Trojans' Raveling Teaches More Than Basketball -- Coach Wants To `Put Something Of Substance' Into Kids' Lives

LOS ANGELES - In the life of a basketball team, there is a time to plant and a time to reap. Then there is a time to motivate.

"Fellas, this is the team that laughed at us last year," George Raveling drawls, his Philadelphia parochial-school accent heading south into storefront-preacher territory. "It's our turn to laugh tonight. This is our house."

Framed by a locker room full of inspirational slogans ("I'm One Mean Trojan - You'll Feel the Pain!"), the USC men's basketball coach is pacing around his seated players, sweat already starting to soil his crisp white turtleneck. A big, voluble man, he's pumping up the volume, preaching his pregame sermon as his Trojan team prepares to take on Arizona State University, a rugged conference rival.

"Let's get the house rockin'!" Raveling, 56, hollers, his broad, 6-foot-4-inch frame looming over his players' heads. "Let's get 'em excited! Let's fire this crowd up! This is our house!"

QUICK FADE-OUT

The pep talk pays off. Charged with emotion, USC starts the game off on a 9-0 run. By halftime, the team has a 41-31 lead, thanks to Lorenzo Orr's unerring shooting and Mark Boyd's tenacious rebounding.

In the locker room, the team is sky-high, whooping and shouting, stoked on adrenaline. Twenty more minutes of winning basketball and they will be 4-1 in the Pac-10. It would be a sweet spot for any team, but especially for perennial underdog USC, whose men's basketball program has languished for decades in the shadow of UCLA, the colossus that once beat its cross-town rival 19 times in a row.

But talk of a Trojan dynasty will have to wait. USC's sizzling first-half play in the Jan. 20 Arizona State game turned out to be the high-water mark of the season. Twenty minutes later, at game's end, the team was back in the locker room, heads hanging down, tears welling up in some of the players' eyes.

A DREADFUL GAME

Led by a stocky, sharpshooting guard named Stevin "Hedake" Smith, Arizona State turned the second half into a rout, outscoring the Trojans 56-21. With USC point guard Burt Harris on the bench with a leg injury, backup guard Damaine Powell was forced to guard Smith. Overmatched, Powell had a dreadful game. Smith made 10 of his final 15 shots, including seven three-pointers, as ASU cruised to victory.

In the locker room after the game, there is stone-cold silence. Slumped in a chair, Powell sits by himself, the team avoiding him like the plague. Only Mark Boyd, the team's leader, makes a point of coming over to give him a hug and a hushed pep talk.

For several agonizing minutes, Raveling stands in front of his players, staring at them, rocking on his heels, wrestling with his emotions. Everyone seems stunned.

When Raveling finally speaks, his voice is low and sorrowful, a weary father trying to console his grieving sons. "We had the game right where we wanted it, but we couldn't play as a unit," he says. "We're all going to have to look inside ourselves and see what we can do to improve." After a quick glance at Powell, the coach continues: "It's not gonna do any good to blame one individual. If you want to blame someone, blame Rav. That's what I get paid for."

After a tough loss, some coaches scream obscenities, pound lockers and throw chairs at the walls. Others sulk and pout, snapping at reporters and shooing their players into the showers. But when the team gathered for practice the next morning, Raveling told them how much he believed in them. Before anyone knew it, tears were streaming down his cheeks.

"Coach was very emotional," Mark Boyd says. "He started crying, right in front of us. He said he felt terrible, not because we lost but because only one person had taken the initiative to go over and talk to Damaine. He knew that if someone else had been the one to have a bad game, Damaine would've been the first to come over and comfort them."

"`A LIFE OF ILLUSION"

Boyd falls silent, trying to properly express the moral of this story. "Coach wasn't mad about losing," he says. "He was upset that we hadn't helped each other out as a team."

Every so often, a fortunate son like Harold Miner or Duane Cooper will go on to play in the NBA. But for most of the coach's surrogate children, basketball provides only a momentary glimpse of the spotlight. In Raveling's eight years at USC, only four Trojans have played in the NBA. Even Miner, the most successful, doesn't start anymore. So far, no one has lasted more than three years.

To Raveling, the lesson is clear. Many of his players will struggle to find another career path. As Raveling likes to say, "Athletes live a life of illusion."

"Winning basketball games just helps you keep your job," he says. "But keeping your job helps you work with these kids about the real challenges of life, which all happen away from the court. I know there's an enormous demand around here to win. But I don't want someone to ask me what I accomplished in my life and for me to say that I won this amount of games or took a team to some tournament. . . . These kids come out of underprivileged, inner-city areas, and I'm just wasting my time if I haven't put something of substance into their lives."

USC fans surely applaud these lofty ideals, but they don't come to the Sports Arena to watch the school's debating society. Like any other coach, Raveling is supposed to win basketball games. It's an immutable law: Lose enough games, and you lose your job.

