Camden High Packs Legacy for Its Trip to Torrey Pines

Clarence Turner may be the only high school coach in America who can put his team on a plane, pop out to the Coast, play a couple of games, then hustle to the Forum to watch two of his former players, Milt Wagner and Billy Thompson, sit together on the Los Angeles Lakers’ bench.

Turner may be the only high school basketball coach to have two other former players--tight end Derrick Ramsey, who used to play for the Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders, and Kansas City Chief defensive end Art Still--knock the bejeebers out of each other in the NFL.

Turner has won New Jersey state titles in seven of the past 10 years in the division for the largest public schools.

Fourteen consecutive section titles. Fifteen consecutive league titles. A 30-0 team that was awarded USA Today’s mythical national championship two years ago.

A record of 432 victories and 52 losses, achieved by a coach who, over the past 18 years, has built Camden High’s basketball program into one one of the country’s best.

Turner, 48, has achieved almost everything a high school coach could.

Torrey Pines (18-0), The Times’ top-ranked team in San Diego County, will play this year’s version of the legend tonight in a home exhibition to raise money to help pay for a new stadium.

Camden’s imminent arrival has caused a stir at Torrey Pines. The school had sold more than 1,000 tickets by Thursday, more than it had ever sold for a basketball game.

After Camden (8-1 and ranked 24th nationally by USA Today) plays Torrey Pines, it will travel to St. Bernard of Playa del Rey for a game Monday at 5 p.m. That should end in time to allow Turner and his players to listen to Chick Hearn’s pregame show on the way to the Forum for the game against the Houston Rockets.

Quite a field trip, but a visit to California seems just like any other for Camden, which has played only two games at home. It’s a nice change from January in New Jersey, but it was even nicer last year when the Panthers went to Hawaii and Florida. They settled for California this season when a scheduled trip to Puerto Rico fell through.

“No matter what kind of team I have, they gain from the experience of traveling,” Turner said. “They gain maturity, and that’s important. We like to enjoy some of the local culture . . . but don’t think we’re coming to lose, now.”

Turner says he also learned about life through travel. He played baseball in the Negro American League and for a Jackie Robinson all-star team that traveled through the South in 1953, playing 45 games in 30 days and encountering hostile white crowds along the way.

He attributes the beginnings of his basketball success to when he played point guard at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, N.C., under Cal Irvins. Turner became close to his coach and would pick his brain constantly.

“I learned you can’t treat every player the same,” Turner said. “Coach was great at studying people. Everybody is not the same. I’m probably harder on my stars than I am on the other guys.”

The fact that he was running the Johnson C. Smith team as point guard gave him added insight.

“I learned how to think the game,” Turner said. He concedes that it caused his coaching to be guard-oriented. His teams are known for getting out on the break.

Wagner was probably the one who benefited most from that. Turner took a good ballplayer and turned him into a great one, according to Wally Macpherson, athletic director at Camden since 1975.

“You could see Milt had talent when he came here,” Macpherson said. “But I think (Turner) molded him into the player he was his senior year.”

Wagner scored 2,003 points in three years and, as a senior during the 1980-81 season, led a team that averaged 103.4 points, 10th-best ever nationally. The team failed to win the state title.

Kevin Walls was another of Turner’s guard prodigies. He led the nation as a senior in 1983-84 with a 44.8-point average. The team went 31-0 and won the state championship.

But things did not go as well for Walls at Louisville as they did for Wagner. He averaged only 3.8 points his second season and was benched after a dispute with Coach Denny Crum over playing time. He left after two years and is trying to make a comeback at tiny Georgetown (Ky.) College.

Guard Victor Carstarphen has added to the tradition this season. He has averaged 26.5 points, and he scored 38 in a 100-62 victory over Sewell Washington Township last week.

“This town has been lucky to be blessed with great guards,” Turner said. “But I think I have a tendency to work on that phase a little more and allow those players to mature a little more because I played guard.”

Carstarphen has signed a letter of intent to play at the University of Cincinnati next season. There, he’ll join former Camden teammate Louis Banks, like Thompson a rare star forward.

