Hill Emerges as Confidence Man at WSU : College basketball: Former Cleveland High standout has the right attitude for a shooting guard.

To find out what makes Eddie Hill tick, understand what makes him ticked.

It’s not that Hill is irritable; he is one of the most popular players on the Washington State basketball team. Still, he fumes when his jump shot is off target.

After a miss, the iron becomes the focus of Hill’s ire. He glares at the hoop the way a tennis player plucks his strings after an errant smash or an embarrassed outfielder searches his glove for a gap in the leather.

The gesture amuses WSU players and coaches.

“If Eddie had a bad night, it might have been because of the rim,” Coach Kelvin Sampson said. “Eddie just never believes that he can have a bad night.”

That type of confidence is contagious. The Cougars appear self-assured these days: They are 20-10 (8-9 in Pacific 10 Conference play) and already have won more games than any WSU team since 1983.

Hill, a 6-foot-1 sophomore from Cleveland High, is the first player off the bench and the backup for Terrence Lewis, one of the best off-guards in the conference. Hill is averaging 8.1 points and 17 minutes a game. In Washington State’s 82-68 upset of USC on Sunday, Hill made three of three three-point baskets for nine points in nine minutes.

“Eddie is having a very good sophomore year,” Sampson said. “I wouldn’t have any problems with starting him.”

Yet Hill has been erratic. He scored 25 against Alcorn State, 22 against Cal State Sacramento and 19 against Cal. But lately he has struggled, averaging 5.1 points in the past eight games.

Hill knows what Sampson wants. His first option is to shoot.

His second option . . . is to shoot.

“Coach expects me to score coming in,” Hill said. “He wants me to add something to the game. He doesn’t just want me to come in and run along. I’ve got to take some three-pointers, play hard defense, get things going.”

A month before his latest cooling trend, Hill weathered another mini-slump. He went scoreless in consecutive games but bounced back with double-digit outings against Cal and UCLA.

“I was putting a lot of pressure on myself that if I didn’t go in there and score, he was going to take me out,” Hill said. “I wasn’t doing my job at all. I was taking maybe two or three shots a game when I should be taking nine or 10.”

The WSU playbook includes “Rover Ed” and “Shooter Ed,” plays that allow Hill to roam the baseline in search of his shot.

Said Sampson: “When he gets it rolling, I just like to sit back and watch.”

Likewise, Hill’s teammates marvel--albeit privately--at his accuracy.

“I call him Shotgun,” Cougar point guard Bennie Seltzer said. “Eddie can really shoot the ball. I wouldn’t tell him that, though.”

Instead, the Cougars keep Hill grounded by ribbing him when he misfires. When WSU played host to Arizona last season, Hill launched a shot that missed the rim by a yard. Did the home crowd razz him for his wild, high-plains drifter? No, but his teammates did.

“It was a horrible shot,” Seltzer recalled, a hint of glee in his voice. “The stroke was pretty, but, man . . . He got it bad from us.”

Hill, 18, is the youngest player on the team and was just six months removed from his 17th birthday when he made the 18-hour drive from Los Angeles to Pullman, Wash.

“It was kind of good going from L.A. to such a small town,” he said. “You see a different part of the world, something I really hadn’t seen before. I’m used to the big city and now, bam, I’m in the middle of wheat fields.”

The culture shock was one thing, the shock he encountered during his first meeting with Sampson was another. The coach suggested that he redshirt.

Hill is no shot blocker, but he rejected the recommendation into the cheap seats.

“Eddie bristled like a porcupine,” Sampson said. “He sat up straight in that seat and said: ‘Coach, I ain’t come up here to redshirt.’ ”

Hill’s confidence was fostered at Cleveland, where he excelled for two years after transferring from Burroughs in Burbank. During his senior season, he averaged a team-high 16.3 points a game--a statistic that might have been more robust had the Cavaliers not been so talent-rich.

Former high school teammates of Hill’s who are playing at the NCAA Division I level include Adonis Jordan (Kansas), Andre Chevalier (Cal State Northridge), Lucious Harris (Cal State Long Beach), Trent Cornelius (Washington) and Tim Bowen (Butler).

Bob Braswell, who coached at Cleveland before leaving for Long Beach in 1989, remembers Hill’s brazen, yet charming demeanor.

“Supreme confidence? Supreme is an understatement,” Braswell said. “The first day of practice, after he transferred from Burroughs, Eddie went around and told every starter that he would take his job. . . . We had good teams at Cleveland before anybody had heard of Eddie.”

Braswell and Hill became good friends and still keep in touch, although not as often as either would like.

“I really love Eddie,” Braswell said. “I love his heart.”

Hill keeps in closest contact with Jordan, point guard for the third-ranked Jayhawks. They tease each other about bragging rights. Jordan always wins.

“Last year I kept telling him, ‘Kansas is horrible. Kansas is horrible.’ ” Hill said, chuckling. “Then they go to the national-championship game and I can’t say anything to him. He’s on videotapes. He’s on covers of things. I can’t say anything.”

Well, that’s not exactly true. As a freshman, Hill scored 20 points against Arizona, sinking six of 11 three-point shots in 19 minutes.

“After the game, Eddie was (upset) because we didn’t win,” Sampson said. “He could have cared less that he had 20, but that’s his confidence level.”