A TOUCH OF GRAY : UCSB Center Enjoying Life at Picturesque Seaside Campus

SANTA BARBARA —  Smile and say Gauchos. That’s what Gary Gray has been doing since he arrived at UC Santa Barbara last fall. The starting center for the Gaucho basketball team wears a smile as big and warm as the sun that bathes students here with 70-degree beach weather in January.

Gray is a freshman, living among the breed in campus dorms. In conversation, he radiates so much happiness about his current station it’s difficult not to squint.

A few months ago, the city’s tourism council scrapped plans for an advertising campaign built around the slogan Savor Santa Barbara . It should be revived. Gray would be a perfect poster boy.

“I love it here,” said Gray, the 1987 City Section 3-A Division Player of the Year from Granada Hills High. “It’s right on the ocean, everyone is nice and it’s good academics. What else can you say about this place?”

Well, 17,000 students attend the university and there appear to be at least as many bicycles, including the black beach cruiser on which Gray traverses the scenic campus. To be sure, UCSB is a top academic institution, but at this university Albert Einstein and other scholars defer to two-wheel pioneer Ignaz Schwinn.

Climate and academics have been taking a back seat recently to the UCSB basketball team, which is 11-1 overall and 3-0 in the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. Only a loss to Stanford taints the record of the Gauchos, who defeated Pepperdine, Oregon State and North Carolina State before scoring perhaps the biggest win in their history--a 62-60 victory over Nevada Las Vegas last week in Las Vegas.

Not surprisingly, the students have gone ga-ga over their Gauchos, and they will pack the 6,000 seat Campus Events Center for tonight’s game against San Jose State. On Friday, much of the population that usually spends weekends chug-a-lugging in Isla Vista will move Party Central to the basketball ticket office and camp out for Saturday’s game against Utah State. The first 2,400 students also will receive the only available tickets for the Gauchos’ Feb. 6 game against UNLV.

“People keep coming up to me, people I don’t even know, and they say ‘Great game, I’ll be there Thursday,’ ” Gray said. “It’s pretty crazy.”

Gray, 6-9, is averaging 6.8 points and 3 rebounds in little more than 18 minutes a game. He won the starting center position during the preseason and shares time with 6-8 Greg Trygstad, who made the PCAA All-Freshman team last season, and 6-10 junior John Westbeld.

Gray scored a season-high 16 points in games against Pennsylvania and North Carolina State but rates his 12-point performance against Oregon State as his best.

In that game, UCSB was leading, 69-67, with Gray at the free-throw line and less than a minute remaining. He made two shots, the second of which provided the victory margin as Oregon State hit a three-point shot at the buzzer.

Gray’s cool under pressure has impressed Santa Barbara Coach Jerry Pimm, who also likes Gray’s self-motivation, intelligence and coachability.

“He’s got a good head on his shoulders,” Pimm said. “He understands his highs and lows and he understands his physical limitations, which is a big reason why he is progressing.”

Last season at Granada Hills there did not seem to be a weakness in Gray’s game. He averaged 26 points and 15 rebounds, leading the Highlanders to their third consecutive Northwest Valley league championship and the 3-A title.

This season, however, guards Carrick DeHart (15.9 points a game) and Brian Shaw (13.3) have provided most of the scoring for the Gauchos.

“I’m not really concerned about points right now,” Gray said. “Defense and rebounding are the key things for me. The offense will come. I can see myself becoming a better scorer here as my career goes on.

“It’s all building. It’s a process where I’m learning and learning and learning every day.”

Gray passed his first college test before he ever entered a campus lecture hall. The instructor was Pimm and the subject was weights and measures. Specifically, those of Gray’s body.

At 250 pounds in high school, Gray looked a lot like the Pillsbury Doughboy. He wasn’t exactly fat, but he was soft.

Last summer, Gray visited Santa Barbara and weighed in at “263 pounds of baby fat,” Pimm said. Player and coach sat down and outlined some activities for Gray to pursue before returning for school. Among them: pushing away from the dinner table, eating three square meals daily, weightlifting and running. The goal was to reduce to 245.

Gray went home and ran the court in a wide-open summer league with college players such as UCLA forward Trevor Wilson. He began lifting weights five days a week and running two miles a day.

When Gray returned to school he weighed 245, and he has dropped nine more pounds since beginning preseason conditioning. Gray is not yet an Adonis but a new, angular physique is taking shape. He is well on his way to muscledom.

Preseason tutoring sessions with Ben Howland, a Gaucho assistant, have made Gray a stronger inside player. He also is becoming adept with a jump-hook shot and is improving his left-handed shot.

“In high school, Gary played in a league where there weren’t a lot of 6-8 athletes, so it’s a new thing for him to be going against guys that big and athletic,” Howland said.

At least one member of the Gaucho coaching staff attended every game Gray played during his senior year, but Howland played perhaps as large a role as Pimm in Gray’s choice of Santa Barbara over Minnesota and Oregon, among others.

Howland called Gray often and began almost every conversation by reminding him that it was 80 degrees in Santa Barbara and that the co-eds were walking across campus in bikinis.

Gray smiled at the memory as he surveyed the campus, noting that Howland’s reports just barely qualified as an overstatement.

“I knew I made a great choice and I have no second thoughts,” Gray said. “From the first day of school, I fell right in. I’m very comfortable here.”