Banks, who graduated in 1986, is the school’s all-time leading scorer with 2,775 points and led the national championship team. He had to sit out his first year at Cincinnati because of academic problems but has averaged 7 points this season and had 14 points and 10 rebounds off the bench in a 102-97 loss to Virginia Tech Thursday night.

Thompson scored 1,756 in a high school career that ended in 1982, but Turner said he really matured as a player at Louisville.

Some have wondered if Turner exercises undue influence on his players to get them to go to the school he favors. They say that Turner pushed Louisville in the past but changed his allegiance to Cincinnati after Walls’ problems. Turner says that he has never favored one school over another and that it is natural for players who have played together to want to keep doing so.

“Milt saw Louisville win a national title his senior year,” Turner said. “He liked the style of ball they played. When they came down and saw Milt, it was natural that they saw Billy, too, and saw that he was a great player. I think when Kevin was deciding on schools, he wanted to go and be a part of something special where three guys from the same school could be on a national champion.

“Cincinnati was the only school that was talking seriously with Louis, saying, ‘Hey we want you to come.’ Carstarphen did not have a great summer. Cincinnati was the only talking to him, too. He couldn’t wait around for people who are not talking to him. I try to stay out of the recruiting as much as possible.”

Support for Turner’s statement came earlier this season. Forward Denny Brown signed to play with Iona, a school that has not traditionally signed Camden players.

How does Turner churn out quality players year after year at a public school?

“Turner is a great motivator and a great teacher,” Macpherson said. “He is a great judge of talent. And he always has an eye to the future. He never goes with an all-senior team. He usually has two or three underclassmen who play a lot. He thinks that they are going to have to learn to play under pressure sometime, so they might as well learn young.”

Says Turner: “No two teams are the same. We change as our personnel changes. It’s difficult for the kids if they are not in tune with what you are doing. We make sure they are in tune.”

Macpherson also said Turner always prepares his players with a tough schedule. This year, Camden played in the prestigious New Hanover Invitational in Wilmington, N.C., losing its only game of the year in the final to Georgia’s Northeast Macon High, 84-66. Camden trailed by only one at the end of the first half but went cold in the second.

Camden has beaten the defending Connecticut large schools state champion, West Haven, 88-82, and a prep school from New Hampshire. It defeated Harper High from Atlanta and will play perennial Pennsylvania basketball powers Harrisburg and Williamsport.

The school does not pay for long trips, so Turner and Macpherson have to turn to other sources to pay for the team’s globetrotting. Some of it comes from local corporations such as RCA. But, almost unbelievably, a large amount comes directly from Camden, a poor industrial city of 85,000.

Turner and Macpherson know how to please. For instance, they got six rap bands to play at a dance on Thanksgiving night and raised $4,000. They had raised that much at an earlier dance as well.

“We get great support from our community,” Turner said. “We played a game at 4 (Tuesday afternoon) against Pennsauken, a school known for its football team, and the gym was packed. I couldn’t believe it.”

The fans like it because they almost always get to see the Panthers stomp opponents. In two home league games this week, Camden beat Edgewood, 125-82, and Pennsauken, 132-78.

The away games have been less one-sided. In addition to the loss to Northeast Macon, Camden barely escaped after it led Cherry Hill West by six, 70-64, with 1:02 to play. After two quick baskets, a Cherry Hill West player hit a 25-footer with 4 seconds left to put his team ahead, 71-70. Turner called timeout with two seconds left.

He set up an inbounds play, but Dennis Brown, a 6-foot 5-inch senior averaging 24 points, hit the ceiling with the pass. That gave Cherry Hill West the ball under its basket, but its inbounds pass went back out of bounds without touching anybody.

Turner set up another play, and this time Brown threw a full-court pass to 6-6 sophomore Julius Davis, who scored as the buzzer sounded. Camden 72, Cherry Hill West 71.

“It’s one of the most unbelievable things I’ve ever seen,” Turner said. “We sent Carstarphen down to the other end because we figured they’d follow him, and they did. That would never happen again.”

That may be because Turner has thought about retiring. He said that it takes a little more to get excited about each season now, a little more to get the adrenaline flowing in his players.

“I go year to year now,” he said. “I don’t know what will happen after this season.”