Player of the Week : Mater Dei’s Candidate for Player of Year Earns Honor

Underdogs. Whether it’s 5-foot 9-inch Doug Flutie or Star Wars’ Luke Skywalker, people love to see the little guy win.

Enter the 6-8 frame of Mater Dei’s Tom Lewis. The only thing little about him is how little competition he has had in his three years on the Monarch basketball team. Last season he had 919 points in 30 games to set the Orange County scoring record, and he is 57 points short of passing former Ocean View star Wayne Carlander, who is No. 4 in Southern Section career scoring. Lewis also is No. 6 in career rebounds, has set every school scoring and rebounding record and has an outside chance of breaking his season scoring record.

If there were such a term as overdog , Lewis would be Orange County’s.

Take his performance last week. The coaching staffs at Bishop Montgomery and Pius X wish somebody would. Lewis scored 39 points in each of Mater Dei’s Angelus League victories over the Knights and Warriors. For the week he made 84% of his shots--32 of 38--had 25 rebounds and was named Times’ Player of the Week.

Maybe someday Lewis will do something different to make headlines such as saving a kitty from a burning tree. As it stands, he’s just a broken record when it comes to scoring.

People like to read about the player who hasn’t scored all year, having a big game. They like to hear about the third-stringer who saves the game.

None of this applies to Lewis.

Consider that his 39-point games are only 7.3 above his season average. Of course, Lewis isn’t shooting anywhere near 84% for the season. He’s floundering at 66.2%.

Said one county sportswriter: “Lewis could be Player of the Week every week.”

Although he makes a case for himself nearly every week, this is the first time Lewis has received the honor from the Times.

“I think we’ve all been a little spoiled by Tom’s success,” Monarch Coach Gary McKnight said. “People just expect him to score, like they just expect us to win. I’ve noticed that this season attendance has dropped at our games because people just expect these things to happen.”

Said Lewis: “Even when I score it doesn’t matter to people. The only way people are going to want to read about Tom Lewis is if he doesn’t score.”

Or perhaps they would be interested if he scored 60 points. That’s a possibility tonight against Mater Dei’s opponent, last-place Bishop Amat. McKnight says he’s received pressure all season to play Lewis an entire game.

For the first three games of the season, Lewis averaged less than two quarters of play. In league he’s averaging about two and a half. He played only 19 minutes in the game against Pius.

“I know there’s a lot of people who’d like to see score a lot points, but I don’t think it would prove anything,” McKnight said. “I know he can score 60 points if we let him play, but that wouldn’t be fair to our second-string players. They work hard, they deserve to play.”

Said Lewis: “I don’t really think about the points. I know people won’t believe that but it’s true. I don’t judge my game performance by points. If I’m really tired when I leave a game, then I feel like I’ve played my best. I’ve scored a lot of points in games and felt I haven’t played that well.”

That’s all very nice, but isn’t Lewis a bit curious?

With a sly grin Lewis said: “It might be interesting to see.”