Coming In From the Cold : College Basketball: Ventura’s Lester Neal and Randy Carter and Joe Daughrity of Oxnard have migrated from Chicago.

Lester Neal could only shake his head and chuckle last Saturday as Randy Carter filled his ears with some Westside chatter.

Neal is the leading scorer on the Ventura College basketball team and is from Chicago’s Southside. Carter, from rival Oxnard College and the state’s leading scorer, is from Chicago’s Westside. The two squared off, in a verbal sense, as a prelude to Wednesday night’s first game between the two schools--and the Chicago players--this season.

(Results of Wednesday’s game were not available at press time.)

But Saturday, Carter had Neal pinned in a corner. After all, Carter had scored a season-high 41 points that night against Rhode Island College, and was making sure his homeboy knew all about it.

Carter didn’t let up. He had done downtown so often, he was mass transit. Nobody could stop him. Nooooo- body .

“He was talkin’ smack, man,” Neal said. “Tellin’ me about his 40 points.”

That’s 41 , Lester.

Neal smiled, unimpressed, and waited for the Westsider to catch his breath and give him a chance to tell Carter about the 20 points and 11 rebounds he posted the same night against Santa Barbara. When Carter finally inhaled, Neal countered.

“He was telling us how they beat us all four times last year,” Carter said with a laugh. “Yeah? Well, we just let them do their talkin.’ ”

Talking smack is expected when Carter and Oxnard teammate Joe Daughrity, also from Chicago’s Westside, get together with Neal more than 2,000 miles from home.

They are the top three junior college scorers in an area full of surfboards and convertibles, and they are wearing t-shirts during a time of the year they’re used to wearing parkas. Although they thrive on an opportunity to jaw at one another, they equally enjoy talking about life in the Windy City.

“When we see each other, it’s like ‘What’s up, man?’ ” Daughrity said. “It’s like ‘Hey, it’s somebody else from Chicago.’ ”

And somebody else who has escaped the inner-city ghettos in order to concentrate on goals in a more accommodating environment.

Lester Neal was hanging out with some friends around the Robert Taylor Homes in Southside Chicago last summer, enjoying his final day at home before leaving for Ventura on Aug. 29.

“They were saying I should call it a night, but I told them I was going to hang out with my partners before I leave,” Neal said.

Neal lived with his mother and three brothers in a two-bedroom apartment at the corner of Second and Wabash. The apartment is part of a 16-story building in the Southside projects, which extend 30 blocks and claim Detroit Piston star Isiah Thomas as a former tenant.

In the projects, thieves stall the elevator, then prey on tenants as they walk darkened hallways. This time, however, a thief held Neal at gunpoint in the middle of the lobby and walked away with some jewelry and about $200 of Neal’s traveling money.

Although Neal is 6-foot-6, 220 pounds, he quickly realized he was overmatched. “I was scared,” he said. “I just stayed calm and tried to be patient.”

The strategy spared Neal injury, but left him even more discontented with ghetto life. Shootings had already taken the lives of two childhood friends, Nathaniel Perry and June Stewart.

Stewart’s death was particularly disturbing. He and Neal were boyhood friends who played playground basketball together. Neal attended Stewart’s funeral the same day as a game with Simeon High, then the top-ranked team in Illinois, and he played poorly in a blowout loss.

“I had a lot of things on my mind,” Neal said.

He wore a sweatband with Stewart’s initials the remainder of the season, a sweatband that remains tucked in the back of a drawer in his apartment. It is a symbol of one of many difficult memories.

“It’s so hard to focus on things because of all the distractions,” Neal said. “Sometimes I had problems outside of school and would take that problem to school with me, which would create more problems.”

Neal didn’t have many problems on the basketball court at Dunbar High, a perennial national power. He averaged 15 points and 15 rebounds during a three-year varsity career that ended with a third-place finish in the city playoffs and a 29-5 record.

But Neal failed to meet Proposition 48 academic standards, and Coach Fate Mickel sought a disciplined junior college program for Neal. He found that at Ventura.

Mickel has known Ventura Coach Phil Mathews since Mathews’ days as a recruiter for Cal State Fullerton.

“If I send any boys out there, I know Phil is going to take good care of them,” Mickel said. “He’s a good coach and a disciplinarian.”

