COLLEGE BASKETBALL : THE BLACK COACHES ASSN.: STANDING AT A CROSSROADS : USC’s Boyd a Case of Beating the Odds : Academics: Forward will graduate with a degree in economics after a rocky freshman year.

Lost in the squabble between the Black Coaches Assn. and the NCAA over the plight of young African-American athletes has been the viewpoint of the black athlete .

USC senior Mark Boyd is one such athlete.

Boyd, a 6-foot-7 forward who was selected this week as the team’s most valuable player, enrolled at USC on a basketball scholarship in 1990 and will graduate in May with a degree in economics after having been a four-year starter for the Trojans.

“Getting my degree on time has been the most important thing for me,” he said. “I know that basketball only lasts for a very short period of time, which makes getting a degree from a school like USC that much more important. Getting to the point where I can support myself, so that I don’t have to depend on anyone else, has been a goal, and that’s why I’ve worked so hard to graduate in May.”

When the NCAA does its next study on black athletes, Boyd will be used as an example of how the system works. What will be lost in his story, however, is the struggle he had merely to get an opportunity to succeed.

Boyd grew up without a father in a small two-bedroom house in a predominantly black area of Decatur, Ga. His mother, Betty, slept in one room, and his two older sisters shared the other. Until he went to college, Boyd’s bedroom was the living room.

In his neighborhood, academics were not valued because the local school system was notorious for having inferior resources, facilities and lower test scores, not to mention campus gunfire.

When it came time for Betty Boyd to send her only son to high school, she cringed at the thought of sending Mark to the neighborhood school.

“The street we lived on was not that bad, but the surrounding area was filled with problems,” she said. “I wanted him to go to a school in a different area because I didn’t think that the kids who went to school in our neighborhood were given much of a chance academically.”

So, she took action. Without financial resources to send him to a private school, she searched for other options, finally enrolling him in a “Minority to Majority” busing program.

Boyd rode a bus every school day for four years to Redan High in Stone Mountain, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta. There, he exchanged hanging out with his neighborhood friends for sitting in a classroom with mostly white students, many of whom grew up in mansions.

The trade-off worked for Boyd, who maintained a B-minus grade average while becoming Redan’s all-time leading rebounder.

“The whole reason why I went to (Redan) was to get out of my neighborhood,” Boyd said. “If I had stayed, there’s no way I would have accomplished what I have done today. I may have ended up like some of the guys who grew up around me who went away to play ball, but are now back home hanging around.”

When Boyd began high school in 1986, he was part of the first freshman class that would have four years to prepare under the NCAA’s Proposition 48, which required high school athletes to graduate with a 2.0 grade-point average or have a 700 score out of a possible 1,600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test to qualify for a scholarship.

In the eight years Prop. 48 has been in effect, blacks have made up more than two-thirds of the athletes who failed to make the cut, many of them failing to earn a qualifying score on the SAT, which has been criticized as culturally biased.

Boyd wasn’t among them. The difference, he said, was that he had been in position to gain a quality education, thanks to his mother.

Boyd is against the NCAA raising minimum academic standards for incoming freshman athletes. He believes that too many black athletes, who did not receive quality educations because they live in urban areas, will be affected.

“I don’t like it at all because it already is hard enough for kids who are halfway riding on basketball alone to get to college,” Boyd said. “Increasing standards to get in would really hurt kids who are trying to get out (of urban areas). For some, if they can’t get it through sports, they would probably be stuck there for the rest of their lives. