San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
SHORT AND SWEET
Gomez only 5-8, but shooting stroke one of the best around
The roster heights for San Diego State’s basketball team are taken from preseason physical exams. Players will poof up their hair, thrust their shoulders back, stick up their chins, rise onto their toes and then lobby trainer Sergio Ibarra for, you know, come on, how about a couple extra inches.
Terrell Gomez arrived at SDSU this season as a graduate transfer from CSUN. No tip toes. No lobbying. “I’m 5-8,” he said. And that, if you want you understand how a 5-foot-8 basketball player can average nearly 20 points per game in Division I or why a program that went 30-2 last season and is known for big guards begged him to come, is where you start with the kid from South Central Los Angeles who has a 6-1 brother that, in his words, “took all the height.” He’s never pretended to be something he isn’t.
“I’ve been dealing with it my whole life,” Gomez says quietly, confidently. “I wasn’t blessed to be tall. Obviously, if I was 6 feet, it would be a completely different conversation. But I’m not. I just work with what I have. “I’m 5-8.”
Will Alexander, one of his coaches at Inglewood High, has known “T-GO” since he was 5.
“You’d think he was built like Lebron when he walks on the court, the way he carries himself,” Alexander says. “He always said, ‘If I grow, fine. If I don’t grow, fine.’ He’s always been comfortable with his height . ... God just blessed him with something really special inside.”
Gomez will play his 100th collegiate game today when the Aztecs host Pepperdine, and you won’t have to tell the Waves that the little guy can play. Gomez faced them last year at CSUN. Made seven 3pointers. Dropped a careerhigh 33 points on them.
Gomez is the shortest
scholarship player in Dutcher’s 22 seasons at SDSU and quite possibly in the school’s five decades of Div. I basketball. He also might be the best pure shooter.
His practice record at CSUN: 43 straight corner 3pointers.
At SDSU, he’s already gotten to 42.
Most players of his stature are purely distributors, cognizant of their inability to get shots off, using their quickness to penetrate instead, small, swift, shifty. Gomez is an anomaly, more 2 guard than point, more scorer than facilitator, the product of some sage advice from his older, taller brother who played at Iona.
Says Gomez: “He always told me, ‘You won’t be able to play very long if you’re short and you can’t shoot.’ ”
Easier said than done at 5-8, especially at a level filled with 6-4 athletic guards with 6-8 wingspans.
UCLA coach Mick Cronin marveled: “I’m trying to recall guys who have as quick a release as he has. His release is unbelievably quick.”
That’s the first piece. The next is hesitation moves, step-backs and fall-aways, anything to create more space against bigger, longer defenders.
The next is physics. Gomez differentiates between the ball going in the basket and the ball going in cleanly, purposely making himself practice swishes because they require a higher arc. He typical workout regimen is from five spots behind the 3-point line — the corners, both wings and the top — and one drill requires him to swish three straight from a spot before he can move on.
The next is … eyes?
“A lot of eyes,” Gomez says. “Eyes say a lot about a player. I’ll look around before
I shoot to make it look like I’m passing, and the next thing you know the ball’s gone. I just do little things to throw people off so they can’t time it. I’m going to get blocked. Everybody is going to get blocked. But it’s going to be hard for guys to measure me with my pace and how well I can throw them off.”
At CSUN, he holds practically every record associated with 3-pointers, making 293 in three years while shooting 43.6 percent. In Big West games last season, when opposing coaches knew what was coming and game-planned against it, it was 52.9 percent.
He also led the nation in free-throw accuracy at 94.8 percent. More impressive, though, is that he had 252 attempts, driving, faking, leaning, coaxing his way to the line. Think about it: Who’s fouling a 5-8 guy when you can just wait for him to release the shot and block it cleanly?
Gomez’s eyes light up. Physics, and psychology.
“Big men are really macho and they feel like any little guy coming into the paint, they’re not having it,” he says. “They want to block my shot instead of changing my shot, especially at the college level. At the pro level, you’ve probably got some guys who are smarter and will just try to change your shot. But a lot of these guys at the college level are like, ‘Well, I gotta block his shot. There’s no way this little guy is going to score on me.’ ”
He practices it all with a religious zealotry and scientific precision. If he misses two 3s in a row from the same spot, he starts over.
Alexander tells a story from high school when they had a player shoot a free throw at the end of practice each day. A miss meant the team ran sprints; a make, they didn’t. They usually didn’t pick Gomez, but on that day they figured the
Pepperdine at SDSU
Records: Pepperdine 2-1, SDSU 3-0
Series history: Pepperdine leads 36-17, but this is the first meeting since 1994 (a 61-58 SDSU win) and only the third since 1963.