Neal headed west, leaving behind a 3-year-old son, Latavius, as well as family and friends. Although Neal was bringing a troubled past, Mathews didn’t consider him a risk.

“Fate isn’t the kind of guy who is going to send someone who will embarrass him or his program,” Mathews said. “Kids from his program are good kids.”

Neal also has been a good player. He has averaged a team-high 16.7 points and 9.6 rebounds for the 16-6 Pirates and, at times, has shown signs of Division I brilliance.

“He can be one of the best players in junior college next year as far as rebounding,” Mathews said. “He has lapses where he just wants to be ordinary, but the word is out on him that he’s not ordinary, he’s talented.

“He’s a Division I rebounder just on straight, brute power.”

More important, perhaps, is Neal’s opportunity to concentrate on athletics and academics without the distractions that followed him in Chicago.

“He doesn’t have to look over his shoulder here,” Mathews said. “He can go out at night without the constant threat that if he goes into a certain neighborhood, he could never be heard from again.”

Mathews says Neal has been an impact player much like Cedric Ceballos was as a freshman three seasons ago. Ceballos helped the Pirates to the state championship in 1987 and is Cal State Fullerton’s leading scorer and rebounder his season.

“I have found myself here,” Neal said. “I can focus on what I want to do in life. Sure, it’s a challenge to come out here and do well. But I like challenges.”

Joe Daughrity looks at Randy Carter, and Carter smiles. What is this surfing business anyway?

“We don’t know nothin’ about surfing,” Carter said. “The type of neighborhood we’re from, well, there ain’t no surfin’ and all that type of stuff.”

Rather, what’s more common on the Westside--where Carter and Daughrity were boyhood friends--are shootings and robberies. It’s enough violence to keep Neal on the Southside.

“Man, it’s crazy over on the Westside,” Neal said. “They just flat-out don’t care. They do what they want to.”

That’s the main reason why Carter and Daughrity left for Oxnard. Carter, a 6-4 forward, is leading the state with a 25.8 scoring average and a 67% shooting percentage. He also averages nine rebounds.

Last season, he averaged 17 points and nine rebounds and was an all-Western State Conference pick.

Daughrity, a 6-1 point guard, went to the University of Loyola of Chicago, but never played. He sat out one year because of Prop 48 and transferred the next season and now is averaging 14.2 points, 5.2 rebounds, 5.5 assists and 2.1 steals for the 10-7 Condors.

Both players excelled at Crane High, where Carter was all-area and Daughrity was all-state. But both were anxious to play elsewhere.

“I have always believed in them getting out of the city,” former Crane Coach G. K. Smith said. “They need to get out of the hustle and bustle, and see what other places have to offer.”

And that is where Jim Long steps into the picture. Long, 50, works for the Chicago Board of Education and watches as many as four high school games a week. He has close ties to Smith and the Crane program, and uses most of his free time to help players find schools that accommodate them both academically and athletically.

Long plays mediator between the coaches and the players, sometimes traveling with players during visits to universities.

“There are a lot of good players in Chicago who don’t get out because nobody helps them,” Long said.

So Long assumes that role, and coaches such as Oxnard’s Remy McCarthy benefit. Long knew McCarthy when he was an assistant at the University of Utah, and kept in contact after McCarthy took over at Oxnard last season.

“I tell the kids that I have a friend out there in California who will take care of them,” Long said.

McCarthy doesn’t balk when Long contacts him with another prospect’s name.

“I’m always open to listen to him,” McCarthy said. “I know if he’s calling, the guy can play. I don’t ask any questions.”

After what he has seen in Carter and Daughrity, why should he? Critics said Carter was too fragile, at 6-4, 190, to play in the middle. McCarthy disagrees.

“I told Crane they should be very, very proud of Randy Carter,” McCarthy said. “I feel like I got a steal.”

Despite the turmoil in their neighborhoods, all three players talk of returning to play basketball near Chicago. Carter and Daughrity are in their final year of junior college eligibility, and they are generating interest from several Division I schools. Neal, a freshman, is already drawing attention.

“It’s been a chance for us to calm down a little, a chance to think about what you want to do,” Carter said.

Carter and Daughrity returned home for the holiday season, but Daughrity joked that he wanted to get back on the plane when he felt the Midwest’s biting cold.

Carter said the temperature will never come between him and a return visit to the Westside.

“Hey, it could be 70 below, but that’s home,” Carter said.