Giant Steps : As Middleton Rises From Valley College to the ACC, Clemson May Go From Almost-Forgotten to Also-Ran

Less than 10 minutes into the first game of his first season in major college basketball, Larry Middleton was already facing a defense designed specifically to stop him.

The junior transfer from Valley College had made 8 of 9 shots, bombarding a Maryland-Eastern Shore zone from long range, and the crowd at Clemson University’s Littlejohn Coliseum was chanting, “Lar-ry, Lar-ry, Lar-ry.”

Howie Evans, the Maryland-Eastern Shore coach, switched his team into a box-and-one, with one defender assigned to dog Middleton. The defense slowed down the muscular 6-3 guard, but it was too late to save the Hawks.

Clemson romped, 83-57, and Middleton, cut from the B team at Taft High in Woodland Hills just five years ago, had taken his first step toward proving to the world that he could play the game at its highest levels.

Not that Evans needed much convincing. He had seen Middleton play at Valley, where the former All-City center was a two-time all-state selection while making the transition to guard.

“All the coaches in the country know Larry Middleton,” Evans said afterward. “We had his name on the bulletin board--Middleton: shooter supreme, must contain. We didn’t do a good job the first eight minutes and he blew us out of the game.”

Clemson expected big things from Middleton--he became a starter about a week into fall practice--but 24 points and forcing an opponent into a special defense in his debut?

Wasn’t he getting ahead of himself?

Afterward, Evans was already talking about Middleton’s pro potential, saying: “There aren’t too many guys in the big show who can shoot like that.”

As far as Middleton is concerned, this is the big show.

He came to Clemson, he said, to face the best possible competition. And here he was, one game into the season, staring into a television camera and being interviewed on the local news.

“The adrenaline was pumping so quick,” he told WOLO’s Mark Wade, “that I didn’t feel anything.”

Later, Middleton smiled broadly.

“This is a lot of fun,” he said.

And it will only get better, he promised.

“I felt that I shouldn’t have missed a shot out there,” said Middleton, who missed 9 of 21. “I feel that every time I put it up there, I shouldn’t miss unless I’m rushing myself or I don’t have my feet set or I’m just too far out.”

Last Monday night against Rider College of New Jersey, he was almost perfect. He missed his first shot, then hit a school-record 12 straight and finished with 27 points in a 101-63 Clemson victory.

“Our Mission is Transition”

--Clemson basketball motto

Clemson’s 10,000 residents live and die with the fortunes of the Tiger athletic teams.

Lest you forget whose territory you might have wandered into by mistake, orange Tiger paws have been painted everywhere--on taverns, laundry mats, newspaper racks, barber shops, banks, tennis rackets, even in the streets and gas stations. When the Clemson football team played in the Gator Bowl a few years ago, Clemson students painted tiger paws along the 350 miles of highway between Clemson and Jacksonville, Fla.

“At football games,” said assistant basketball Coach Maury Hanks, “even 80-year-old women have tiger paws painted on their cheeks.”

As the bumper stickers say, “Paws for a Quality Experience.”

In basketball, however, the locals haven’t had much to celebrate.

A charter member of the Atlantic Coast Conference, Clemson is the only school that hasn’t won a conference title in the 32 seasons since the ACC was formed in 1953. Only once have the Tigers been invited to the NCAA tournament--they lost to UCLA in the West Regional final in 1980, Larry Nance’s junior year.

The problem is the conference. From top to bottom, the ACC has long been a standard of excellence in college basketball.

To put it in perspective, a fan once asked former Clemson Coach Press Maravich about the Tigers’ upcoming schedule. “We play North Carolina and Duke this weekend,” Maravich said, “and next weekend we play North Carolina State and Virginia.”

“OK,” said the fan, “you’re 0-4. Then what?”

It could be more of the same this season.

Clemson was ranked 34th in the nation by Sports Illustrated in its college basketball preview edition, which is pretty good, considering that 64 teams make the NCAA tournament. But six of its seven ACC opponents were ranked higher. In this week’s United Press International poll of coaches, three ACC teams--North Carolina, Duke and Georgia Tech--are ranked among the top four.

Obviously, the competition is intense, which is why Middleton is here. Although he is shy by nature, he has never been one to back down from a challenge.

When he dreamed of dunking a basketball as a youngster growing up in South-Central Los Angeles, his father told him, “If you want something bad enough, you’ve got to go out there and practice at it.”

And so he did, coming home from school every day and jumping for hours at the basket hanging in the backyard. After his homework was finished, he’d go out again, sometimes until midnight.

“Whenever I needed him,” said his mother, Bobbie, “I knew where to find him.”

The result is a taut, powerful body, with calf muscles that fairly bulge out of his socks. His vertical jump--which is 32 to 38 inches, depending on who you talk to--is the best on the Clemson team. Hence, his nickname, “High Rise,” which was given to him by teammate Grayson Marshall.

Middleton was dunking regularly by the time he was a sophomore at Taft, but he was still cut from the program by B and C Coach Mark Drucker. He went out for the team late after playing football, and Drucker said the roster, for the most part, had already been set.

