought it meant we just had to practice together and be nice to each other. But it goes a lot deeper than that.

“It means you’ve got his back and he has your back.”