WOJO: FINALLY MAKING HIS POINT AT DUKE

Those who wrote off Steve Wojciechowski as Duke's point guard neglected to take his bloodline and background into account.

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Longshoreman.

It is a word that stirs certain images among those who have never been there or done that.

Images of big, tough, brawny men who carry grappling hooks and unload cargo ships for a living. Images of dockside saloons, union disputes, Pier 6 brawls, Marlon Brando's Terry Malloy and Lee J. Cobb's Johnny Friendly in ``On The Waterfront.''

Ed Wojciechowski, the father of Duke point guard Steve Wojciechowski and a second-generation longshoreman on Baltimore's harbor, chuckles as he attempted to dispel the images.

``In my early years, it was tough, physical labor,'' Ed Wojciechowski says. ``But now, a lot of it is automated.

``And when Steve reached his current height of 5-feet-11, that made him an inch taller than me. He's pretty proud of that.''

Steve Wojciechowski is unlikely to carry on his family's vocational tradition. He has a much better head on his shoulders than Terry Malloy. But the traits of his father and grandfather - toughness, tenacity and the willingness to work harder - have helped him succeed on the basketball floor after others have counted him out.

Before this, Wojo's junior season, it appeared to most Duke fans, to the media and even to the Blue Devils' coaching staff that he had bought a one-way ticket to Palookaville.

He was recruited in 1994 as the first ``next Bobby Hurley,'' the point guard who had guided Duke to the 1991 and '92 NCAA championships.

Wojciechowski's freshman season turned into a train wreck for Duke's program. An adverse response to preseason back surgery left an exhausted Krzyzewski unable to coach after early January. The Blue Devils' record plummeted from a 9-2 start to a 13-18 finish. And though the freshman point guard started more than half of those games, he finished with a 4.0 scoring average, a 34.3 shooting percentage, 81 assists and 42 turnovers.

``It was a hard year of adjustment for me,'' Wojciechowski recalls. ``It was a different level. In high school, I might have gone up against a good player every two weeks. Here, it was every game. It would be Randolph Childress or Travis Best, Cory Alexander, Jeff McInnis, Duane Simpkins. Most of those guys are in the NBA now. I just wasn't ready to compete against them, physically or mentally.

``And it seemed like everything that could possibly go wrong did go wrong.''

Krzyzewski's absence didn't help, but it wasn't the worst misfortune that befell Wojciechowski that winter. Ray Mullis, his coach at Baltimore's Cardinal Gibbons High School, died of cancer. Then Wojo's father was diagnosed with cancer, leading to the removal of a kidney.

Between his freshman and sophomore years, Wojciechowski was lost in the wilderness, and his attempts to improve went unrewarded. He spent part of the summer with the U.S. Junior World Championship team. And he hit the weight room a little too hard, gaining 10 pounds that provided strength he didn't really need while curbing the quickness he did.

When he returned for his sophomore season, Krzyzewski was back. But so was Chris Collins, a young man on a mission to revive his own career in his senior season. Bringing his experience to bear, Collins beat out Wojo for the point guard job and proceeded to lead the Blue Devils to an 18-13 turnaround and an NCAA berth.

``It was kind of like I was starting as a freshman all over again,'' Wojciechowski says.

His individual statistics were scarcely better than in his freshman year - 3.4 points per game, a 31.8 shooting percentage, 84 assists, 38 turnovers.

By season's end, however, Wojciechowski had begun playing better. Called upon to replace the injured Collins in the ACC tournament, Wojo had to call on all his toughness to keep playing after he suffered a severe ankle sprain early in what turned out to be an 82-69 loss to Maryland.

``I discovered that, no matter how badly I played or how sad I was about a loss, the sun always came up the next morning,'' Wojciechowski says.

But even with Collins departing, Krzyzewski wasn't convinced that Wojciechowski could be his point guard this season. After Duke tried and failed to recruit a hot-shot prospect named Shaheen Holloway from Elizabeth, N.J., Krzyzewski sought to convert sophomore Trajan Langdon from shooting guard to the point.

