Why a 50-point game won’t be the last you hear of Valley Center’s Tyler Brown

Tyler Brown was invincible.

Or at least that’s how the junior should have felt after Tuesday when he scored 50 points to lift Valley Center to a 72-66 victory over Newton.

Brown has been a scoring phenom at Valley Center, where he averaged better than 25 points last season and has scored 142 points in four games (a 35.5 average) entering Friday night’s game at Andover.

But dropping half-a-hundred in a game and breaking scoring records do not make Brown feel invincible. Someday those things might matter, but right now they do not.

At the end of the day, Brown is just a kid trying to win over his father’s approval — and bad news for his opponents, it’s not easy to come by.

After his 50-point performance, the first thing his dad said to him? “You could have had 60.”

“Ever since I was little, I always wanted to impress my dad,” Brown said. “That was my biggest goal and I’m still trying to do it.”

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To understand how Brown became the prolific scorer he is today, you have to understand how he was raised.

He was the youngest of four boys growing up in the Brown household, which meant Tyler was typically on the receiving end of the punishment doled out by his older brothers, Nathan and Zach, and his older stepbrother, Cole, in 2-on-2 driveway basketball games.

“It was always a goal of mine to beat my brothers,” Tyler said. “I mean you love your brothers, but you got to compete with them.”

Chris Brown is a disciplinarian father and was also their coach, instilling in his sons a work ethic at an early age. Tyler still winces at the thought of the intensity of some of those practices and wonders how many down-and-back sprints he ran over the years.

But that was part of the unspoken agreement between the father and his son. Tyler knew if he let his father push him like that, then some day he could be great. Nothing is ever given to you, Chris used to tell him. You have to earn it.

“Man, he was crazy,” Tyler said, laughing. “Those practices were hard. At first I was like, dang, I do not want to do this, but after a while, I learned that I did want to. I want to make myself better and keep pushing myself.”

That’s the most satisfying part for his father.

It doesn’t matter how many points Tyler scores, he is still obsessed with the process of becoming a better player.

“There have been a lot of blood, sweat, and tears that have gone into this for him, for me, for his brothers,” Chris said. “There’s some satisfaction there knowing that all of that time and effort, you can see it start to pay off.”

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A shooting stroke as pure as Brown’s doesn’t happen by chance.

It is a stroke taught by his father and has been refined over the years and tended to daily.

Nowadays, shooting is associated with three-point shooting, but Brown isn’t just a dead-eye three-point shooter. He is a dead-eye shooter.

“These days, kids are focused primarily on one shot and that’s shooting the three-pointer,” Chris said. “Something I stressed to all of my kids is that I wanted them to be diversified players and to be that, you have to have an inside-outside game. You’ve got to be able to shoot a 10-foot jumper and attack the rim and finish.”

That ability to be accurate from anywhere on the court is what impresses Valley Center coach Ty Unrau, but it doesn’t surprise him anymore because he sees it every day in practice.

“His preparation in practice is just unbelievable,” Unrau said. “He grinds every day in practice to get the shots that he will see in games. Most kids come to practice just to shoot around, but Tyler is working to take game shots.”

Chris has watched Tyler play practically every second of competitive basketball and he believes there is more to come. Even after Tyler scored 50 points, Chris doesn’t think that was the limit.

“I don’t think there’s an offensive record in the state that he can’t break,” Chris said. “I don’t care if it’s single-game scoring or shooting percentage or scoring average, I don’t think it’s an issue. The only thing that can stop him right now is him. If he goes out there and he’s got it in his head that he’s going to score, then welp, he’s going to do it.”

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It wasn’t until he was at the free-throw line with 16 seconds to go that Tyler Brown heard someone mention 50.

“I had no idea, I was just trying to get the win,” Brown said. “I heard someone say I had 50 and I thought there was no way. I didn’t even think about it until the game was over.”

In his quest to preserve Valley Center’s victory, Brown scored 21 of his 50 points in the fourth quarter and made six free throws in the final minute to ice the game. He made 16 of 31 shots, 7 of 13 from behind the three-point arc, and a perfect 11 of 11 from the free-throw line, but also added five rebounds, four assists, and seven steals.

“He had that look in his eye,” Unrau said. “He was in attack mode early and you could just tell that night he was not going to be denied.”

Brown made his first three shots, including a step-back three-pointer on Valley Center’s first possession.

Junior Kadin Pearson, who has played with Brown growing up, said that was the giveaway that a special night was underway.

“When he starts pulling up and making them like that, that’s when you know he’s feeling it,” Pearson said. “Growing up playing with him, that’s how he’s always been. It’s a lot of fun to watch.”

“I had a couple of heat checks in there,” Brown said. “Everything felt good coming off my hand that game.”

But there is always room for improvement, as his father reminded him after the game.

He may be hard to please, but that mental toughness he has built up in Tyler is the reason he gives for why he was able to score 50 and why he isn’t satisfied yet.

“Maybe some day I’ll impress him,” Tyler said, grinning. “I’m going to keep trying.”

This story was originally published December 15, 2016 at 5:33 PM with the headline "Why a 50-point game won’t be the last you hear of Valley Center’s Tyler Brown."