Notes on a native son . . .
Lead on: They are sometimes called ”The Three Amigos.” They are, at other times, referred to as ”The In-It-To-Win-It Crew.” No matter. Byron Irvin, along with Lee Coward and Anthony Peeler, is a charter member of that talented trio of Missouri guards.
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He is, indeed, its reigning member, its only senior and the team`s leading scorer. He enjoys that role, relishes it really, a penchant he proved with three of his performances during this Tigers` season on the brink (of both grandeur and immolation).
In December, against Memphis State, Irvin helped blow open a close game by scoring 17 of his 21 points in the last seven minutes. Against Arkansas, in a game tied with just six minutes remaining, he exploded for 11 points and a pair of assists to lead Missouri to victory. Finally, last Saturday against Oklahoma he produced 34 points, nine rebounds, seven assists and two steals while leading Missouri to its biggest victory.
”We have four seniors, and all of us can be leaders, but it was a matter of someone stepping up and taking over the role,” says Irvin when asked of his crunch-time exploits. ”It`s a role you can handle by scoring or vocal leadership. I can handle both situations. I`m kinda like the veteran.
”Now with he type of team we have, anybody can really score, and it`s not always on me. I`m counted on, but I just try to take my time and let it happen. And as Coach (Norm) Stewart says, `There`s no better time for it to happen than the second half.` ”
In the beginning: McGlother Irvin, the amigo`s padre, was himself a star at Tilden High in the `50s, and he has coached Biddy League ball in Chicago for most of the last 15 years. Not surprisingly, his children were quickly introduced to sports, and so Byron was catching passes, jumping rope and dribbling around chairs by the time he was in the 3d grade. ”Before he began playing the game,” recalls his father, ”I wanted him in condition to play.” Some of Chicago`s playground legends then often stopped by the Irvin home and displayed their talents on the cement half-court in the family`s backyard. Their presences and the portraits they painted with their play only augmented the dad`s knowledgable tutorings, and as early as the 6th grade, young Byron manifested one quality of a champion. ”He had a lot of heart,” says Mac Irvin. ”He was not afraid.. So he has been competitive from the age of 11.” He has, since then, also been aware of those dictates his father was already drilling into him. ”Be a good thinker,” was one.
”No one is better than you. If he thinks so, make him show you,” was another.
”Give the open man the shot,” was a third.
”I think,” Byron`s father says, ”that`s why he`s a very unselfish player. It`s not a matter of how many points you score. The thing is to win-win and have fun. So be serious about the game while enjoying it.”
The son himself recalls one other lesson, and it, too, was as simple as all the others. ”Play hard,” says Byron Irvin. ”He told me every time I hit the floor, to play hard. You have to do that-especially in Chicago.”
`Let me introduce myself`: Byron`s team won the tough Angel Guardians tourney when he was in the 7th grade. And about the same time, he played on a baseball team that won a state title. But he did not truly blossom, says his father, until his junior year at Julian High, until he hit St. Rita with 34 points in the first game of that year.
Twelve months later, during the early-signing period, Irvin signed a letter-of-intent with Arkansas. Then he went on to make all-city as a high school senior and to average more than 15 minutes a game as a Razorback freshmen. But then Eddie Sutton, the coach who lured him to Fayetteville, departed for Kentucky and was replaced by Nolan Richardson, and a year after that, Irvin himself was ready to leave.
”I liked it under Coach Sutton. He stresses guards in his program,”
Irvin explains. ”The next year, I just had a personality conflict with Coach Richardson. He`s a good coach. But sometimes it just works out like that.”
Schools from every conference in the country, Irvin recalls, were ready to welcome him, but he wanted to play in the Big 10 or the Big East or the Big Eight. He narrowed his choices to Iowa, Boston College and Missouri, finally heading for Columbia, Mo.
Reintroducing himself: From the fall of 1986 to the fall of `87, Byron Irvin served the transfer`s penance. For the first time since the 1st grade, he was sitting out a basketball season, though every afternoon, at Tiger practices, he tested himself against the multi-talented Derrick Chievous.
”They became games within the game,” Irvin remembers, and that was fun, but he still felt empty when his future teammates picked up the conference championship rings they won that year.
Last year, playing in Chievous` shadow, he emerged as Missouri`s second-leading scorer, and this year, with Chievous off to the pros, Irvin has led the Tigers in points scored, steals, minutes played and free-throw shooting percentage. He is also their second-best three-point shooter and third in assists. Most importantly, in the preseason, it was Irvin who decided to respond when Stewart looked at his team and said: ”With Derrick gone this year, someone has to be the leader.”
Back to the present: These are the best of times, and these are the worst of times for Byron Irvin, leader. While he has flourished in his final season as a collegian, he also has struggled, with many other Tigers, to adapt to absence of Stewart, who had been hospitalized for cancer surgery.
Assistant Rich Daly took over as head coach, and the relationship between him and his senior amigo has not been without tension. The most telling moment came two Saturdays ago, on Feb. 18, when Irvin was 40 minutes late for a practice after attending a makeup class.
He had not, it turned out, informed Daly that he would be at that class, and the coach-in-residence responded by keeping Irvin on the bench until garbage time in the next day`s game against Nebraska. ”That kinda surprised me. It was kinda difficult,” Irvin says. ”But I think he got his point across. It would be his way or no way, and he didn`t care who it was.”
”I sometimes get mad thinking of all the things that have happened to us,” Byron Irvin concludes. ”But I think some things are meant to be, and this is a situation that was meant to be, and I can`t change it.
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”But I can”-and here the leader re-emerges-”I can do some things to keep them from being so bad.”