FIVE TO WATCH : College Basketball? NBA? Well, Let Them Try High School First

Eighth-graders who make the grade: They are out there in droves, playing basketball in everything from common recreation centers to unique parochial leagues.

But who are the best, and what can San Diegans expect from them in the future? Perhaps more important, what is too much to ask of them?

“Every individual is different,” said Bill Walton, a fine eighth-grader in his own right when he was attending Blessed Sacrament Elementary School. “Some are more mature at an earlier age. I have one myself. He’s good, and he has a chance to go and become better and better.”

Walton, of course, took his game much further, to UCLA and the National Basketball Assn. Oldest son Adam, an eighth-grader at Earl Warren Junior High in Solana Beach, is recovering from a broken left foot, oddly enough (Bill had chronic foot problems in the NBA) and hasn’t played since Christmas. Adam is taking statistics and assisting Coach Bill Vice.

“So much of it depends on attitude, work ethic and injuries,” Bill Walton said, “and basketball is the ultimate test.”

Erik Meek, a 6-10 junior center at San Pasqual, may be the most recruited player since Walton. But it isn’t often that a player of such talent surfaces in San Diego.

“You get a player like Meek once but every five years,” said Mt. Carmel Coach John Marincovich. “I don’t like to push my eighth-graders too much. They’re too young. I like them to progress at their own rate.”

But a search of the county produces at least five players who may take their high schools by storm as early as next year:

Marlin Carey

Black Mountain Middle School

Rancho Penasquitos

Maria Carey didn’t mince words as she quickly scrawled a message to her son, who was slowing falling apart before her eyes.

“Calm down and be cool out there,” Mom wrote during a game last year. She sent one of Marlin’s opponents--who also happened to be his best friend--to deliver the note at courtside.

Said Maria: “He was getting upset, and normally he doesn’t. I knew if he didn’t calm down, he would have gotten kicked out.”

Carey settled down, and his Poway Youth Basketball Assn. team went on to win.

“Yeah, the note helped,” said Carey, a 5-foot-9 guard for his junior high and PYBA teams.

According to John Martin, his PYBA coach last year, Carey has potential galore but can also be very emotional.

“He’s exciting to watch, and he’s an exceptional ballplayer,” Martin said, “but he’d lose it once in a while. He’s so young, though, and he’ll mature.”

Carey has led his PYBA team to a 4-1 record, averaging 17 points and seven rebounds. Last year, more than 1,000 of his peers voted him the PYBA’s most valuable player.

But he is already mature enough to know that so much can get in the way of his dream of playing in the NBA.

“I don’t let it get to my head,” said Carey. “I’m not a (Michael) Jordan or anything like that.”

Carey, who will attend Mt. Carmel High, also has standout football skills. He scored 33 touchdowns and gained more than 1,500 yards last season as a running back on Rancho Penasquitos’ Pop Warner Midget team. But basketball is his first love.

“I like football and everything,” he said, “but I’m really going after basketball.”

Mike Flynn, another former coach, said Carey is “a very gifted player. He can play any position, he has good leaping ability and good offensive skills.”

Flynn said Carey is a smooth operator but also a fast one.

“He has extraordinary quickness,” Flynn said. “He just glides. He has a very fast first step, and you have to give him room because he can blow by people in a hurry.”

Martin recalled a game where Carey dribbled through all five opponents and flipped the ball for a layup.

“He’s exciting to watch,” Martin said. “His skills are so good. You can never count him out for his ability. He stands out so much.”

Truc Huynh

Grant Middle School, Escondido

In Vietnamese, above the giggles from friends and two younger sisters, Huynh asks her oldest brother, Quoc, what team he plays for at Escondido High.

“Freshman,” he replies in English.

The general opinion is that Truc could easily take his place next year. She is a regular for the eighth-grade boys at Grant, who are 15-1. Coach Steve Bruecker said Dave Turner, Quoc’s coach, has joked about her playing for him.

“It was a tongue-in-cheek comment,” Bruecker said. “He said she could make his team, but he knows the girls really need her.”

Huynh’s presence on a girls’ team will be a unique experience. Other than her physical-education classes at Grant, she has never played with or against girls.

“I’m afraid of hurting them,” said Huynh, a 5-5 guard with a 3.75 grade-point average.

The only sport Huynh played before she moved from Vietnam in 1986 was soccer. After she and Quoc began watching the Lakers, she developed a thirst for basketball. A year later, she played her first organized game for Grant’s seventh-grade boys.

In 13 years of junior high coaching, Bruecker had never seen a girl on a boys’ team.

“She had to try out just like anyone else,” he said. “No one complained because she’s equal or above half the team. She’s completely accepted.”

Bruecker said that when players see her, “they realize they’re going against a player with exceptional skills, and they forget she’s a girl.”

Huynh has started three games for Grant but is usually the first player off the bench.

“She comes in as an opportunity to rest the other guard,” Bruecker said. “I’m confident with her ability to get into the flow of the game off the bench. The tempo doesn’t change when she’s brought in.”

Bruecker says Huynh, 14 and left-handed, is an excellent ball-handler and outside shooter.

“She comes into the game,” Bruecker said, “and if she’s left open at 18-23 feet, she’ll get it. She drives real well to the basket, and if she’s open, she gets a layup.”

Bruecker said Huynh plays with energy and enthusiasm and contributes on and off the court.

“Her attitude and love of the game makes her stand out,” he said. “Even when she isn’t in the game, she still is. Basketball’s her joy.”

Tavie Mason

Wilson Middle School, San Diego

Mason once showed up at the Encanto Recreation Center with just 10 minutes of practice remaining for Hoover’s freshman team. But Ralph Brice, his coach, wasn’t mad. He was impressed .

