College Basketball / Robyn Norwood : Brundy Takes Shots at DePaul Record Book

Stanley Brundy never took to Los Angeles. He didn’t like it when he came here from New Orleans and, after playing at Crenshaw High School for 2 years, he went to college elsewhere.

His departure has been DePaul’s gain. This season, he is leading the Blue Demons in scoring at 18 points a game, rebounding at 6 a game, field goal percentage at 65%, blocked shots at 24, and steals at 35.

By coincidence, he had the best game of his career against a Los Angeles school, scoring 47 points and pulling down 20 rebounds in a 115-111 victory over Loyola Marymount in the championship game of DePaul’s tournament in December.

It was a performance that put him in good company in DePaul basketball lore. His scoring total was 6 points shy of George Mikan’s school record of 53, set in 1945, and tied him for second with Mark Aguirre, who scored 47 against Maine in 1981. The only other DePaul players to have scored 30 points and have taken down 15 rebounds in a game are Aguirre and Terry Cummings.

Like it or not, Loyola Marymount will see Brundy again today, when the teams meet at the Rosemont Horizon.

Brundy wasn’t the star of the undefeated 1984-85 Crenshaw team that won the City 4-A championship and the State Division I championship. He averaged 14 points a game on a team that counted among its members Stevie Thompson, now at Syracuse, and Ron Caldwell and Dion Brown, both now at Washington.

But he has come into his own at DePaul, where he has scored 1,025 points in 95 games and has made a place for himself with the best career field goal percentage in school history.

His repertoire of dunks, layups and a shot that school publicist Tim Stephens calls “a running one-hander sort of hook from 3 feet out,” has him at 62% for his career. He is so far ahead of second place, which is 55.3%, that he could miss his next 88 shots and not lose the record.

His mark is also the highest of any active player and puts him at No. 19 on the NCAA’s all-time list, wedged between Patrick Ewing and Brad Daugherty.

The free throw line is a different matter. Fifteen feet apparently is beyond his range. Brundy has made just 32 of 74 from the line this season, or 43%.

He is such a disaster at the line that he shoots 100 free throws before practice, 100 after, thinks about them “day and night,” and still gets no better.

It has been so bad that Coach Joey Meyer, for a time, took to not watching when Brundy was at the line. But the laughter from bench-warmers who caught on changed his mind.

That would be good-natured laughter, of course. Brundy is the cornerstone of the 9-7 team, which has lost 6 games to teams ranked in the top 20.

But we like your nose, Coach K: Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski turned philosophical this week in responding to a question about the Blue Devils’ No. 1 ranking.

“Would you rather not be No. 1?” a reporter asked, perhaps conditioned by Dean Smith’s classic--and often comic--complaint about the trauma of holding the top spot.

“Being ranked No. 1 is fine,” Krzyzewski said. “You’re like my wife, asking about all those hypothetical situations. I’d rather deal with the fact that we are ranked No. 1. That’s just where it’s at. If we’re not No. 1, then I’ll deal with that.

“I have a big nose. But I don’t sit around saying, ‘I wonder what it would be like without a big nose. I’d like a little one.’ I don’t do things like that. What do you think? Do you think I’d look better with a little nose?”

Duke beat William & Mary this week, 100-38.

Just think if Mary hadn’t played.

How to explain the scheduling of a game that proved so lopsided?

William & Mary, a school in Williamsburg, Va., is something of a traditional opponent and has a 2-23 record against Duke. The Indians are coached by Chuck Swenson, who began his basketball career as a manager of the Indiana basketball team under Bob Knight and worked as an assistant to Krzyzewski at Army for 3 years and at Duke for 7.

Consider the scheduling a friendly gesture by Krzyzewski, providing his friend with a big-time game that appeals to recruits and gets some exposure for the program.

The same explanation holds for another Duke blowout this year, a 94-59 win over Cornell, a team coached by Mike Dement, who was an assistant at Duke in 1982-83.

Larry Steele and the city of Portland have done all right by each other for a long time.

Steele played for the Trail Blazers for 9 years and helped Portland win a National Basketball Assn. title in 1977 with his hustle and uncanny outside shooting.

Now he is at work at a task that is proving more difficult than his days in the NBA, coaching a University of Portland basketball team that is 0-14 this season and has a 20-game losing streak, the longest current streak in Division I.

When Jack Avina quit 2 years ago, the Pilots hired Steele after Dave Twardzik, another former Trail Blazer, turned down the job.

At the time, Steele was marketing manager for the Trail Blazers. He had never coached.

The Pilots finished 6-22 in his first season. This season, they have played only one team below the Division I level, Puget Sound.

The Pilots lost to the Division II Loggers, 75-71, after blowing a 13-point lead in the second half.

“We started hoping we would win,” Steele told the Associated Press. “I think that was the problem.”