Monday, July 26, 2004 | 9:12 a.m.
Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4088.
Normally by late Sunday afternoon, the crowds at the around-the-clock Big Time high school basketball tournament and recruiting hootenany are about as thin as Barry Bonds before he started hitting the juice -- er, weights. By then, enough of the 400 college coaches have made their way home that you can access the wireless network to make a cell phone call from Henderson.
But the Foothill High main gym was filled almost to capacity at 5 p.m. Sunday. And it wasn't because of the potato salad cobbler being sold at the concession stand or that tournament sponsor Reebok had knocked $5 off a pair of high-tops at the retail kiosk it had set up out front at the Home of the Falcons.
It was because the Spiece Indy Heat and New York Panthers were about to shoot some hoops.
Maybe summertime AAU basketball is still an underground sport of sorts. But with the advent of the Internet and recruiting newsletters that have turned casual basketball fans into recruit-a-holics, it won't be long before the Big Time will be able to ditch the miner's helmet.
My first thought upon walking into the gym was this must have been what it was like when playground legends Earl "The Goat" Manigault and Connie Hawkins used to hoop it up at Rucker Park in Harlem. Only with nets on the rims. And without the giant Afros.
The team from Indianapolis and the one from Brooklyn were expected to meet in the championship game of the Big Time Open division tonight, before the New Yorkers' unexpected loss in pool play shuffled the bracket. But the result proved to be a foregone conclusion, as the Hoosiers won easily, 74-55. Without running the Picket Fence once.
It's a good thing the Heat doesn't play in the Mountain West, or Wyoming would be in trouble.
It's not that the Panthers weren't that good, it's just that the Heat was better than advertised. The team from Indianapolis, made up of mostly sophomores and juniors from its own Brickyard, put the Panthers a lap down before the first pit stop.
Unfortunately for the New York team, there aren't any yellow flags in summer basketball (although its coach, Gary Charles, wore a pale yellow outfit and a snappy white fedora that would have blown Walt Frazier's mind). So the Panthers and their young 6-foot-9 behemoth Derrick Character (17 points) had no way of catching up.
The Indianapolis kids were so dominant that they didn't need 6-foot-10 Josh McRoberts, who watched from the bench with his ankle immobilized. McRoberts was injured Sunday morning which enabled Mike Krzyzewski, who will be McRoberts' coach at Duke, to catch an early flight to Tobacco Road.
But that just freed up a few more shots for Daquan Cook (18 points), Michael Conley (16) and 7-foot sensation Greg Oden (13).
As one Indiana University fan at the media table said, it would be a shame if Mike Davis doesn't get some of these kids to stay home. Or even worse, if they end up at Purdue. But it probably won't be Oden. Although the soft-spoken giant says he would like to go to college -- two years from now, when he's finally of age -- that would a bigger upset than the Foothill concession stand running out of potato salad cobbler.
"He's the best prospect in the nation, bar none," said noted recruiting guru Bob Gibbons, who has Oden at the top of list in his All-Star Report newsletter. "If he was old enough, he would have been drafted ahead of Dwight Howard (the precocious high school ace from Georgia selected first overall by the Orlando Magic).
"NBA teams draft on potential, and this kid has more potential than any of them."
Based on Sunday's game, Oden's best move is a slam dunk. Those are the kind of one-dimensional players coaches love.
But with two years of high school ball remaining, chances are Oden is going to learn a drop step and a few finesse moves to put with his power game. Then he might become as good a player as he is a person, says his coach, Mike Conley.
"You notice on our team, we don't get into the hoopla," said Conley, whose son is the Heat point guard. "I try to teach our kids other things besides playing basketball. I think our kids show maturity when they play."
If you're one of those who follows track and field during an Olympic year, you may remember Conley for the gold medal he won in the triple jump at the Barcelona Games or the silver he earned eight years earlier in Los Angeles.
Or, if you're one of those hoop-a-holics who spilled over to the "coaches only" side of the gym Sunday night because there was no room in the spectator bleachers, you may remember Conley as a point guard for Eddie Sutton at Arkansas in 1980, where he played alongside Darrell Walker.
"I just happened to be a better triple-jumper than I was a point guard," said the personable Conley, who continues to be deeply involved with USA Track and Field as its executive director of elite athletes (i.e., Olympic team).
"Obviously, I could jump and I could shoot the open shots but I was suspect at handling the ball. I could make decisions, I just couldn't handle it the way these kids can."
Based on Sunday, I'm not sure Oscar Robertson, another Indianapolis schoolboy basketball legend, could handle it the way these kids from Indiana do, at least not at their age.
Four of the Indianapolis stars, including Oden, are teammates at Lawrence North High, which won last year's state championship in the basketball-mad Hoosier State.
It's a good thing there isn't a time tunnel near the RCA Dome that can transport these kids back to 1954. If that were the case, tiny Milan High would have never stood a chance, and the "Hoosiers" scriptwriters would have had to start from scratch.
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