“He couldn’t get a ride and instead of just staying home, he came anyway, with 10 minutes to spare,” said Brice, who has three eighth-graders on his team. “That showed me he’s willing to do anything just to be there. He (acts like a team’s) 12th man, willing to come and improve. He has the best attitude on the team.”

Mason, 13 and a 5-8 guard, has a few rough edges, but Brice said he is “by far the most talented player at this level. There’s fire in his eye. Every game he gives me 100%.”

Brice said Jim Thompson, Madison’s varsity coach, told him Mason had the talent to start for him right now. Hoover Coach Hal Mitrovich is equally taken.

“He would probably start for us as a freshman,” Mitrovich said.

In a game against St. Augustine last week, Hoover scored 58 points; Mason had 51. Rough Edge No. 1.

“We want him to distribute the ball a little more,” Brice said, “get him to be more of a team player.”

Two days later, Hoover scored 61 points, and Mason limited his total to 38. He is averaging 35 points and close to 14 rebounds a game.

“He’s learning to play more with the team and not carry the load,” Brice said.

Brice said one of the qualities that separates Mason from thousands of other talented junior high players is maturity.

“He plays like he’s five years older,” Brice said. “Other players don’t have the confidence he has. He just has the knack to go to the hoop, and he has it right now. He’s not afraid to shoot.”

With all Mason’s shooting and passing abilities, Brice said, Rough Edge No. 2 is defense.

“His defense is still weak,” he said, “but he’s doing everything: rebounding, shooting, passing. That will come.”

And perhaps take him to higher levels.

“Right now he’s thinking about college,” Brice said. “His main thing is to compete in college. His parents are very supportive. They’ll guide him in the right direction.”

Eddie Montalvo

Earl Warren Junior High

Solana Beach

If he can avoid the path taken by two older brothers--and there is a coach and friend who is determined that he will--Montalvo could become one of the county’s best players.

The brothers attended Torrey Pines for two years and played junior varsity basketball. By the end of their sophomore years, both had left the program. Tim Ovies, who has helped coach Montalvo since the summer of 1988, is hoping that trend ends.

“He’s a terrific kid,” Ovies said. “We’re just trying to stop that process.”

His brothers’ example and presence has also helped him. Because they played with him daily through the years, Eddie had opportunities many boys his age lack.

“That helped me a lot,” Montalvo said, “just playing with bigger players.”

Said Ovies: “One of the reasons he’s so good is he’s always played against older brothers. After (one) finished his sophomore year, Eddie used to beat him consistently in one-on-one situations. Any kid who can beat someone with a two-year high school background, that’s something.”

Although Montalvo, who is 5-10, has a relatively modest career high of 27 points and averages just 16.7 a game, Coach Bill Vice said that is deceiving.

“We have an unspoken rule on the team,” Vice said. “If we are up by 20, the other kids get to play.”

Vice said Montalvo, 14, plays close to three quarters a game and has led his team to a 4-1 record.

Ovies said Montalvo’s biggest obstacle is his self-doubt, an area they are constantly trying to improve.

“Just his presence offers leadership,” Ovies said, “but he’s not a leader yet. He’ll never be a high school point guard unless he learns to vocalize. He likes to let his play say it all, but unless he vocalizes it, it won’t happen.”

Montalvo may attend Torrey Pines or University City, but he already has his sights set on a Division I school.

“I’d like to go to UCLA,” he said.

Said Ovies: “I keep telling him that he may never hit the NBA, but at least he can get an education and change things for his mom and his family. If he makes all the right choices, he knows it will get him a scholarship and into college.”

Shondel Robinson

Gompers Secondary, San Diego

Here’s to you, Miss Robinson. According to Michael Skibbe, your Encanto Recreation Center coach, only one thing separates you from a future college scholarship: incompetence.

“If she doesn’t get a Division I scholarship, someone screwed up,” Skibbe said.

Skibbe isn’t the only one who seems so sure of Robinson’s potential.

Celeste Robinson said her 13-year-old daughter received at least 10 Christmas cards from college coaches who saw her in a tournament last summer in Florida, when she was playing on the Police Athletic League’s 13-under All-Star team.

“She has gotten a lot of encouragement,” Celeste Robinson said. “And it’s real encouraging to see our children make an impression in the community.”

Robinson is the only girl in a family with five boys--all basketball players--including Archie, 14, a freshman on Lincoln’s varsity team.

“She goes straight to the hole, just like a little Archie,” Skibbe said. “With five brothers, she’d had the opportunity to play with the guys, and it’s helped. She’s the only player I have who doesn’t play like a girl.”

But she gets plenty of practice with girls, from her own PAL team to Lincoln’s varsity, with whom she practices and helps manage.

“They’re a lot better than I am,” Shondel said. “But more to my level (than boys).”

Said Skibbe: “I know Lincoln has already put its mark on her.”

Robinson is becoming less and less of a one-woman show for Encanto--she scored 18 points in a 41-19 first-game loss, then contributed 31 in the next game, a 49-38 victory--but that’s partially because she has made her teammates play up a notch.

“She makes everyone around her better,” Skibbe said. “She’s such a positive influence, leading by example. She knows her God-given talents, and she takes it from there.”

One of Shondel’s talents, Skibbe said, is an exceptional feel for the court, knowing where to go and what to do without having to stop and think about it.

“She shoots, she follows, she goes back up,” Skibbe said. “She knows the court. She knows where the ball is. She always has her head up, looking.”

Robinson is a 4-11 guard, averaging 30 points, 12 rebounds and six assists for Encanto, which is 3-1.

“With Shondel, you’re always going to be competitive,” Skibbe said. “It doesn’t take teams long to figure out she’s the one to stop.”