Success in ‘Redd’ Zone

Try to find any part of basketball that Brian Scalabrine doesn’t love. The grunt work, playing defense, banging for position under the basket.

“The whole thing is fun,” he said. “That’s how it is for me.”

Ask him about the other night when he planted his 240 pounds in the lane and tried to take a charge, when the other guy was a little too quick, dunking in monstrous fashion, sending a groan through the crowd.

“If you’re having fun, you don’t care if you look dumb,” Scalabrine said. “You don’t care if the girl in seat No. 29 is watching.”

This is an oversized kid playing an oversized kid’s game. The 6-foot-9 sophomore--they call him “Redd” because of his hair--has established himself as USC’s new center, giving the Trojans a much-needed presence inside with 14 points and seven rebounds a game. Sometimes it seems he has willed the team to a 5-0 start by pure enthusiasm.

“What makes him competitive every night is his passion,” Coach Henry Bibby said. “There are very few guys who come through who love the game that much.”

Maybe that’s why Dick Vitale talked about Scalabrine on national television. Or why Long Beach State Coach Wayne Morgan called him “a great Division I player.”

“That’s just Redd,” teammate Quincy Wilder said. “He works hard.”

But it isn’t work at all. Just watch him tonight against Loyola Marymount. The 20-year-old looks as though there is no place else he would rather be than on the basketball court.

This is a guy from tiny Enumclaw, Wash., who always wanted to play college ball but blew a scholarship to Gonzaga because he didn’t have the grades. Getting a second chance meant playing for Highline Community College in Des Moines, Wash.

“The only time we saw a Marriott was when we drove by one,” said Joe Callero, his coach then. “Your highlight after the game was getting $5 and going to McDonald’s.”

Recruiters from nearby Washington and Oregon noticed Scalabrine as he led his team to a 31-1 record, but Division I would have to wait. Scalabrine needed another year of junior college to qualify academically. He returned to Highline and, in the toughest kind of decision for a gym rat, redshirted to save his remaining eligibility for the big time.

“Missing a whole year of games?” he said. “After the third day I wanted to change my mind.”

His days were all the same. Up at 6 a.m. to take 300 shots before class, then lift weights at mid-morning, then back to class. In the afternoons, he worked with former Laker Swen Nater or practiced with the Highline team. Callero played him at every position, making him pound the boards one day, making him bring the ball upcourt like a guard the next. One thing never changed.

“I’d always shoot the ball,” Scalabrine said. “That year, practice was like my games. Whoever was guarding me, I wanted to kill him.”

That pent-up competitiveness erupted at a three-day all-star tournament in Southern California after the season ended. Suddenly, every Pacific 10 Conference school was asking about him. Scalabrine chose USC because the Trojans asked loudest.

“I wasn’t really this blue-chip or All-American, so other schools didn’t really want me,” Scalabrine said. “But [USC assistant coach] Silvey Dominguez, from the first day, he knew that he wanted me and that I’d fit into the program.”

It was a package deal, USC giving a scholarship to Wilder, a guard at Highline, and hiring Callero as an assistant coach. The Trojans got a center they soon realized could have an immediate impact.

USC coaches rank their players after each practice, scoring them in everything from rebounding to passing. Scalabrine has rated at or near the top from day one. He began the season with 14 points, nine rebounds and two blocks against San Diego State and has not looked back.

“Very active. Relentless energy,” Bibby said. “Things like that are what I look for.”

Each game, Scalabrine has added another element to his repertoire, shooting the hook, throwing no-look passes, jumping out to trap on the perimeter.

“He can even shoot the three-pointer,” forward Jarvis Turner said.

In a lineup with no true center, Scalabrine has the freedom a basketball junkie craves.

“You look at most teams, the big men sprint back to the block, cover inside and work their way out,” he said. “I get to pressure the ball and deny guards. How great is that?”

It’s a dream come true for a big kid who cares about basketball and his family and renting videos and almost nothing else. Scalabrine isn’t going to worry about tougher days to come, the games he will play against veteran 7-footers such as Stanford’s Tim Young and Washington’s Todd MacCulloch once the Pac-10 schedule begins.

Right now, he’s having too much fun.

“I say that to myself every day,” he said. “You feel like that, you have a little more bounce in your step.”