HIGH HOPES FADED FAST

In his tenure at USC, Raveling has shrewdly peddled lowered expectations, positioning the Trojans as scrappy underdogs, an easy task at a school where football always has been the high-profile sport. But this season was supposed to be different. Buoyed by a highly touted class of high-school recruits, Raveling boasted to reporters that his Fab Four Freshmen - 6-foot-11 center Avondre Jones, 6-4 guard Stais Boseman, 6-3 guard Claude Green and 6-5 swingman Jaha Wilson - were "as talented as any group I've ever coached."

Expectations began to run high after USC started the season by winning 10 of its first 12 games, even if some of the victories were over such easy marks as Tennessee-Martin and Sacramento State.

Then came the Arizona State debacle. After that loss, the Trojans found themselves trapped in a horrific downward spiral. They lost eight of nine Pac-10 games, including a blowout at UCLA and an embarrassing defeat at home against Washington, which was a woeful 3-16 going into the game.

A star forward at Villanova, Raveling takes losing hard. Nearly every nook of his USC office has a basketball on display, inscribed with the score of one of his big wins as head coach at Washington State, Iowa or USC. But Raveling recalls the big losses as well. "I've had my heart broke so many times I can't even count anymore," he says the morning after his grim UCLA defeat, eating a losing coach's breakfast - a Coke, two chocolate-chip cookies and three Bufferin. "I'll know it's time to get out when we play a game like last night and it doesn't eat away at my innards."

PLENTY TO BOAST ABOUT

Perhaps what makes Raveling different from other coaches is his sense of perspective. After a crushing loss, most coaches spend the next day barricaded in their office, staring at game films. The day after his team lost to Washington, Raveling went out to see "Schindler's List."

His supporters say he has plenty to boast about. He took his Washington State team to the NCAA tournament for the first time in nearly 40 years. At Iowa, he won 20 games two seasons in a row. At USC, he has made a weak program respectable, thanks in large part to his recruiting of Miner, a local high-school star who led the Trojans to two consecutive NCAA tournament appearances before turning pro after his junior year.

A SUBSTITUTE FATHER

What makes Raveling unusual is the impact he has on his players away from the court. Miner recently began giving USC back its $60,000 in scholarship funds and donates free basketball tickets to kids participating in a reading-improvement program. When Cooper, another former USC star in the NBA, is downcast about his lack of playing time, he calls his old college coach for a boost.

Always lugging a duffel bag full of books and magazines on trips, Raveling concludes practice each morning by giving players a sheaf of clippings from newspapers and magazines. One day it might be a business story about money management or a successful entrepreneur. Another day it's an excerpt from a story about former Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, who is quoted as saying: "You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas."

For many of his players, inner-city kids who have grown up without fathers, Raveling's broad horizons and position of power make him an appealing substitute. Mark Boyd says that when he first arrived at USC, he couldn't take his eyes off his coach. "Never having a father in my house, I just got this immaculate vibe from him," Boyd recalls. "I'd watch everything he did, what he'd say, how he acted with people."

TRIES TO BROADEN HORIZONS

Raveling seems determined to offer his players what he thirsted for in his own youth: a glimpse of the bigger horizon that looms outside the familiar landscape of cheering-crowd arenas. "I wish I could put these kids in a car every week and show them an art museum or take them to Santa Barbara," he says, walking through campus one day, offering hearty greetings to passersby like a politician on the campaign trail.

"These kids are so naive about what life's about," says Raveling, whose marriage ended in divorce years ago. "As much as my heart aches after losing to UCLA, it aches even more about how little preparation they've had to compete in today's society."

Of the 12 players in uniform on most USC trips, 10 are black and five are from the Los Angeles area. Except for senior guard John Masdea, all are at USC on athletic scholarships. Many grew up in neighborhoods where sports was considered the only visible avenue for success.

"My opportunity - my escape - was basketball," says Boyd, who grew up in a cramped household where he never had a bed of his own.

50 POINTS STIRS INTEREST

One morning, Raveling is on the phone with Cooper, a talented three-point shooter from USC who is a reserve guard for the Phoenix Suns. Raveling sounds excited. With several of the Suns' stars out with injuries, Cooper is getting more playing time.

Still, the USC grad sounds worried about sticking with the team. "It's like anything else, Coop; the longer you're with 'em, the more respect they'll have for the things you can do," Raveling says, giving him a pep talk.

As Raveling gets up to leave his office, the phone rings again. It's a junior-college coach calling with a tip about a potential recruit. Although recruiting is a big part of Raveling's job, it's largely an offseason pursuit. So he is only mildly interested until the coach reveals how many points the player scored the night before.

"Fifty!" Raveling exclaims, his interest level rising. "Where'd you say he's playing Saturday?"

As soon as he hangs up, Raveling rushes off to confer with his assistant coaches, eager to see what they know about the kid. When he returns, he has an extra bounce in his step. "I don't care who you're playing," he says. "Scoring 50 is tough to do."

Suddenly Raveling spins around and heads back to his assistants' offices. He forgot to tell them about the earlier phone call. It's a moment when the two sides of his coaching life come together. He has discovered a hot prospect just as a door is opening for a former player.

"Hey guys, guess what?" he booms with paternal pride. "Coop's starting tonight!"