MENTONE - Raise the roof.

That's all the kid - the skinny one with the long sideburns, the Nike armband wrapped around his left bicep and the band wrapped around his right leg - asked of the fans. Get up one more time, he motioned with his arms. Stand up. Make noise.

Again the Tippecanoe Valley fans obliged their basketball player. The harder Jeffrey Brown Jr. pumped his arms, the louder they roared.

Brown, with the help of the Vikings fans, led his team to a 33-32 overtime win over Columbia City in last Friday's sectional championship game.

Brown scores 17.3 points and grabs 7.9 rebounds for the 12-10 Vikings this year. He is a slasher, arguably the best in the area at moving and cutting to the basket and splitting two defenders. He is blessed with long arms, quick hands and the ability to read the floor well.

"He's the most skilled athlete we have out there," Valley coach Gregg Sciarra says.

"At home, he does his chores when he gets to them," his mom, Teresa, says. "But on the court, he can be everywhere at once."

His stats, good ones that they are, are only part of it.

Two characteristics you need to know about the player nicknamed Brownie.

He hates to lose.

He is a leader.

Brown leads his teammates on the court by his play and emotion. He leads the fans in the stands.

He is that important to his team.

Without him, Valley probably wouldn't be playing 16-6 Northfield in Saturday's regional.

"If we're going to win," Sciarra says, "he has to play well. If he doesn't play well, we lose."

This from a player who nearly decided not to play basketball at all his freshman year. Sciarra kept on him, and Brown kept at it. As a sophomore, he played on the junior varsity and varsity squads.

"He took some beatings then," Sciarra says. "He was the whipping boy. Kids mouthed him. Somebody missed a shot, he yelled at Brown."

Brown paid his dues and got tougher. He started on the varsity team as a junior and averaged 14.7 points, 7.7 rebounds and 2.7 assists per game.

He stands 6-foot-1 and weighs 155 pounds, pedestrian size for a basketball player.

"He was a gym rat," Sciarra says. "He'd play here, then he'd go to the park in Rochester or the YMCA in Warsaw.

"He did that more than anyone I've ever known."

The numbers got better, the confidence bigger this year.

"He turned into a player his junior year," Sciarra jabs, "and then he got a little cocky. As a senior we can hardly contain him. We always say he weighs 155 pounds but that he has a 255-pound mouth."

On team picture day, Brown emerged from the locker room wearing a headband, armband and legband. Sciarra shook his head and pointed at each one without saying a word. Brown scowled, but he peeled them off.

Still, that wasn't all. Sciarra pointed at Brown's socks. One was pulled up past the kneecap. The other was pushed down to the ankle.

Brownie was being Brownie.

He even admits he can be a pain.

"They used to take things out on me," he says of his sophomore days. "I take it out on everybody now. I figure I've earned it."

That's off the court. On the court, he's a different person.

'Losing Drives Me Insane'

Want one word to define Brown the player? Intense. Sciarra put one other Valley player from the last six years - Scott Johnson - in the same class as Brown when asked how intense Brown is.

Johnson was one of the best players ever to wear a Viking basketball uniform.

Johnson hated to lose. Brown hates to lose.

"Losing drives me insane," Brown says.

Sciarra confirms this. "Read his shoes," he says.

Valley lost to Plymouth 61-55 in late February. Brown missed five free throws that game. Afterward, he did two things.

The first thing he did was hunt down a pen so he could write "Free throws win ball games" on his shoe. "Just to remind myself," he explains.

Now he writes that on his shoe before every game. In case he forgets, his friends shout it at him, like they did when he shot around before the sectional championship game.

He hit just 3 of 6 free throws against Columbia City, but one of his makes with 0.8 seconds left on the clock gave Valley the win.

The second thing Brown did after the Plymouth loss was shoot. After that game ended and the crowd left the gym, Brown stayed and shot free throw after free throw.

"I would have shot free throws forever," he says, "if he (Sciarra) would have let me. Just shoot and shoot and shoot. I shot a bunch the next day."

Raising The Roof

To Brown, winning and loud fans go hand in hand.

He writes the free throw thing on one shoe. He still has one shoe left.

On this shoe he writes "Raise the Roof." The high-five is out. Raising the roof is in. Brown and fans raise both hands and pump them, like they're trying to push the roof off the gym.

When he found a free moment on the floor during the Columbia City game, he motioned to the fans to raise the roof.

"I try to get the crowd so pumped up they will raise the roof off the gym," Brown says. "I have to keep the crowd into it, keep them thinking about good things."

Brown is a high school player with a cult following that is every Viking fan. Everybody - this is no lie - loves Brownie.

"If you're a fan of basketball," Sciarra says, "and you watch a 155-pound kid give his blood, sweat and tears out there, he just grows on you.

"He's on the floor. He plays a lot bigger than 6-1. He rebounds against 6-6, 6-7 kids. He does everything.

"You fall in love with that type of player."

To Brown, it's simple.

"I'm pretty good friends with everybody," he says. "I think they probably like to watch me play. I'm down to earth with them. I always talk to them when I'm on the court."

The Floor General

Brown gets to the fans when he can, but first he deals with his teammates.

Watch Brown before a game, right before the lineups are introduced. He shakes hands with every teammate. "It's a ritual," he says.

"I've always been the emotional leader, even back in junior high. I like to see other people up. If they're up, it keeps me up."

Three other seniors - Darren Parker, Nick Stutzman, Bryan Lenfestey - start, but Sciarra says Brown's the man.

"He's our best vocal person," he says. "With him, if it's not a vocal thing, it's an eyebrow moving this way or that, a point or a scowl.

"It's tough to say seniors look up to seniors. But they know who makes us go."

This year has not been perfect for Brown. There was the New Year's Eve party he was caught at that led to a four-game suspension for him and Stutzman.

True to his personality, Brown tackled that issue head on.

"I did wrong," he says. "I might as well tell everybody instead of trying to make up a lie. I'm not going to cover it up. People were going to find out anyway. I might as well tell them.

"If I have something to say, I'll tell you. That's the way I am."

Those close to Brown swear that's not like him to be in trouble, that it was a one-time thing.

After Valley won the sectional, Brown climbed the ladder and cut the net. He bolted down the ladder to the end of the gym where Wayne Landis was sitting. Landis, a Tippecanoe Valley middle school teacher, is confined to a wheelchair. Brown knelt down beside him and handed him his piece of the net.

That, people say, is Jeffrey Brown Jr. [[In-content Ad]]