Pieces Fall into Place for SDSU’s Williford : College football: Like other alumni of Pasadena Muir High, he makes his presence known.

SAN DIEGO —  When Sam Williford learned he would start in last Saturday’s football game for San Diego State, the news traveled fast on the Pasadena Muir High alumni hotline.

On Thursday--the day of Williford’s first-team promotion--Paul Joiner, a starting linebacker at California, and Reggie Reser, the No. 2 cornerback at Washington behind Mario Bailey, got the word.

Demetrice Martin, a starting wide receiver at Michigan State, and Cedric Thomas, the injured starting quarterback at Oregon State (Williford’s cousin), learned a couple days later that another Muir standout was getting a chance to emerge in Division I football.

So did the Mushonga brothers: Lumumba Mushonga of New Mexico and Mudie Mushonga of Hawaii.

They all remember what an extraordinary athlete Williford was at Muir and what unlikely twists his career had taken: the suspension, the position changes, the injuries.

Some expected Williford--not Marshall Faulk--to be running the ball at SDSU. Some thought he would be playing outfield in the major leagues by now.

Those still around from the early days figured he’d be on the streets of northwest Pasadena. No way he’d be in college.

Elic Mahone, a backup linebacker at USC, also got the news.

“I told Elic last Thursday I was starting,” Williford said. “He said, ‘I better come down.’ ”

While his Trojan teammates celebrated their 14-7 victory over Arizona on Saturday afternoon, Mahone showered and left for San Diego. He stopped only to pick up UC Irvine basketball player LaDay Smith, another Muir alum, and pulled into San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium in the middle of the second quarter.

By then, Williford--a former All-San Gabriel Valley running back now playing defensive back--had grabbed the attention of 50,021 fans in the Aztecs’ 52-28 victory.

It had been three years--three years since he had played on a starting unit, three years since he led Southern Section champion Muir (11-2) with 760 yards rushing and 860 receiving.

“I thought, ‘Dang. I’m out here,’ ” Williford said. “I kinda forgot how it felt.”

It didn’t look that way.

Several times he forced Hawaii option quarterback Michael Carter to take alternate routes or pitch away. Williford threw Carter for a two-yard loss, which led to a key Rainbow punt with the Aztecs leading, 31-28. He rocked receiver Brian Gordon with a hard tackle. And, coming from the opposite side of the field, Williford nearly chased down Travis Sims on a 40-yard scoring run.

“He was flying around,” SDSU Coach Al Luginbill said. “He made a couple of mental errors, but he busted his tail and made some plays to make them snap it over again.”

The redshirt sophomore finished with five tackles, second only to Tracey Mao’s six. Williford had entered the game with eight tackles all season--most of them on special teams coverage. His 13 tackles rank only 20th among the Aztecs. But with what he saw Saturday, defensive backs coach Ron Mims will give Williford a chance to get more.

“I’ll bet he hadn’t played 10 plays all year,” Mims said. “He’s going to have another opportunity. We were excited about what he had done.”

And Williford is as much stunned as excited by the opportunity.

“It’s just a weird feeling being the starter--just like that,” he said. “Everyone said it could happen fast. They were right.”

He’s fortunate just to be able. At one point earlier in the season, Williford wore a cast on each arm, the result of a chipped bone on his right hand and a broken left wrist. He was still wearing a splint on his wrist in the Texas El Paso game, when he suffered sprained knee ligaments and a bruised fibula on a kickoff.

But after starting strong safety Chris Johnson suffered a season-ending injury at home 2 1/2 weeks ago, Mims played a hunch.

John McCartney replaced Johnson in SDSU’s 17-6 loss at Wyoming. But Mims decided to insert Williford at dime back for the Hawaii game because he thought Williford was better against option offenses. Starting dime back Robert Griffith was moved to strong safety.

It is Mims, himself a Pasadena native, who recruited Williford as a 16-year-old senior, believed in him and pulled him through tough times.

“It’s been a battle,” Mims said of Williford, 19. “You kind of had a sign that he was finally coming to the front (Saturday), finally being the kind of guy that you expected him to be.

“His peers have done a great job to get him to understand what it takes to play on this level.”

Williford’s peers are not just his SDSU teammates, but also the stable of athletes he grew up with at powerhouse Muir. Williford can rattle off the numbers--15 Division I football players from the seasons 1988-90, 17 Division I athletes out his 1990 senior class--and he stays in contact with everyone.

“There’s a high expectation level for (Muir) athletes when they do go on,” said Mims.

But there was a time when Williford thought he was going nowhere. That was before his 45 receptions as a senior, his career kick return average of 38.5 yards or his career record of five kick returns for touchdowns.

His baseball legend is even greater. As a junior, he had a .361 batting average, 41 RBIs, 20 stolen bases and 11 assists from center field, including seven runners thrown out at home plate.

But Mims came calling for the Aztecs and quickly became a father figure for Williford. Williford doesn’t acknowledge his natural father, Sam, who left the family and moved to Tennessee when Sam Jr. was 7. He got all the support he needed from his mother, Donna, a member of the school board in Pasadena.

But even Donna couldn’t keep her son from trouble.

“In ninth and 10th grade, I was a knucklehead,” Williford said. “I was running with the wrong people. Making bad decisions. Not going to school. There was a lot of things I did my mother still doesn’t know about. If I told her, I’d be hurtin’ her.”

So he spared the details, and, by his junior year, had an academic mountain to climb if he wanted to get out of the seamy side of Pasadena.

“I started doing well in football and I started getting recruiters interested,” he said. “I thought, ‘Dang. Maybe I can go to college. Football is a way to get out.’ ”

Many thought baseball would be the way out. The Seattle Mariners chose Williford in the 24th round of the June 1990 draft, even though he was suspended his entire senior season for his involvement in a brawl in a basketball game against rival Pasadena High.

Mims took a hands-on approach to Williford’s college transition, making the former offensive star a defensive back.

“I still have an offensive mentality,” said Williford. “I never played defense--ever. I went through a hard adjustment period.”

Said Luginbill, “Some people take longer to mature. I think Sam’s finally starting to mature and play the way he’s capable of playing. He certainly is talented.”