Quiet reflection

The Quiet Man was about to be noisy.

Crenshaw Coach Willie West was watching his team build a large lead in the fourth quarter against league rival Dorsey High on Friday when the referee’s whistle shrieked. A foul was called on one of his Cougars.

West, who had been sitting quietly, as is his way, stood up. His 5-foot-10 frame -- looking a little padded thanks to a Crenshaw blue-and-gold sweatsuit jacket -- doesn’t quite move as fast as it did 37 years ago when he became the Cougars’ coach; now 66, he has some back and leg pains.

With play stopped, West ambled over to the referee and only then grew animated, for him, as his eyes grew large and his voice rose in pitch. Yet he did not let his displeasure spill over to the crowd in the packed Dorsey gym. His words were directed only to the referee. No wild gestures. No vulgar outbursts. In 30 seconds, it was over. West was back on the bench, back to watching quietly as Crenshaw went on to a 98-78 victory.

It was the final regular-season game for Crenshaw.

And for West.

Retiring quietly would have been his preference, but that’s not possible.

Not after 37 years.

Not after becoming the winningest coach in Los Angeles City Section history.

Not after becoming only the fourth coach in state history to record 800 victories. He is 802-139.

Tonight could be 803. The Cougars are seeded eighth in the Championship Division of the City playoffs and have a first-round game at ninth-seeded Sylmar. The Cougars, however, are considered a longshot to send him out with his 17th section title.

But West is ready to try something different.

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West’s teams have won a record eight state titles, 16 section championships and 28 league titles.

Some of his players, including Marques Johnson, John Williams, Kevin Ollie and Tremaine Fowlkes, have gone on to play in the NBA. Others, such as Stephen Thompson at Cal State Los Angeles, are now coaches themselves.

The respect for West runs deep.

“He was definitely a pioneer for all the young African American coaches that followed -- for all coaches,” Compton Dominguez Coach Russell Otis said. “He set a standard. He worked hard, and I think he did it the right way.”

Santa Ana Mater Dei Coach Gary McKnight who, like Otis, has won five state championships, said of West: “He taught me something about rotating players. His teams would just wear you out.

“And he’s a tough, tough competitor, but not a yeller or screamer.”

The Quiet Man. That is West, at least now.

As West himself acknowledged to The Times in 2002, “I’m not as strict and I’m not as aggressive as I used to be. I’m still there, but I’m a little softer. I guess it’s because of the aging.”

Even referees wouldn’t disagree.

“Willie got upset at times,” said Robert Mozee, a former official who now assigns referees for the City Section. “But Willie was not demonstrative. He would let you know how he felt about a call, but he was not out to incite crowds.”

Referee Eric Gaines, who has officiated for 18 years, said West stands out for another reason.

“Lots of coaches today coach not for the team but for the sidelines and who’s watching,” he said. “It’s like they want to be the show. Willie was never like that.”

West probably could have stayed at Crenshaw for as long as he wanted but began hinting about retirement in 2005, when he and his wife, Denise, built a house about 30 minutes west of Phoenix. They have a 21-month-old daughter.

“My wife loves Arizona,” said West, who also has a son, Willie West III, 31, from his first marriage. “We had a lot of timeshares in various places in Arizona, and she likes what she sees.”

Since coming to Los Angeles from Houston in 1958, West has worked nonstop and only now, as the end of his final season nears, does he think about what that has meant. He has part of the answer right away.

“Being a high school basketball coach,” he said, “has taken me to a lot of places I probably wouldn’t have gone, such as Japan. I’ve gone to Europe. I’ve gone all over the United States.

“A lot of people have invited us [to tournaments] to see what Crenshaw is all about. I’ve been to Alaska ... learned they thought every black kid in Los Angeles was a Blood or a Crip.”

That draws a chuckle from West.

A quiet one.

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Baseball is his true love. He hoped to play at USC -- “I was a shortstop, had a live arm and was a switch-hitter,” West said -- but couldn’t afford to enroll there. Instead, he signed up at Los Angeles City College and later transferred to Cal State Los Angeles, where he earned a degree in physical education.

