Passion is name of the game for Miller's Marquis Lewis

Junior guard brings toughness, energy to Bucs as they prepare for state tournament

CORPUS CHRISTI - A casual observer of Miller basketball might have a tough time distinguishing any difference in the Bucs' three best players.

Billy Guzman, Dale Perryman and Marquis Lewis are all undersized junior guards that are 6-foot-1 or shorter. All three can handle the ball, and all are equally adept at scoring from the perimeter or penetrating for points in the paint.

But when you watch the Bucs play a little more, the differences begin to emerge. Guzman is the coldblooded outside shooter with nerves of steel. Perryman is the silky smooth scorer who can get his points from anywhere on the court. Lewis is the tough guy trapped in a 5-foot-10 muscular frame. He can score from the outside, but prefers to bulldoze his way inside and flash his 40-inch vertical leap for momentum-changing dunks.

He also isn't one to be trifled with.

Liberty Hill's Shane LaCaille tried to test Lewis in the region finals Saturday. Early in the game, Lewis was guarding LaCaille off the ball and had his hand on the Panthers guard's chest to keep track of his opponent.

LaCaille quickly slapped away Lewis' hand. With the ball still in play, Lewis took one step forward and got nose-to-nose with LaCaille, letting him know quite clearly he wasn't going to let him do that again.

"I'm not going to let anybody push me around," said Lewis, who will lead his teammates into the state semifinals against Waco La Vega on Thursday afternoon. "I just play ball, and it's just my emotions. It was the first thing that came to my head. I hit his hand, like, 'Don't touch me.' It's a physical game. He wanted to get a little physical, so I was just playing back with him. It's just having fun, playing ball."

Lewis also is known to get a little too boisterous when a referee makes a call against the Bucs or when a teammate makes a mistake, but he swears his intentions are good.

"It's just emotion, but it's not a bad attitude or anything, sir," said Lewis, closing his comment with a common word in his vocabulary. "I just want everyone to play to the best of their ability, and I want them to do the same to me if I mess up. People think I'm getting down on myself or the team, but I'm really not. I just want to win so bad, and sometimes it comes out like that."

Miller coach Maurice Bastian has pulled all the right levers to get the Bucs to their first state tournament since 1950, and he said he knows when to pull the reins on his athletic guard.

"He's very emotional. He plays with his heart on his sleeve," Bastian said. "What people may not see is that he's the first person to apologize when he gets out of hand. I do have to chastise him from time to time, but he comes from an environment where there wasn't a lot of structure. We're a family here, and we try to give him that structure."

That missing structure comes from growing up in McComb, Miss., about 100 miles north of New Orleans. He lived there until about 18 months ago, when he and his grandmother realized that Lewis was finding trouble too easily in a place where trouble wasn't hard to find.

So, Lewis left Mississippi behind and headed to Corpus Christi to live with his older brother Michael.

The Mississippi influence isn't hard to miss with Lewis. First off, hardly anyone in the Miller hallways calls Lewis by his given name. Instead, they refer to him as "Mississippi" or even more commonly as just "Sip." Then, there's the unmistakable Southern drawl that makes him stand out in conversations with his teammates. And, among the numerous tattoos that cover both his arms is a bold "601", representing the area code in Southern Mississippi.

His grandmother's influence also is evident in the tattoos.

On his right forearm is the inscription, "You don't know what you're alive for until you know what you'd die for."

It's something his grandmother told Lewis when he was in the midst of his troubles in Mississippi.

"It didn't mean too much to me when she first told me, but it's really stuck with me," Lewis said. "I was getting in trouble, and she told me that. When I moved down here, it kind of sunk in to me what she was talking about. I needed to get my priorities straight. I've done that now."

A brief trip home during December reminded Lewis of those priorities. In early December, Bastian noticed his usually talkative playmaker wasn't focused on the court or in the classroom. Turns out, Lewis' focus had flipped to his grandmother, who was struggling in Mississippi.

With Bastian's blessing, Lewis missed some games to return to Mississippi for a week and check in on the biggest influence in his life.

"I felt like he needed to go home to pull himself together," Bastian said.

Lewis said everything is squared away at home, and all he's thinking about now is the trip to Austin.

"I had (my grandmother) on my mind a lot; I wanted to see her and I wasn't really focused," Lewis said. "She was struggling with bills and stuff, so I was worried about that. I want to make sure she is OK, and I don't want to see her struggle. I went back, and she just told me to keep playing and to not worry about her. She's doing good now, and I'm focused again."

That could be bad news for Waco La Vega, which despite it's No. 1 state ranking, strikes no fear in Lewis.

"I don't think anyone can really intimidate us, sir," Lewis said. "They're a lot like us, and we'll see which one is better Thursday. I'm not nervous, I'm excited."

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