His face is impassive on the basketball court, masking any emotion that may be simmering inside of him.
He moves skillfully and smoothly, with a style that is mature beyond his years. Yet, he's only a 19-year-old freshman.
Tom Lewis has seemingly everything going for him. He was one of the most acclaimed players in Southern California high school history while leading Santa Ana Mater Dei to two Southern Section championships.
He had been honored, publicized and recruited by major colleges since his sophomore year in high school.
When he finally chose USC, it came as a surprise to so-called insiders who had flatly predicted that he would wind up at a more prominent basketball school.
Lewis has made freshman mistakes, to be sure, on a very young team, but he is the team's leading scorer, averaging 18.2 points, and only veteran forward Derrick Dowell and center Rod Keller have more rebounds.
He plays with a sort of aloof confidence, but there is an air of loneliness, too, about this young man who seldom smiles.
According to Pat Barrett, Lewis' surrogate father and counselor, Lewis doesn't trust or confide in many people, seldom reads the papers to glow in their accounts of his play, and is a private person.
"I was never very sociable, not even in high school," Lewis said.
Lewis made headlines of a different type recently when he said, without elaborating, that there was "turmoil" in USC's basketball program. He recanted his statement after talking with Coach Stan Morrison, saying that he understood to his satisfaction why all players are not treated alike, reportedly a source of his discontent.
A headline in the Orange County Register suggested that Lewis might be leaving USC, although he has since denied that he has any intention of transferring to another school.
Even so, transfer has now become a taunt directed at Lewis on the court, while spurring new rumors.
UCLA rooters chanted, "Transfer! Transfer!" when Lewis was at the free-throw line in a recent game at Pauley Pavilion.
And the Gold Sheet, a national betting publication, speculated that Lewis may transfer to UC Irvine.
"Those rumors will never stop because of Tom's high visibility," said Barrett, who rarely misses a USC practice. "More than half the people who write these things, we haven't even talked to. He's not leaving USC as far as I'm concerned. I know what he's going to do."
Morrison said that he hears such rumors frequently, adding: "Highly recruited kids with high visibility are often subject to the rumors put out by evil people."
So Lewis will now have to ride out the storm of innuendoes.
Lewis is from Boston, where his parents were divorced when he was a small boy. His mother remarried and the original family split up. An older brother stayed in Boston with his father. His mother, Judy, and her new husband, Peter Yanover, moved to Orange County along with Tom and his sister.
"I haven't been in contact with my father since I was 7 years old," Lewis said. "He never expressed any interest in me. He thought that if I wanted to see him, I should come to him. My brother and sister have maintained contact with him, though."
Lewis was going into eighth grade when he came West. Barrett, an assistant coach at Capistrano Valley High in Mission Viejo at the time, recalls the first time he saw Lewis.
"He was playing on a Dana Hills all-star team and he didn't say two words to me," Barrett said.
But Barrett saw something in Lewis that set him apart. "He was a hard-nosed kid out of Boston who would go after anyone," Barrett said. "He was thin, but he could play. He ran like a deer and dove for loose balls."
Barrett showed an interest in Lewis, and the youngster responded. Their relationship flourished as Barrett took Lewis to summer league games, counseled him about basketball and encouraged him to study.
Lewis played on Capistrano Valley's sophomore team as a freshman, but then Barrett got an opportunity to become an assistant coach at Mater Dei and took it.
It wasn't surprising when Lewis followed Barrett to Mater Dei, given their close relationship. But it created a controversy later.
"After his sophomore season at Mater Dei, Capo Valley took Tom before the CIF rules committee and said I illegally recruited him," Barrett said.
"We won that case but now everybody was looking at me as if I was a crook. What is forgotten is that when Tom first went to high school, he was 6-3 and 145 pounds and no one had ever heard of him."
These days, Barrett, who played at Cypress College before earning a letter at San Jose State in 1975, is a bachelor father.
Lewis left his mother and stepfather early in his sophomore season to live with Barrett and his parents in Garden Grove. Peter and Judy Yanover subsequently moved to Phoenix, where Lewis visits them occasionally.
