That ’77 Team Set Standard : Volleyball: Brown remembers USC squad that is considered best.

Debbie Brown and a few friends got together in South Bend, Ind., last month and reminisced about old times.

This is what they remembered:

--Practicing for hours as teen-agers in a rundown, little gym at Santa Fe Springs.

--Leading USC to an undefeated season, the only one in collegiate women’s volleyball history.

--Creating controversy when seven of the eight members of their Trojan team left college to join the U.S. national team.

--Recalling the disappointment when the United States boycotted the 1980 Olympics.

The group, most of whom are currently volleyball coaches, gathered at the Golden Dome Classic. They were: Pittsburgh Coach Sue Woodstra, Cal State Long Beach assistant Debbie Green, former USC Coach Chuck Erbe, and Notre Dame Coach Brown.

Woodstra, Green and Brown, then Debbie Landreth, met as teen-agers on Erbe’s junior national team in the early 1970s. For the next decade, the group was the most formidable volleyball ensemble ever to roam the court.

They were unstoppable, flawless in their play.

They were strong--the U.S. Olympic Committee’s head trainer reportedly said that they were among the fittest female athletes he had ever tested--and they played a power game.

Brown was their leader. She was the captain of the 1976-77 USC teams that were 72-1 and won two national titles. She also was co-captain of the 1980 U.S. Olympic team.

Brown’s era as a player is legendary in women’s volleyball. Current college players mark the next generation; many of them are Brown’s disciples.

USC’s 1977 undefeated season may never be equaled. But there will be those who try to do so.

The top-ranked UCLA women’s volleyball team is 28-0 and has defeated all but two opponents in three games. The Bruins’ dominance is reminiscent, for many, of the greatest team of all time.

“It’s great just to be compared to them like people are doing this season,” said Julie Bremner, UCLA’s setter. “The thing with them is that they played together quite a long time.”

Bremner has crossed Brown’s path several times, playing at Notre Dame her freshman season before Brown was hired as coach, and also on the 1989 and 1990 U.S. national team, when Brown was a U.S. assistant coach.

“(Brown) coaches a lot like she plays,” Bremner said. “She does everything she can in order to get the team to win.”

Notre Dame will not meet UCLA this season and Brown has not seen the Bruins play. Speculation about UCLA going undefeated, however, interests members of the 1977 USC team. “It certainly gives a lot of pause for thought as to how (UCLA) would do against my ’77 USC team,” Erbe said. “I’m not blase or cavalier, I don’t have the attitude that, well, records are meant to be broken. That’s a really special record for this particular group. I’d hate to see it broken. I’d like to see UCLA get beat one time.”

Brown will return to Los Angeles tonight for a match against the 11th-ranked Trojans (19-8). Notre Dame, ranked 20th, is 30-6.

It won’t be the first time Brown has returned to USC since playing there--she led Arizona State against the Trojans during her six years as Sun Devil coach from 1983-88--but returning to USC always brings back memories.

“I guess the thing I remember the most about that (undefeated) season is that the team got along great and we just had a really fun time playing the game,” Brown said. “I guess that goes along with winning.”

In 1973, Brown, then a senior at El Segundo High, joined an Orange County group of girls and began training year-round under Erbe.

Erbe’s players, competing against much older teams, won the 1975 U.S. Volleyball Assn. national title and became the first junior national team.

In addition to Brown, Green and Woodstra, the group also included Paula Dittmer-Goodwin, Terry Place and Carolyn Becker, all of whom eventually played at USC.

USC hired Erbe the next year and four members of his team, including Brown, enrolled in the school. They were among the first women to receive athletic scholarships at USC. They finished the season 34-1.

The next season, four more of Erbe’s players enrolled at USC. They made history.

Brown won the Mikasa award for the best all-around women’s volleyball player in the United States for two consecutive years.

The USVBA finally ended USC’s dominance by starting a year-round training program for a national team. With the controversial Arie Selinger as a coach, the program could redeem the United States for its absence in the 1976 Olympics.

Brown and her colleagues did not hesitate. When virtually the entire team, along with Erbe, who was named Selinger’s assistant, left school in 1978 to train at Colorado Springs, the USC athletic administration was outraged, saying it set a dangerous precedent by forcing athletes to choose between the national team and school.

“Obviously there was attachment to being in school,” Erbe says, “But you have to realize that college volleyball wasn’t as big and widespread as it is today. . . . The whole motivation behind that group was the Olympics. It wasn’t a matter of if , it was just a matter of when. “

The 1980 Olympics, however, became a matter of if , and if President Carter had not ordered a boycott, the United States might have played for the gold medal.

For Brown, it meant the end of her playing career. She finished her education at Arizona State and turned to coaching. In 1988, she was an assistant to national team coach Terry Liskevych. It was the first U.S. team without any of Erbe’s former players.

Notre Dame hired Brown last season to take over a program that won only nine matches in 1990. This season, Notre Dame secured an NCAA bid by winning the Midwestern Collegiate Conference championship.

But turning around a program must be a snap for Brown. She already helped create an era.