He first stepped onto the Crenshaw campus in 1968, fresh from John Muir Junior High, to coach the Cougars’ junior varsity teams. Then, two seasons later, he got the job of a lifetime. Literally. Varsity coach Jim Ryan was leaving.

“I didn’t know I was going to be the coach until I came up to watch a football practice,” West said. “Some of the basketball players came up to meet me. And they said, ‘You’re going to be the basketball coach.’ I said no, I’m already a basketball coach. They said, ‘No, of the varsity.’ ”

West remembers the first team meeting.

“Back at that time they wore naturals or Afros, and as the B/C coach, I always had the players have close haircuts,” said West, who though now balding kept his hair neat back then and his mustache finely groomed. “So they were more concerned if I was going to make them cut their hair.

“I said, ‘You can keep your mustache, but you can’t have other facial hair, and as long as you keep your hair neat, I won’t bother you about it.’ So they did that.

“They won the championship but weren’t supposed to, based on the talent that was in the City, and especially with me being a first-year varsity coach.”

Nobody knew it then, but a dynasty was forming.

Crenshaw won five City championships in the 1970s, six in the 1980s and five in the 1990s. “We were also the runner-up six times, but because of budget constraints, I stopped ordering those banners,” West said.

The Cougars won their first state title in 1983, and their last one came in 1997.

Though West drew inspiration from coaches as diverse as John Wooden and Bob Knight, his signature style was devastatingly simple yet highly choreographed. It’s an all-out, full-court defensive attack from the moment the ball goes out of bounds until the opponent tries to score.

“His aim was to force you to do what you didn’t practice every day,” Otis said. “He’s going to take you out of your normal routine. Now you have to think about what you’re doing instead of just reacting and playing.”

Top conditioning was a must for that style of play to work, so Crenshaw players were always running, from the first day of tryouts to the last day of the playoffs.

“One of his tenets was ‘wall-to-wall -- run and touch each wall,’ ” said Eric Waters, a member of the 1973 City Section championship team and now Crenshaw’s junior varsity coach.

“It was not uncommon for people to throw up and quit the first day. Pulling up lame didn’t always mean you were hurt, but some guys didn’t want to run anymore. And for a coach who has a lot of guys to look at, that immediately put you on the back burner.”

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Donald Aaron was the first of West’s players to earn All-City honors in 1971.

But Marques Johnson was his first star.

Johnson, now a Pacific 10 analyst for FSN, helped the Cougars win the 1973 City Section title and was selected City player of the year that season. He went on to star at UCLA and in the NBA, where he was a five-time All-Star.

But in the summer of 1972 he was a nervous high school junior when his father brought him to meet West.

“We’re in a gym,” Johnson said. “Coach West ran a summer program there, so he had me get a ball and get on the court. West was still pretty limber -- he could dunk the ball -- so he guarded me, was talking trash, was boxing me out. I wondered if I wanted to play at Crenshaw.

“I didn’t know it then, but he was testing me to see how tough I was. And he told my dad he wanted me.”

Johnson thought so much of West’s coaching style that four of his sons -- Kris, Josiah, and Joshua and Moriah, who are enrolled there now -- have played at Crenshaw.

Kris was the 1993 City Section player of the year, making the Johnsons the first father-son combination to achieve that status.

But West also has rules, and it didn’t matter who you were when it came to his rules, which included players wearing ties when the team traveled; no showing disrespect to adults or authority figures; and most important, no player being bigger than the team. Violate a rule and you watch the game from the bench.

Kris Johnson can attest to that. One time, in South Carolina for a game, Johnson drank an extra soda at the team meal. That soda violated one of West’s rules. Johnson recalled that West made him sit outside, where the thermometer was struggling to hit 30 degrees, while the team finished eating. Then, at the game, Johnson never left the bench.

“He never compromises his morals or his beliefs for a player,” Kris Johnson told The Times in 2002. “I respect that in him.”

Not every player immediately accepted West’s mandates. Some, like Tommy Johnson, the 2000 City Section player of the year, initially chafed under his coach’s dictates.

