Ccs’S Sure-Fire Guard Takes Aim At Priorities Former North Central Star Allen Continues To Excel

It was one of life’s curves that Chris Allen would take again, if he had to.

It didn’t matter what was going on in his life. His mother needed him more than his basketball team did.

So when fall quarter opened at the cross-town twins that are the campuses of the Community Colleges of Spokane, Chris Allen stayed home, his promising basketball career at risk.

Allen had counted the times he needed his mom, Cheri Burdulis, and she was there. Now, he felt, he would return the love.

“She’d had a brain aneurism, a clotting of a blood vessel in the brain,” Allen said this week as he and the CCS Sasquatch prepared for Thursday night’s opener in the NWAACC basketball championships at Longview, Wash.

“She didn’t want me to quit in the first place, but I really wanted to spend time with her. I was able to be with her, stay with her a lot.

“That was my first priority.”

But the game and this team were not easy to put aside. Allen found himself at one practice, watching, and later at a second and then a third, missing it, suspecting that his mom was right, that school is where he belonged.

The North Central High graduate could see coach Sam Brasch had assembled a new team with more promise than any he’d had in eight years. There was a gifted big man in 6-8 basketball freshman Andre Ervin who had almost as much to learn as he had to contribute.

There was James Kiger, who could fill it up from the deepest corner. Steve Chamberlain looked like a strong 6-7 freshman who would be a solid fit.

Everybody in the gym could play. They’d be OK without him.

But taking it in, the 6-foot guard Allen knew they’d be even better with an experienced, quick, vertically gifted leader at the point.

Him.

Allen’s first priority was seeing to the needs of the single mother who’d raised him. Still in her 30s she was strong and recovering from the stroke.

“She still has no sense of smell,” Allen said, “but other than that, she’s great”.

He talked with Brasch about coming back. The door was opened.

Some great moves followed - a breakaway jam against Walla Walla; the penetrate-and-kick passes out to Kiger; the drive he made in the Blue Mountain game when, with two bounces from the head of the key, he went up for the two-handed dunk.

With assorted family in the stands, Allen and the Sasquatch went to No. 1 in the East. They open with Centralia on Thursday night.

As he has all season, Allen will do the extra credit work for his No. 1 fan.

“Having my mom in the stands makes the success we’ve had that much sweeter,” he said. “I told her I was playing for her. My character, it’s my mom. I grew up with her. She was a single parent raising three kids. We went through some hard times. I learned so much from her, mainly how to treat people.”

Attention is beginning to build from places he’s never seen, but if he had his pick of schools to move into next fall, he wouldn’t have far to drive. It’d be Gonzaga.

“I’ve liked them since I was a little kid,” he said. I was happy for them when they went so far in the NCAAs, but I knew that meant a strong recruiting year.”

And not much chance that they’d take a community college guard who wants to redshirt next season. Allen and Brasch agree he’d be better with another year to build strength and technique through practice before starting his junior year in the fall of ‘01.

So much for Gonzaga. “I did hear that Gonzaga was looking at a kid from North Idaho,” he said. “We played them. I heard they were impressed with how I did against him. That was an honor for me, just to hear that.

“I’d love to play D-1 (Division I) but I just want to go on and play somewhere. It doesn’t really matter where. Alaska-Fairbanks and Central (Washington) have been the biggest takers so far, so that’s where I’m the most interested.

The tournament will offer an audience.

“Someone told me there are more scouts than fans there,” he said. “That’s fine with me.”

Some never get used to performing in an empty gym, where the loudest noise is an official’s whistle, where the squeaks of shoes and the barks of coaches rise above the scattered applause from girlfriends, moms, dads and uncles.

Everybody loves a fan, but Allen plays the same game, with or without a crowd. Some of his best has come out of summer street games in Coeur d’Alene, where he said the most spirited off-season hoop is played.

His earliest basketball influence was “my grandfather (Charlie) Burdulis,” he said. “When my mom was remarried, her father-in-law got me started. When I was in fifth grade, he’d take me the Mead basketball camp. He helped out there so I got to go for free. He had a basketball court outside. That’s where I always was.”

Over the years, he’s grown closer to his father, Ron.

“We’ve made amends, my dad and I,” Allen said. “I live with my dad. It makes sense financially. I still see my mom all the time. They’re friends. My dad, my brother and I won our division at Hoopfest.”

Chris Allen - after summer school to complete his A.A. requirements - is about to move on and up in this game.