Aggers’ Longshot Is Finally Beginning to Pay Dividends

On the day he was hired to resuscitate the Loyola Marymount basketball program four years ago, Coach Steve Aggers vowed to tap into the pool of Southern California high school talent that the previous coaching staff had largely abandoned.

Aggers immediately set his sights on Compton Dominguez High, then the nation’s No. 1 team, and found Sherman Gay, an athletic but raw 6-foot-7 forward who hadn’t captured the fancy of many recruiters.

“We just went after him hard,” Aggers recalled. “At first look, he was an outstanding athlete but you could tell he was probably a ‘tweener. He didn’t possess great perimeter skills and he was probably too thin to play inside. I think a lot of people didn’t see a position for him.”

Even with the Lions coming off an embarrassing 2-26 season, the interest piqued Gay and his mother, Loretta, a Loyola graduate. Gay had attended many games at Gersten Pavilion and could envision himself in a Loyola uniform.

“I knew about the history here,” he said. “I came to the game when Bo Kimble had his number retired. I thought about what it would be like to come here and filling up these seats again.”

Loyola isn’t selling out Gersten Pavilion as it did in the early 1990s, but Gay has helped the Lions (13-11, 4-7 West Coast Conference) become respectable again. The senior forward is putting up career numbers after three largely inconsistent seasons.

Gay is the fourth-leading scorer in the conference, averaging 16.3 points a game. He also leads the league with 46 blocked shots and ranks third with a 54.9 field-goal percentage.

Gay averaged five points and 2.9 rebounds before this season.

Big West Conference

Utah State and Pacific have clinched spots in the conference tournament next month. UC Santa Barbara has the inside track at third place.

The other seven teams are jockeying for the final five postseason spots.

“Any game you win, you feel like you’ve distanced yourself from the others,” UC Riverside Coach John Masi said. “But you know, you turn right around and drop one or two games and you’ve put yourself back in a bad spot.”

Riverside is a prime example. The Highlanders (8-13, 5-8) had lost five in a row before victories last week over Long Beach State and UC Irvine. That pulled them into a fifth-place tie with Cal State Fullerton before a loss to Utah State on Thursday.

Riverside defeated Irvine for the first time since 1977 and its 72-54 victory last Saturday was its first in seven games played in front of a regionally televised audience.

“I guess you can say that was a benchmark win for us, but it doesn’t carry much weight now,” Masi said.