Green Blends Maturity With Skills

The shot didn’t fall.

Jerry Green has moved on.

That’s a skill. Or perhaps a gift.

“I can let it go. It wasn’t meant to be,” said Green, who scored 27 points for UC Irvine against UCLA on Saturday.

Had he scored 29, he and the Anteaters would have gone home with an upset.

But Green missed on one of his trademark floating jumpers in the final seconds when Dan Gadzuric got an arm in his face.

The next day, Green enjoyed his usual Sunday, driving to Pomona to attend the Great I Am Pentecostal church, where his uncle is pastor, his father is a minister, his mother is the church secretary and his grandmother is a missionary.

The UCLA outcome was a disappointment, but Irvine’s shooting star has gotten used to getting over disappointments.

Irvine was 24-3 last season, then missed the NCAA tournament after losing to Pacific in the semifinals of the Big West Conference tournament.

Then Green, encouraged by his father Gerald to test his NBA prospects after being selected Big West player of the year, declared for the draft.

He wasn’t picked.

“I watched until, like, 40 or something,” Green said. “I was kind of hurt. Just about every basketball player dreams of making the NBA.”

Irvine Coach Pat Douglass didn’t worry much about Green recovering from the letdown.

“I think with some players you would be concerned,” Douglass said. “But he’s a pretty mature kind of kid. Pretty disciplined. Religious. Not one who dwells on negatives very long.”

The important part of the careful approach Green and his father took as they explored the NBA was not signing with an agent.

When Green wasn’t drafted, he was free to return for his senior year--on the NBA scouts’ radar now, and clear on where he needs to improve.

“I’m glad I didn’t get picked,” he said. “A lot of guys drafted in the second round are playing overseas.”

Green is back, scoring even more than last season, when he averaged 19 points.

At 24.1 points a game, he is ninth in the nation. He scored 41 against Pepperdine and 36 against Loyola Marymount.

“He’s much stronger than when he first came in as a freshman,” Douglass said. “He’s always been a very instinctive scorer. But he was just a driver. He didn’t really shoot the three-point shot. Now, you can’t just lay off him.”

Green made 29 three-pointers last season and has made 17 in nine games this season.

There are other areas that still need work--turnovers, for instance, after eight against UCLA--and defense.

But that was the beauty of testing the NBA waters.

Green went to the predraft camp in Chicago and learned what he needed to do.

“Be more of a point guard,” he said. “I’m usually taking a lot of shots. But passing the ball and getting people open, that might be my role at the next level.

“I’m a [point guard or shooting guard], but I’m only 6-3. At the next level, most people 6-3 are point guards, unless they’re like Allen Iverson.”

Green is a little different from most players with pro aspirations. He was slow to emerge in high school because his family didn’t immerse him in the world of high-profile summer basketball, then he was slow to make a name in college because Irvine was rebuilding.

But understand this about those game-winning shots: Green has made his share.

He beat Pepperdine on a three-pointer in the final seconds of double-overtime this season. Long Beach State and Boise State were victims last season.

You make some, you miss some.

“I’ve missed a lot of game-winning shots,” Green said. “I used to be so hard on myself. But as you get older, more mature, you learn to move on.”

Gardner Another Example

Jason Gardner withdrew his name from the NBA draft list after not faring well in the Chicago camp, and returned to Arizona for his junior season.

He’s better for it.

Gardner has worked to become a more consistent three-point shooter, and like Jason Terry before him, now gets to take a turn as the focal point of the team.

“He was disappointed, but I met with him and his mom and I told him Damon Stoudamire was nowhere near ready to go after his sophomore or junior years and ended up being the rookie of the year,” Coach Lute Olson said.

“Steve Kerr is in his 14th year in the NBA and might never have made it if his knee injury hadn’t given him a fifth year [in college]. Jason Terry is having a very good career in Atlanta.

“I told [Gardner], in my opinion he was trying to do the impossible.”

All excellent examples, although there’s an obvious exception: Mike Bibby jumped to the NBA fairly easily after his sophomore year at Arizona.

Knight Time

It’s going to take a lot more than a “he-said, he-said” over a verbal exchange with an arena manager for Texas Tech to waver in its support for Bob Knight.

University President David Schmidly and Athletic Director Gerald Myers, an old friend, are so squarely in Knight’s corner that perhaps the only thing that would cause a problem would be a well-documented physical confrontation with a player or student.

Schmidly said in October that such a situation would be unacceptable for any Texas Tech coach.

“Now, will Coach Knight after a rough game have a rough interview with a reporter? Probably so,” he said.

Throw Compaq Center’s Jerry MacDonald into the bin with the media.

MacDonald issued an apology--but notably not a retraction--saying he’d “overstepped” himself in publicly alleging that Knight had been verbally abusive and had asked him to “step outside” when he spoke to Knight, who had criticized the facility during a news conference.

Texas Tech is still getting its first taste of the scrutiny Knight is under, and he has yet to visit the charged atmospheres of some of the Big 12’s less friendly arenas.

A February swing that takes the Red Raiders to Oklahoma State and Kansas figures to be worth watching.

Worth noting in the meantime: At 8-1--the loss was to Sam Houston State--Texas Tech is only one victory from matching last season’s total.