“He was always hard on us,” said Johnson, who currently plays professional basketball in Mexico. “He’s a quiet coach, but once you get him going, he’s hard on you. I know I didn’t understand it until I left.

“The most important thing he taught us -- play hard all the time. The whole game. We didn’t watch film or study their plays, we were just supposed to go harder than anyone we played against, make them react to us. And the hustler always wins.”

Amid the winning, though, there were some pitfalls.

Twice under West, the Cougars have had to forfeit games and were put on probation, in 1972 and 2002, for using ineligible players. One of his assistants, Joe Weakly, was caught up in the 1972 case, accused of illegally recruiting players for Crenshaw. West doesn’t discuss the details, but what he remembers is revealing.

“Joe came from Denker Park,” said West, referring to what is now called Denker Recreation Center in South Los Angeles. “He said he wanted to help, and I didn’t have an assistant at the time. He did bring over a kid that cost me a championship in 1972, but Joe was a very loyal guy.”

Weakley was courtside with West for another 19 years.

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West still hopes to ease out of the spotlight. It’s just that the spotlight is slow to give up.

At Crenshaw’s final home game Feb. 7, he was showered with farewell gifts and tributes.

At that game at Dorsey last Friday, he was presented with a basketball autographed by his current players and coaches. Oh, he also got a caricature portrait, which he graciously accepted with a smile and held up for the cheering crowd to see.

On March 15, he will be inducted into the Cal State Los Angeles athletic hall of fame.

While West considered leaving before -- he interviewed for assistant jobs at Occidental, USC, Long Beach State and Cal State L.A. -- it always had the same ending.

“But I’m not sorry I stayed,” he said recently.

West then grew thoughtful, and said it was always about the kids, helping the kids.

Yet he warns coaches with college aspirations to not get caught up in the fact that they are helping kids.

“Because,” he said, “there’s always going to be a kid that needs help.’ ”

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mike.terry@latimes.com

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Begin text of infobox

True West

Some highlights of Willie West’s 37-year coaching career at Crenshaw High:

CALIFORNIA COACHING LEADERS

Career victory leaders among high school boys’ basketball coaches in California:

* 843 -- Mike Phelps (Oakland Bishop O’Dowd,

Alameda St. Joseph Notre Dame)

* 829 -- Lou Cvijanovich (Oxnard Santa Clara)

* 802 -- Abe Abrami (Emeryville Emery)

* 802 -- Willie West (Crenshaw *)

* -- has a playoff game tonight at Sylmar

Source: CalHiSports.com

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TO THE NEXT LEVEL

Many of those who played for Willie West at Crenshaw went on to compete at four-year colleges. Some of those include:

* Cal State Los Angeles: Alphonso Brigham, Harold Toomer

* Cal State Northridge: Chris Davis, Armand Thomas

* Connecticut: Marcus Williams

* Cornell: Maynard Brown

* DePaul: Stanley Brundy

* Drake: Napoleon Gaither

* Fresno State: Tremaine Fowlkes

* Howard: Jonathan Stokes

* UC Irvine: Cornelius Banks

* Long Beach State: Stafford Hamlin, Brent Hasson, Ronnie Winbush

* Louisville: Cornelius Holden

* Louisiana State: John Williams

* Loyola Marymount: Thomas Hobson

* Nevada Las Vegas: Michael Johnson, Robert Smith

* Portland: Darwin Cook

* St. Mary’s: David Carter

* Sacramento State: E.J. Harris

* San Diego State: Alastair Faux, Tommy Johnson

* San Francisco State: Lewis Gray

* San Jose State: Terry Cannon, Brandon Hawkins

* Stanford: Melvin Arterberry

* Syracuse: Stephen Thompson

* Texas El Paso: Scott English, Quintan Gates, Kevin Hamilton

* UCLA: Marques Johnson, Kris Johnson, Gary Maloncon

* UC Riverside: Reggie Mims

* UC Santa Barbara: Wayne Davis

* Utah: Kevin Bradley

* Washington: Dion Brown, Ron Caldwell, Doug Meekins, Curtis Stokes

* West Texas State: Renard Murray

Sources: Crenshaw High, Amateur Athletic Foundation