Waves update: This is their fourth game, and third in Viejas Arena. The Waves were part of last week’s season-opening event there, beating UC Irvine 86-72 and losing to UCLA 107-98 in triple overtime. This was a late addition to the schedule after Lorenzo Romar’s team had a game against Fresno State canceled. The undeniable leader is senior G Colbey Ross, already Pepperdine’s all-time leader in points (1,835) and assists (667). This season, he’s averaging 24.0 points and 6.7 assists. Junior F Kessler Edwards might be a future pro as well, averaging 18.3 points as part of maybe the most lethal 1-2 duo on the West Coast. Three others score in double figures — Jan Zidek (13.0), Jade Smith (12.0) and Ken Chukwuka (11.0) — for a team averaging 92.7 points, although that’s skewed by the triple OT game and Thursday’s 94-45 win against NAIA Saint Katherine (a day after the Aztecs beat the Firebirds 83-42). The Waves lead Div. I in free-throw accuracy at 90.6 percent.
Aztecs update: Coach Brian Dutcher debated whether to add yet another high-level opponent to a nonconference schedule packed with them but figured he might as well, not knowing how the season will unfold and how many games might get canceled. It also provides a good test before playing at No. 25 Arizona State, particularly in terms of defending elite guard play. Despite the impressive start, winning games by 15, 19 and 41 points, Dutcher has identified some areas that need improvement, specifically ball screen defense. Another emphasis will be avoiding a fourth straight slow start. The Aztecs rank 10th nationally in scoring defense (52.3) and are in the top 30 in 3-point baskets (11.0 per game), turnovers committed (9.7), turnovers forced (19.0) and scoring margin (25.3). Starting forward Aguek Arop sat out Wednesday against Saint Katherine with a cut on his hand but has practiced since and is expected to play against the Waves.
Next up: at No. 25 ASU, Thursday (7 p.m. PST, Fox Sports 1) players had run enough and sent him to the line as an act of mercy.
He missed.
“You should have seen the look of disgust on his face, the utter look of disdain,” Alexander says.
The team ran, finished practice and went home. Gomez stayed in the gym and shot 100 free throws … on each basket.
“He’s a kid who, man, if he could have actually lived in the gym, he would have lived in the gym,” Alexander says. “I’m serious. Give him a cot in the corner to sleep. He’s a throwback. He’s a jewel.”
Still, as much as Alexander tried to explain that to college coaches, as much as his shooting statistics dazzled, they couldn’t look past the numbers next to his name on the roster. He had two Div. I offers, to Liberty and Oral Roberts, but both had offseason coaching
changes and evaporated.
His best — really, only — option was to attend an L.A. prep school with the promise of a scholarship the following season from then-csun coach Reggie Theus, himself an Inglewood alum.
Gomez would average 17.1 points in three years at CSUN, 19.2 and 19.8 in the last two seasons under Theus’ replacement, Mark Gottfried. He started all 96 games and averaged 36.4 minutes, never playing fewer than 26. He averaged 14.4 shots. He had minimal defensive responsibilities.
So what’s he doing at SDSU, where he … is coming off the bench; hasn’t played more than 23 minutes; is limited because of his defensive deficiencies; hasn’t taken more than seven shots in a game; and barely averages 10 points?
The answer is another statistic: 34-62.
That was CSUN’S record in his three seasons at Northridge. The Matadors had no winning records and never challenged for a conference title. SDSU’S record over that same span: 73-26, with two trips to the NCAA Tournament.
Another transfer guard from L.A, KJ Feagin, did made the same move a year ago for the same reasons, leaving behind a 17.5-point average at Santa Clara for half that at SDSU, which finished 30-2 and No. 6 in both major polls.
“It’s a balancing act,” Dutcher says. “We take these players because they’ve shown they can score at an elite level, so we want Terrell to come in here and score the ball. Now, maybe it will drop to 10 or 12 points per game instead of 18 or 19 because maybe he’s playing on a more balanced team and doesn’t have to score as much. That’s what KJ told me when he came: ‘Coach, I was scoring because I had to score.’
“That’s why these kids
come here. They want to win at the highest level, and to win, obviously, you have to sacrifice.”
Gomez previously knew Aztecs senior wing Matt Mitchell and called him before committing. Mitchell was honest. SDSU has had a 20-point scorer only five seasons in the Div. I era, and none in the last 34 (since Anthony Watson averaged 22.5 on a 10-19 team in 1985-86).
“We share the wealth,” Mitchell told him. “In some sort of way, you (get across) that if you’re not about team ball, if you’re not a team player, then this might not be the right place for you. But at the same time, just knowing Terrell, his competitiveness, his spirit, his fight, he’s nothing but a team player and he just wants to win.”
Even to a fault. Dutcher noticed Gomez was passing up open shots in preseason practice, deferring to others, just trying to fit in. Against UC Irvine last week, he had an open jumper that he would have launched last season but noticed Keshad Johnson sneaking along the baseline. He threw a lob for rim-rattling dunk instead.
“I didn’t leave a losing school to come to a losing school,” Gomez says. “I wanted to come here to win, first things first. Defensively, what they ask of you here, you see why they win games. That’s the biggest difference. At my last school, you pretty much guarded your guy. My last coach was an offensive coach and his exact words were always: ‘They have to guard us.’
“My teammates are helping me defensively, all the coaches have been helping me defensively. It has been an adjustment. But as long as I’m able to get on the f loor, if it leads to wins and I can still be productive for my team enough where at least it’s noticeable, that’s fine for me.”
mark.zeigler@sduniontribune.com