Alhambra High’s Hung Duong, Only 5-8, Is the Valley’s Leading Scorer : Prep Basketball: An ‘unselfish’ scorer, Duong’s 24.9 average has paced the Moors to a 14-2 record.
From the time he started playing basketball in youth leagues, Hung Duong resigned himself to being one of the shortest players on the court.
At 5-foot-8 and 140 pounds, the Alhambra High guard is a small man in a game largely dominated by big people.
Nevertheless, the senior is standing pretty tall on the basketball court.
Going into this week’s play, Duong was the leading scorer in the San Gabriel Valley with a 24.9-point average.
He is also the largest factor in the success of Alhambra. The Moors do not have a player taller than 6-1 in the starting lineup but have the best record in the valley at 14-2.
Statistics aside, Coach Jim Wetmore says Duong does not fit the mold of a top scorer.
“Hung is the most unselfish 25-point scorer there is, and that’s the way it’s always been with him,” Wetmore said. “We gear a lot of things toward him, but he’ll drive sometimes and just dish it off and let someone else get the points.
“He’s the last guy to look in the scoring book after the game to see how many points he scored. He doesn’t care. Last year in one game he scored one point but we won by 12. But he didn’t care about the points. He was just happy that we won the game.”
That is not to suggest that Duong doesn’t like to shoot the basketball or score points.
“He does love to shoot the ball,” Wetmore said. “He just doesn’t force it. He knows he has four other guys around him.”
But when he does shoot, he has a pretty good success rate, and the coach credits it to Duong’s intense work ethic.
“He just loves to shoot and he shoots all the time in our gym,” Wetmore said. “He’s there in the morning, in the afternoon and after school. He just shoots all day.”
Wetmore says the hard-work approach has carried over to other facets of Duong’s play.
“He’s a competitor in the true sense of the word,” Wetmore said. “He plays hard all the time. He hustles out on the court all the time, whether it’s in a game or in practice, and he’s very competitive. He just hates to lose. He doesn’t have any great natural skills, but he makes the most of what he has.”
Assistant Coach Mike Holtrey says Duong never passes up an opportunity to improve his game.
“I think one of the things that’s made Hung better is that on his off days he goes out to local gyms and looks for competition,” he said. “It’s not uncommon to find him playing with college-type players on the day after a big game. He’s always trying to improve himself.”
That goes a long way toward explaining how Duong also leads the team in rebounds and is among the team leaders in assists and steals.
“He’s just very aggressive,” Wetmore said. “He can anticipate things very well. Because he’s very competitive, he’s going to do whatever it takes to be successful. He can score but he’s also our leading rebounder and leads the team at taking charges.”
Duong has never been afraid to challenge considerably taller players for rebounds.
“I guess I just have a nose for the ball and I just kind of sneak in there for rebounds,” Duong said. “I’ve also picked up some rebounding techniques that coaches have taught me over the years.”
He is also not the kind of player who shies from leadership responsibilities.
“He just took leadership upon last year and this year,” Wetmore said. “Hung’s taken a lot of the leadership on himself, but that’s just the kind of person he is. . . . He’s one of our team captains, and one day he was at practice and he told a kid on the team, ‘If you’re not ready to play, don’t show up,’ and the next day we had a big game. Hung is one of those players who’s not afraid to tell the other players that they’re not working hard enough.”
Duong says that he has never minded working hard as a basketball player because he has always enjoyed playing the game.
“There’s never been a time that I didn’t enjoy playing basketball,” he said. “It’s just fun for me to play and it’s always been that way.”
He has been playing the game since the fifth grade--not long after he arrived in Alhambra.
Duong was born in Bac Lieu, Vietnam, which he said is about 50 miles from Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). But he doesn’t remember much about his life there.
“I was pretty young. I know I came here about 1980 but don’t remember much before that.”
He does remember leaving Vietnam with his family by boat. Duong, who has four brothers and one sister, said several members of his family went to the United States before he and his parents joined them.
“My family received permission (from the government) to leave and we went by boat to Malaysia,” he recalled. “Then we went by plane to the U.S. and we settled in Alhambra.”
Since his beginnings in basketball in the park leagues of Alhambra, Duong has made steady development. In high school, after starring on the junior varsity team as a sophomore, he averaged 19.1 points and 6.6 rebounds and received All-Foothill League honors in his first year on the varsity last season.
But his parents have always been more concerned about his accomplishments in the classroom.
“My mom has always looked at academics first and athletics second,” he said. “When I came here I had been playing basketball for a while. But they didn’t want me to play ball. They wanted me to concentrate on my academics. But they told me that as long as I could keep up the grades I could play basketball.”
That has never been a problem for Duong, who holds a 3.73 grade-point average. He said he is hoping to major in either business or architectural engineering in college.
He would also like to play more basketball after this season, although he has not received much attention from major colleges because of his size.
“The UC Irvine coach said he could walk on there, but his chances of playing are another thing,” Wetmore said. “La Verne, Whittier and Occidental have shown interest and it’s come more recently from them. I know they’re Division III schools, but that’s where he might get a chance to play the most.”
Duong: “I just want a chance to play.”