MacLean Pulled Inside Job at Camp

Simi Valley High’s Don MacLean might be one of the top high school basketball players in Southern California, but at the Nike basketball camp at Princeton University, he is just part of the crowd.

The junior arrived here last week a little worried about his chances in the camp, which featured the best high school talent in the country. MacLean’s uncertainty, amplified by being a junior in a senior-dominated camp, seemed to disappear as soon as he started to play the next night.

But his biggest challenge--6-7, 215-pound Dennis Scott from Flint Hill High in Oakton, Va.--was still ahead.

On the second day of games, MacLean received the assignment of guarding Scott, who is considered one of the top two players in the country. Scott was recently described by Tom Konchalski, a talent evaluator, as having “a blacksmith body with the touch of a surgeon.”

MacLean, who has grown an inch to 6-10 since the conclusion of the high school season, was selected to defend him by process of elimination.

“They went out at the start of the game and the four other guys ran to make sure they would match up with someone else,” said Ed Minelli of Cohasset, Mass., MacLean’s coach at the camp.

“I started kind of shaky and wasn’t sure I could play with these guys,” MacLean said on the third day of the camp. “But both the games I played today and tonight, I was doing a lot better. I think I had about 20 points each game.

“I really noticed how well things are going after the way I played tonight. I hit my outside shots, took the ball inside and scored about five times going down low and passed off and took a charge.

“I came here to make myself known and to show that I can play with these guys. People here don’t hear too much about the guys on the West Coast because so many of them are from the East.”

Said Minelli: “The more I see of Don MacLean, the more I like him. He’s obviously got a great future ahead of him.

“He is a very good listener and very coachable, and that’s important. A lot of big men figure they should be the center of attention, but Don doesn’t have an ego like that. He accepts constructive criticism.”

MacLean, who returned home late this week, will play on an American Roundball Assn. team that will meet Sonny Hill’s Philadelphia all-star basketball team tonight at Valley College.