|
|
 |
 |   |
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Video Plus Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities 
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
|  |
Inside College Basketball
Will Whaley Find A College? High schoolers wowed recruiters -- and NBA scouts -- at a pair of big-time camps By Seth Davis
For elite high school players, July is the critical month for impressing college recruiters and, increasingly, a time to catch the eye of NBA scouts as well. No player made a bigger name for himself this month than LeBron James, a 6'7" forward who will be a junior this fall at St. Vincent-St. Mary High in Akron. In a matchup that was the stuff of summer legend, James got the better of Lenny Cooke, a 6'6" forward from Brooklyn, in a hotly contested game at last week's Adidas ABCD Camp in Teaneck, N.J. "It seemed as if all week people were hyping it up like it was the game of the century," James said. "I just wanted to give everyone a good show."
James may have been the talk of the ABCD camp, but he's no overnight sensation. His coming-out party occurred last Jan. 13, when he scored 33 points in a one-point loss to Oak Hill Academy of Mouth of Wilson, Va., then ranked No. 1 in the country. In March, James became the first sophomore to be named Ohio's Mr. Basketball, and in June he was the leading scorer (with a 24.0 average) at USA Basketball's Youth Development Festival in Colorado Springs, where 40 of the nation's top high school players competed in a four-day tournament. However, James's performance last week did touch off speculation that he might be the first player to try to enter the NBA draft as a junior, which would require a legal challenge to the league's rule prohibiting such a move. Goaded by reporters, James said that it was a possibility, but he backed away from that stance last Friday, after returning to Akron. "It's not going to happen," said James. "I'm not going to give it any thought. I have friends here, and I'm not going to leave them. I'm going to graduate with my class and then see what happens."
Carolina Hotshot: Shavlik Randolph had a bigger reputation than LeBron James coming into last week's Nike All-American camp in Indianapolis. Now he's learning what it's like to be a marked man. Despite lingering tendinitis in his left foot, the 6'10" post player, who will be a senior this fall at Broughton High in Raleigh, more than held his own against the other leading big men at the Nike camp. Yet plenty of people -- from bruising opponents to nitpicking NBA scouts -- have been trying to knock him off his perch recently. Last week Randolph's hometown newspaper ran a story reporting that one analyst had rated him as only the fourth-best player at the Nike camp. The headline read randolph's stock dips. "These rankings are for the birds," says Randolph's father, Kenny. "What's the difference between the Number 1 player in the country and the Number 10 player, anyway?" A highly skilled power forward who is more likely to pull off an artful ball fake than a thunderous dunk, Randolph did nothing in Indianapolis to diminish his stature as one of the most coveted players in the class of 2002. For more than a year he has been at the heart of an intense recruiting battle made all the more intriguing by his Tobacco Road bloodlines. His grandfather, Ronnie Shavlik, was an All-America center at North Carolina State in the '50s, and his parents graduated from North Carolina. Both schools are on Randolph's short list, but he says Duke is also one of his top choices, along with Florida, whose coach, Billy Donovan, flew to Raleigh last year just so he could stand in a parking lot and wave at Shavlik as he walked out of the gym. Not to be outdone, Tar Heels coach Matt Doherty sent Randolph a picture of Michael Jordan wearing a T-shirt that read shav country. Randolph, a devout Christian, seems almost too good to be true. He's a gym rat who doesn't like to play in pickup games because he would "rather do drills," he says. He rarely goes out socially, and he doesn't even have a driver's license. "Shavlik wants to be a great basketball player," says his dad, "and he's willing to sacrifice for that."
Trouble for Top Recruit: Robert Whaley says that he has never heard of Richie Parker, the former New York City high school star who became a national pariah five years ago after being convicted of sexual abuse, but Whaley is dangerously close to being cast into oblivion in similar fashion. A 6'9" forward from Benton Harbor, Mich., Whaley, now 19, was charged last January with two counts of criminal sexual conduct for allegedly raping a 13-year-old girl. The case was dropped on June 13, two weeks after Whaley's trial ended in a hung jury. However, Missouri, which signed him to a letter of intent last November, still voided his scholarship offer. "It seems a lot of people are judging me who don't even know me," Whaley says. "How can you punish someone who wasn't convicted?" Given his considerable talents, Whaley will probably still end up playing for a major program next season -- Memphis and West Virginia are the leading candidates -- but any coach who wants him will first have to convince his university that Whaley is a risk worth taking. Whaley has had numerous brushes with the law, dating back to 1994, when he was charged with unlawful use of an automobile. He pled guilty and received probation. The following year he was charged with breaking into a house. He pled guilty to home invasion and was kept on probation. Last Nov. 28, five days after the alleged rape, Whaley checked himself into a detox program at Chicago Lakeshore Hospital, and hospital records showed that Whaley suffered from chemical dependency and depression. Whaley was also arrested last winter for his involvement following an altercation in which he allegedly kicked in the front door at the home of a 40-year-old man in Benton Township, Mich. Those charges were dropped, but Whaley was later placed under house arrest and spent two weekends in jail for having violated his bail agreement from the rape charges. Missouri coach Quin Snyder says the school had decided to rescind Whaley's scholarship several months ago but held off making the announcement until the trial was over. "Given the sensitivity of the legal proceedings, we didn't think it would be fair to distance ourselves from Robert in a self-serving way," says Snyder. "He has had an inordinate amount of adversity in his life, and we thought we were the right environment for him. I think what he needs now is a fresh start." Whaley agreed to sign with the Tigers largely because of the presence of Snyder's top assistant, Tony Harvey, who had been hired as an assistant in 1999 and was elevated to associate coach the following year. Harvey's father, Lou, served as Whaley's legal guardian for almost three years while Whaley was in high school. Whaley says he was "shocked" when Missouri revoked his scholarship, which he learned of from a newspaper reporter at the courthouse, but he is trying to stay upbeat. "I have a whole different outlook on things," he says. "They say all men go through trials and tribulations. I think all this was a wake-up call for me. It's time to get straightened out."
Issue date: July 23, 2001
| |||||||||||||||||||||
