24. Tcu

The Rapper Master P was playing on the boom box outside TCU's Moncrief Hall one day last month when two Horned Frogs started flipping each other off. On a dare Thomas McTyer, a 5'11" guard, performed a flawless backflip. "Now you, Prince!" he said, pointing to 5'10" guard Prince Fowler, who duplicated the feat. "Now you, Lee!" laughed Fowler, pointing to Lee Nailon, a 6'9", 230-pound senior forward with the tumbling prowess of a brontosaurus—or so Fowler thought. "I could do that," Nailon said. Whereupon he stopped and popped the first backflip of his life.

It wasn't, however, Nailon's most significant reversal of late. After averaging 24.9 points last year, third best in the nation, Nailon was ready to leave for the NBA, if he was assured of being a top 15 pick. But scouts at a predraft camp in Chicago voiced doubts about Nailon's agility on the perimeter, prompting him to stay put. (The pros, obviously, never saw him do any backflips.) That skepticism was news to TCU coach Billy Tubbs, who is used to seeing Nailon dominate the post one minute—his lefthanded baby hook is unblockable—and lead the fast break the next. "Lee is a perfect fit for our system," Tubbs says. "We don't run around setting screens for him. We just give him the ball and tell him to go one-on-one."

The TCU system, of course, is the college hoops version of the Freudian id: unrestrained. The Horned Frogs led the nation with 97.2 points a game last season, and Tubbs has visions of racking up 200 against Division II Central Oklahoma on Dec. 12. But with only Nailon and Fowler back as starters, the scoring burden will be on three juco transfers. The best of the lot is 6'9" Marquise Gainous, who gives TCU a second threat in the paint to keep defenses from double-teaming Nailon. (Gainous outscored Nailon, in fact, in preseason scrimmages.)

A former juco player himself, Tubbs boasts that he can land any JC prospect in the country. Yet he still escapes from the rigors of scouting for a little R and R. In October, Tubbs spent a week in Hawaii as a panelist at a beauty pageant. "That's tough trying to judge 180 women in bikinis," he says. "But as you know, I'm a great judge of talent."

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