“We knew about another kid who was coming out and we held the last spot for him,” Drucker said. “What a mistake. I’ll probably never hear the end of it.”

Middleton said he was “hurt.”

Said his mother: “That just made him play that much harder.”

Middleton made the junior varsity as a junior, and by the middle of the season, he was brought up to the varsity. But he still wasn’t a starter. Said Taft Coach Jim Woodard: “I started noticing him and said to my JV coach, ‘This guy’s better than anybody you’ve got.’ But he’d never played organized basketball. He didn’t even know the terminology in a lot of areas.”

He was willing to learn, though. Finally, as a senior, he blossomed. “Even before the season started,” Woodard said, “I told people that he had more physical ability than any player that had ever been at Taft. He’s a great athlete. There was never any doubt about that. It was just a matter of learning the game and getting the experience.” Middleton was an All-City selection, averaging 18.1 points and 10.9 rebounds as the Toreadors’ center.

Centers in guards’ bodies not being in great demand, however, he was not recruited by any major colleges.

He was even more determined.

“I knew in my mind that I could play as well as anybody else,” he said. “I knew it was going to happen for me sometime.”

He went to Valley to become a guard, which turned out to be a much smoother transition than anybody could have imagined. He averaged 20.7 points a game as a freshman, led Valley to the Mountain Valley Conference championship and was the conference MVP.

Major college coaches were tripping over themselves trying to take him away from Valley, but Valley Coach Bob Castagna convinced him that another year in junior college would make him a better player and lead to even better offers.

“I came back and wanted to be, without a doubt, the best junior college basketball player in the state,” Middleton said.

He may have been. Despite facing an elaborate array of defenses designed to stop him, he led the state in scoring with a 27-point average and led the team in rebounding, averaging about seven a game. Said Middleton: “I felt that whenever I stepped on the court, nobody could stop me.”

It was that attitude that led him to Clemson.

Several other schools recruited him, including Nevada Las Vegas, USC, Pepperdine, Minnesota and Providence. But why play for any of them, he figured, when he could play against what he believed was the best available competition at Clemson? Come January, he’ll be matched against some of the best guards in the nation--Duke’s Johnny Dawkins, Georgia Tech’s Bruce Dalrymple, North Carolina State’s Nate McMillan, North Carolina’s Steve Hale.

“The challenge of the ACC,” Middleton calls it.

Middleton prepared for the challenge last summer in a league at Inglewood High.

Facing some of Southern California’s best guards--Washington State’s Keith Morrison, Loyola Marymount’s Keith Smith and UCLA’s Pooh Richardson and Montel Hatcher--Middleton more than held his own.

His confidence soared.

“I knew from the beginning they couldn’t do nothing I couldn’t do,” he said of his more celebrated summer opponents.

He ventured south to prove himself against even better competition. A little uneasy at first because the assistant coach who recruited him, Rudy Washington, had left Clemson to take a job at Iowa, Middleton felt a little more comfortable when he found out that his roommate would be Michael Tait. Tait is a transfer from Arizona who also grew up in Los Angeles, about 10 minutes away from Middleton.

Tait and Middleton had never met, but Middleton said Tait is one of only two people from Southern California that he has met at Clemson. The other is Hanks, the assistant coach who was an assistant at Taft and Valley and graduated from Cal State Northridge.

Middleton is quiet and reserved, and usually doesn’t have much to say. “He’s not so much shy,” Hanks said, “but he doesn’t go out and seek the limelight. A lot of people will think he’s not a smart kid, or he’s not a friendly kid, but that’s not right. He’s just quiet.”

He shows more of his personality on the court. A pained expression crosses his face when he makes a turnover or misses a shot, but his eyes light up when he’s playing well. He grins from ear to ear when his shots are falling.

“He’s not shy on the basketball court,” said Clemson’s second-year coach, Cliff Ellis.

He was almost an instant sensation. In the Tigers’ first intrasquad scrimmage, he scored a game-high 35 points. “I knew then that we had a gem,” Ellis said. In an exhibition against the Australian national team, Middleton led Clemson with 20 points. Then, in another scrimmage, he scored 35 again, making 15 of 20 shots.

“He’s got great confidence,” Hanks said. “When he’s knocking it down, he doesn’t think anybody can shoot any better than him.”

Said Ellis: “I’m very tickled with him. We’re not expecting him to be all-world this year. We’re not expecting him to come right out of the box and dominate. We hope he does, but we’ve got to be patient with any newcomer.”

Then came the opener against Maryland-Eastern Shore. “He was just making a Barnum and Bailey of it out there,” said Evans, the Maryland-Eastern Shore coach.

After five games, in which he has played less than 25 minutes a game because of Clemson’s domination of some weak early-season competition, Middleton has made 61% of his shots and is averaging 16.4 points a game.

And the Tigers are 5-0.

But he’s far from satisfied.

“I’m not quite sure what I can do yet,” he said.

He’s at Clemson to find out.