La Serna’s Lowe Refuses to Compromise Principles

High school basketball coaches generally don’t like to compliment one another. Perhaps it’s an ego thing.

That makes the admiration that Mike Geren has for Whittier La Serna Coach Mike Lowe even more extraordinary.

“You hear about all the bad stuff going on in high school basketball,” said Geren, the coach at Santa Fe Springs Santa Fe. “He’s one of the good things.”

In nine years of coaching against Lowe in the Del Rio League, Geren has won only one of 17 games.

“At first, I didn’t like him much for beating me all the time,” Geren said.

And yet, he says of Lowe: “He is the epitome of what I think coaching is and should be. I’m hoping I can be the coach he is.”

Few outside of Whittier have probably heard of Lowe, who has guided La Serna to 10 league championships in 15 seasons. The reason he coaches in virtual anonymity here is that none of his 14 playoff teams made it past the second round.

But 20 years ago, at the age of 28, Lowe won a state championship, coaching Hacienda Heights Wilson to the Division II title. He had the best player in the state in 6-foot-10 Scott Williams, who went on to play for North Carolina and spent 15 years in the NBA.

Lowe left Wilson the next year for San Gorgonio, where he coached for four seasons before arriving at La Serna in 1990. He has seen the off-court changes in the game, with players choosing schools for exposure reasons and coaches manipulating the system by using transfer permits and club coach connections.

“When I was at Wilson, if that was now, there’s no way Scott would have gone to Wilson,” he said.

Lowe refuses to play the wooing game. He takes whoever shows up at his neighborhood school, teaches them about basketball and life and grades himself by how well they fulfill their potential.

“To win a CIF title in our division, you have to have a couple kids who are Division I players,” he said. “In the time I’ve been in our league, there hasn’t been one kid who went directly to a Division I college.”

Last season, La Serna finished 23-6 and lost to Cajon in the second round of the Division II-A playoffs. The Lancers had a 6-8 water polo player in the lineup. This season, with no one taller than 6-2, La Serna is 11-8 overall but could be headed to another league title with a 3-0 record.

“We have an opportunity to compete for the league championship every year,” he said. “In the big picture, I really enjoy what’s going on.”

And his players seem to enjoy playing for him.

“He sets high standards for the players on and off the court,” senior guard David Hayashi said. “You can’t be a selfish player. You can’t wear your shirttail untucked.”

It has been 10 years since Lowe last received a technical foul from an official. He said it doesn’t mean he’s a saint, but it’s his way of teaching players to keep their cool.

“I think it’s important to be a role model,” he said. “If you’re asking kids to keep their poise and be respectful and act like gentlemen and you don’t do that as a coach, that’s not acceptable.”

Lowe has already experienced having his once-in-a-lifetime player in Williams. He’d like to have another, but he’s adamant about letting it happen on its own.

“As I get older,” he said, “I realize my job is to direct the kids here, whether it’s the 12th man or the first man. Of course, I want to win a state championship again, but the reality is, unless we have two Division I players and a couple 6-7 players, we aren’t, and I’m not going to cheat. If you don’t have integrity, you don’t have anything.”

Geren got to observe Lowe’s coaching philosophy first-hand when he joined him in directing an All-Star team last spring. He was surprised at how honest and open Lowe was while a rival coach listened and took notes.

“I’d ask him questions and he wouldn’t be secretive,” Geren said. “I learned more in three weeks with him than I had learned going to clinics. It wasn’t Xs and O’s but how to treat players.”

Lowe has two sons playing basketball at Brea Olinda, their neighborhood school. Sam, a 6-5 senior, could easily start at La Serna, but Lowe chose to let him attend Brea.

Lowe said he remembers a comment made by former Miami Dolphin coach Don Shula: “Cheating perverts the meaning of victory.”

“It’s true,” he said. “I’m not going to bend the rules so that I can get a couple more wins.”

So now you can understand why Geren considers Lowe his mentor, and why others should too.

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Eric Sondheimer can be reached at eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.