Valley’s Top Guns Never See a Shot They Don’t Like

Basketball gunners are like vampires--they have no conscience and know how to suck the blood out of opponents.

From the opening tipoff until the final buzzer, gunners have a lock-and-load mentality. They rapidly fire shots, never worrying what others think, even if they’re missing.

“Simply put, they can shoot you in a game and shoot you out of a game,” Crespi High Coach Dick Dornan said.

Gunners give coaches ulcers and create love-hate relationships with fans. It takes great patience to coach a gunner, especially when they’re missing shots and the trembling coach grudgingly offers the encouraging words, “Keep shooting.”

Now that everyone knows the definition of a gunner, please repeat after me: “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the baddest gunner of all?”

Their identities are becoming clear:

* Gunner No. 6: Ramon Perry of San Fernando. Perry shoots so often, it looks like he’s conducting an experiment on the gravitational pull of a basketball. He averages 27.2 points, and that’s because the game lasts only 32 minutes.

A 5-foot-9 junior, Perry is a versatile athlete. As a wide receiver, he caught 13 touchdown passes last football season. He competes in basketball and wrestling in overlapping seasons and is a contender for the 145-pound City championship.

* Gunner No. 5: Michael Luderer of Notre Dame. Luderer missed 12 consecutive shots against Chaminade and had the audacity to keep shooting. He finished with 23 points.

“My job is not to stop shooting when I’m missing,” Luderer said.

Poor shot selection, however, can get him a seat on the bench. The 6-3 senior is so confident, he throws up off-balance shots that might be considered prayers by others. If they connect, he’s a hero. If they don’t, Coach Rob DiMuro’s patience is tested.

“You need to give a little bit of freedom in the decision-making to a kid who can score,” DiMuro said. “Sometimes it doesn’t work out right and they get carried away, but you have to take the good with the bad.”

* Gunner No. 4: Andrew Moore of Crespi. Even if there were no three-point line, Moore would be letting it fly from long range. He considers an open three-pointer a higher-percentage shot than a free throw. He has made 47 three-pointers in 18 games.

His coach trusts Moore to make sure his shot selection isn’t too wild.

“If the player labeled a gunner has proven his worth, I don’t mind it,” Dornan said. “But I detest gunners who are into the game just for themselves.”

Moore, a 6-2 senior, struggled earlier this season, but he never stopped shooting and is averaging 17 points.

“I hit a little rough spot, but teammates never lost confidence in me and I never lost confidence in myself,” he said.

* Gunner No. 3: Shayne Berry of Chatsworth. Berry has been borrowing tricks from the NBA’s top gunners, Allen Iverson and Kobe Bryant. The 5-10 senior point guard fears no one and never hesitates to shoot.

He’s averaging 28.8 points, with games of 46 points against Newbury Park and 43 against Reseda.

“I feel the pressure is on me,” Berry said. “I’m either going to win the game or lose the game. I’m never discouraged by what the fans say. If you miss two, three shots in a row and stop shooting, it does the team no good. You can’t be timid. Eventually they’re going to fall. You can never let four, five misses get you down.”

* Gunner No. 2: Kyle Kegley of Thousand Oaks. Any fan foolish enough to provoke Kegley by yelling some snide remark, beware. He’ll retaliate with one of those Jack Nicholson-like smirks, then make basket after basket.

“When [fans] get on you for missing shots, it makes you get fired up and hit more shots,” Kegley said.

The 6-5 senior is averaging 21.7 points and ranks as perhaps the best one-on-one player in the region. He’s among the few players who consistently make shots despite having a defender in his face. His size gives him the option of posting up smaller players, but he’s best known for shooting far beyond the three-point line.

“I’ve never had to tell Kyle to shoot the ball,” Coach Richard Endres said. “I like having confident shooters. If they have to look over to the bench and think they’re going to come out of the game if they miss a shot, you’re not going to have confident shooters.”

Kegley became a good shooter out of necessity growing up.

“I always went to gyms everywhere and I was the shorter guy playing against older guys, so I always stayed outside and shot, shot, shot until I developed an outside shot,” he said.

* Gunner No. 1: Cecil Brown of Canoga Park. He scored 53 points against Fresno Edison and 51 points against Hollywood. The 6-4 senior averages 32.7 points.

What makes Brown the region’s baddest gunner is his ability to score from inside and outside. Against Verdugo Hills, he missed six consecutive three-point shots, but made 20 of 22 two-point shots.

“He has the green light to shoot the ball any time, anywhere,” Coach Ralph Turner said.

Brown has embraced his role as the Hunters’ primary scoring threat.

“I try to get my teammates involved, but when we need a basket, that’s when I start shooting,” he said. “If I’m missing outside, that’s when I take my game inside. If your role on the team is to shoot, you have to keep going even if you’re off as long as you’re not killing the team.”

Brown doesn’t mind being called a gunner. But he dislikes ball hogs.

“Your teammates don’t want to play with a ball hog,” he said. “They’ll play with a gunner. A gunner is where the offense is designed for him to shoot. A ball hog will go outside the offense to shoot.”

Gunner used to be a negative term describing players who were selfish and unrepentant in their shot selection.

But today, coaches want players who believe in themselves.

“I don’t think you can train a kid to be a gunner,” Endres said. “Gilbert Arenas could shoot anywhere on the court and it had a good chance of going in. You want that type of confidence. It’s a lot easier to tone a kid down than tell a kid to shoot when they don’t want to.”

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Eric Sondheimer’s column appears Wednesday and Sunday. He can be reached at (818) 772-3422 or eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.