Hair Gets His Head Together at USC

Nate Hair is all grown up.

His hair isn’t bleached platinum anymore. No Nate hair in the USC basketball team picture, his new coaches told him. So Hair’s hair is dark brown.

His legs don’t quite have their hops back. In the last six months, Hair has had surgery on his right knee and a stress fracture in his left leg. Hair had made his basketball name with his leaping ability.

“Awesome vertical,” Hair’s last high school coach, Brian Mulligan, says. “Unlike anybody’s in high school I had ever seen.”

Jumping, dunking, dunking, jumping, that’s what Hair thought basketball was. Now, Hair comes into a USC game and plays defense at a frantic pace, considers it a privilege to acquire a position rebound, thinks it is an honor to work free for a jump shot.

A jerk. A flake. A pampered softy. Those were some of the nicer words Hair has heard others use to describe him.

Hair played basketball at three Orange County high schools in four years. Ocean View. Aliso Viejo. Capistrano Valley finally. Selfish. Undisciplined. Spoiled. Hair was called those things too. “I know what people thought of me, still think of me,” Hair says.

He is slouched in a chair in the USC sports information office, a blue cap pulled down around his ears, maroon sweat pants hanging loose and baggy. Let’s face it, Hair is a California beach kid, always will be. Life is supposed to be happy and relaxed and full of promise, and maybe that is what got Hair into trouble sometimes.

“I don’t regret doing things the way I’ve done them,” Hair says, “but I’ve also grown up a lot in the last year. I know people probably wouldn’t believe this, but I overthink things sometimes. In high school I would always be thinking about what happens next, what happens next. If something didn’t go my way, my way to change it would be to move on to somewhere new.

“But you know what? The grass isn’t always greener somewhere else. That’s my motto now. And I couldn’t be happier.”

Hair is a freshman at USC, playing for the country’s newest miracle team. For the first time in nine years, the Trojans are nationally ranked (No. 23). Most amazing of all, on the day after they were told that leading scorer and rebounder Sam Clancy and sixth man Jarvis Turner were lost for the regular season with injuries, the Trojans beat second-ranked Arizona to go 5-0 in the Pac-10 and become the conference’s only unbeaten team. After the team had been told about Clancy’s and Turner’s injuries, and right before the Arizona game, assistant coach David Miller made a special plea to the USC rookies--Hair, his roommate Malachi Thurston, Luke Minor, Abdullah Elmagbari and Frankie Evanisko. Don’t be nervous, Miller said. Don’t be uptight. Be confident, be ready. Don’t be nervous.

Except, Hair said, “When coach Miller got to me he said, ‘Everybody but you, Hair. You’re never nervous, are you?’ And you know what? Coach was right. I just go out and play.”

About four months ago, Hair didn’t expect to be the sixth man on the No. 23 team in the country. He didn’t expect to be averaging 11.7 minutes a game, 11.7 minutes and rising.

Last March, Hair tore a ligament in his right knee during the Southern Section playoffs. As he recuperated from that injury, it turned out Hair compensated for his sore right knee by being too hard on his left leg. This became a stress fracture, which caused Hair to miss all of preseason practice and both USC exhibition games.

“It put me way behind,” Hair says. “It was very discouraging. I thought about red-shirting. I thought about a lot of things.”

Friends say Hair even thought about quitting basketball, that it had become not much fun. Certainly Hair didn’t enjoy hearing people knock his character, his work ethic, his willingness to be part of a team.

“I didn’t always do everything right,” Hair says, “but my heart was always in the right place. And I have to say that going to Capo Valley last season was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Says Mulligan: “You know what? Nate figured out something that will make Nate a very valuable player for USC. We begged, we did whatever we could to take this kid with all kinds of natural ability to the next level by playing defense and rebounding. We weren’t always successful last year. But you know what? Now I see Nate go into games and he does exactly that. He plays defense, he moves the ball around.

“That was not the Nate Hair that was so celebrated in high school. Nate has grown so much as a person in the last year and a half, and we’re really proud of him.

“Yes, he had the reputation of being completely spoiled and a bad kid, but he’s been a little misunderstood. Yes, he was kind of punky in high school, but he’s really a good kid. You know what he did? He brought me a poster with USC’s schedule on it and wrote on it ‘Defense, rebound, rebound, defense.’ He’s really changed the perspective of his life.”

Hair thanks God often when he speaks now. That faith came from Tom Airey, a Capistrano Valley assistant coach who has become Hair’s friend. “Tom took Nate under his wing,” Mulligan said, “at a time when Nate seemed to have very little direction and very little perspective.”

Now, Hair seems to have exactly the right perspective. He is happy at USC because he loves his classes, because he loves the campus, because he loves his friends. It is not all about basketball.

He is honest. “At first this year, when I could start practicing with the team, I was overwhelmed,” Hair says. “I thought, ‘Am I ever going to get this down? Do I even belong at this level?’

“I’d always wanted to come to USC. My grandfather, Jim Lowrey, he played football here and he would always talk about what it was like to be a Trojan. So now I do feel like I belong here and I couldn’t be happier.”

So it seems the search is over. Hair has no plans to transfer. He has no need to find greener grass. He doesn’t need to have the best dunk or the highest vertical leap. A nice pass or a well-aimed three-pointer is just fine.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com