Nam Cao : More Than ‘Dipsey-Doo’ Layup Makes a Name for Bolsa Grande Sophomore

When Nam Cao is finished, the image of the Big Man on Campus at Bolsa Grande High School will be reduced forever, but only in terms of physical stature.

Just give him another year or two.

Cao isn’t even old enough to attend a prom, which is just as well because it might be difficult to find a tuxedo in his size. But he doesn’t care. He’s busy proving that lanky upperclassmen aren’t the only ones able to challenge school basketball records.

“Basketball is my whole life,” he said.

In the meantime, the shock of seeing a 5-foot 5 3/4-inch, 112-pound sophomore on the basketball team will have a chance to wear off around Bolsa Grande--where no player shorter than 5-10 has ever started in Coach Tony Lipold’s seven-year tenure.

When the season opened, fans and opponents were skeptical that a small 15-year-old could be the team’s starting point guard.

“A lot of people thought he was too small and too fragile to play varsity,” Lipold said. “I mean, looking at him, he’s not a very physical specimen. He’s not what you’re used to seeing in a basketball player.”

But it’s difficult to doubt Cao’s qualifications today. He leads Garden Grove League’s second-place team in every statistical category--except rebounding.

So far, he has scored 239 points, an overall average of 14.1 points per game including 17.5 points per league game. He is one of Orange County’s most accurate shooters, having made 55.6% of his shots, and is among the leaders in assists with 4.4 a game. He also has made 85% of his free throws, 66 of 76 attempts, and has 34 steals.

Millimeter for millimeter, gram for gram, he is one of the county’s best players.

On the court, where his thin frame swims in the smallest available uniform, he is becoming the stuff of school legends. He beat Santa Ana in the Canyon Tournament semifinal with a 22-foot jumper followed by one of his strange fast-break layups, called the dipsey-doo by Lipold.

But that was nothing compared to his treatment of Long Beach Wilson. With two seconds left in the third quarter, Cao heaved a 60-foot shot that gave the Matadors a 51-50 lead. Bolsa Grande never lost its lead and went on to defeat the Bruins.

“We just went crazy,” Lipold said. “The Long Beach Wilson kids just looked up at the basket and looked up at the clock, and it was like the game was all over.”

His friends, many of whom are veterans of last year’s Garden Grove League champion freshman team, collect stories about him, too.

Don’t expect to impress junior varsity center Sala Lolodo with the Long Beach Wilson shot. He’ll tell you about the time Nam made a similar shot in the junior high school championship. One-handed.

Lolodo recounted how Cao, 16, recently got his driver’s license and offered to give his friends a ride home from a La Quinta game. “We were laughing because he had about three or four pillows (on the seat) under him.”

When Cao faced Mater Dei’s 6-7 Tom Lewis in summer league play, his eyes were on the level of the No. 32 on Lewis’ jersey. “My friends were watching me and giggling,” Cao said. “I’d try to drive on him, and I couldn’t get around him because he was so big.”

Once, when Lolodo and Cao went to a Laker game, they encountered a tall college player in the stands. “Nam went over to stand by him, and he came up to his kneepads,” Lolodo said, indulging in the spirit of exaggeration.

Though Cao seems well-adjusted to an American sport, he originally is from Vietnam. When Saigon was invaded, Nam’s father--a successful businessman--invested much of his savings in a $50,000 boat under the guise of starting a fishing venture in the coastal city of Vung Tau.

Nam was 5 when the Cao family staged its escape from Vietnam, according to his sister Leslie, 21. The Caos hid in the Vung Tau forest one December night, waiting to be ferried out to a 27-foot boat that carried 42 family members 700 miles across the South China Sea to Indonesia.

“We were scared we would flip over because the water was so rough,” Leslie said. “We threw up for three days and didn’t eat anything.”

The family spent a year in Tanjungpinang, a city on Bitan Island, south of Singapore, before emigrating to the United States. They lived in Lafayette, La., and Los Angeles before moving to Garden Grove in 1981.

Nam, who remembers little of life in Vietnam, can generally be found practicing basketball in the gym or studying the sports page. He hates wasting time that could be better spent with a basketball. While waiting for a reporter on campus, he polished his shot using a nerf basketball and miniature hoop.

“He eats and sleeps basketball,” Lolodo said. “He surprises a lot of people because he has so many moves of his own. He’s a basketball dictionary.”

Cao has invented a variety of ploys to compensate for his height. He is adept at hanging in the air and getting a shot off, despite the blocking attempts of taller defenders.

The reverse underhanded layup is one device Cao developed to shield his shot from opponents. Southern California College Coach Bill Reynolds, Cao’s counselor at Bolsa Grande, says he “shoots it from the hip.”

“He gets out there among all those trees, and he has an uncanny ability to get a shot off,” Reynolds said. “It must be instinctive. If he was taught that by someone, I’d like to know who the coach is. He has an ability to slither through defenders and to be a ball hawk.”

It may be Boston College quarterback Doug Flutie’s year to strike a blow for the little guy, but the crucial question for a 5-5 3/4 basketball player remains: is there basketball after high school?

“I’d like to play in college, but I know my height’s in the way,” Cao said. “If only I would grow . . . Sometimes I think about it and I think it’ll stop me from playing, and it feels kind of sad.”

Cao had never heard of Monte Towe, the 5-5 guard who helped North Carolina State to an NCAA championship in 1975 and later played pro basketball briefly. But Cao mentions hopefully that one of his brothers grew to be 5-9, and meanwhile, he follows the progress of Zach Lieberman, a 5-3 player at the United States International University in San Diego.

Reynolds said that if Cao continues to develop at his current rate, some (appropriately small) college will likely be interested in him. “He works hard, he has excellent body control, and he is an unselfish player, and that’s what most college coaches are looking for,” Reynolds said.

Lipold says Cao is one of the three best players he has coached at Bolsa Grande.

“You don’t get a player like Nam all the time,” he said. “When you’re wondering how long you want to stay in coaching, he’s the kind of player that makes it worthwhile.”