But Quin Snyder and Tommy Amaker, the two former point guards on Krzyzewski's staff, weren't willing to give up on Wojciechowski. His confidence buoyed by their encouragement, he attended summer school and played in pickup games with current and former Blue Devil stars at Cameron Indoor Stadium instead of playing on an international team. He also shunned the weight room in favor of sprints and drills that would improve his quickness and durability.

While going head-to-head in preseason practice, both Wojciechowski and Langdon staked out starting jobs for themselves - Wojo at the point and Langdon at shooting guard.

``We both kept a positive attitude, and butting heads made us both better,'' Wojciechowski says.

Since his junior season began, Wojciechowski has become the mainspring of a Duke team that will carry an 18-5 record and a No. 8 national ranking into today's 8 p.m. home game against N.C. State. He leads the Blue Devils in minutes played. He ranks second in the ACC in both assists (5.6 per game) and steals (2.8 per game). He has lifted his shooting percentage to 44.9 and his scoring average to 6.5 points. In addition, his assist total more than triples his turnovers (121-40).

``Steve has acquired a better understanding of how to play to his strengths and away from his physical limitations,'' Amaker says. ``He's a good athlete, but not a great one. He doesn't have exceptional size or straight-ahead speed. So it's hard for him to consistently penetrate and make plays off the dribble.

``Steve is quick laterally, and he has developed a quick first step. He's stopped getting himself into trouble by forcing himself to penetrate and create. He's become a quick thinker who makes good decisions - when and where to pass the ball, when to shoot or drive, when to go after the ball on defense. Those are the qualities that bolster his assist/turnover ratio and his steals.

``Best of all, he's become a leader. His teammates have gained confidence in his decisions, and they try to follow his example in terms of intensity of effort and tough-mindedness.''

There's that word again: toughness. Those who know Wojo best always seem to come back to it when they describe him.

Bryan Moorhouse, a Baltimore attorney and a Cardinal Gibbons alumnus who was Mullis' assistant for 20 years before succeeding him as head coach, remembers his first impression of Wojciechowski when he scouted him as an eighth-grader.

``Steve was a fierce competitor from the very beginning,'' Moorhouse says. ``You have to encourage most players to dive for loose balls, but it always was second nature for him.

``We had an outdoor summer league in Baltimore for all the best high school teams and players. Steve was the only one who played the same way that he did indoors - taking charges and diving for loose balls on the asphalt. He'd usually get back up with a bruise or a scrape. One time, he broke a finger.''

That hasn't changed. As often as not during the season, there is some sort of black-and-blue discoloration on Wojo's face - where opponents have landed elbows in vain attempts to discourage this pest of a defender.

Moorhouse says he anticipated a difficult adjustment for Wojciechowski to the level of play in the ACC, but his former coach never doubted that he had the right stuff to succeed eventually.

``I've never seen a player progress through sheer hard work like Steve,'' Moorhouse says. ``An overachiever? Yeah. I think it's fair to say that he has gotten the utmost out of his ability.''

As is usually the case, the apple didn't fall far from the tree.

Steve is the youngest of three children of his Polish-American father and Irish-American mother, Mary.

Before Ed Wojciechowski followed his own father to Baltimore's waterfront, Ed Wojciechowski excelled as a soccer player and earned a scholarship at the University of Maryland. Steve's older brother, Ed Jr., was a prep all-state soccer and baseball player. His sister, Christine, pursued lacrosse and field hockey at the college level.

``Steve's father is vocal and fiery; his mother is more reserved,'' says Moorhouse. ``She worked in the concession stand at our home games. Steve is a combination of their qualities.''

``My dad and mom are two of the toughest people I know,'' Wojciechowski says. ``They worked hard and sacrificed a lot for us.''

Now, at last, Wojo's legion of doubters in North Carolina is learning what his mother has known for a long time.

``When people say he can't do something,'' she says, ``he'll just try harder.''

Illustration: COLOR PHOTO: Gerry Broome/News & Record
Duke guard Steve Wojciechowski

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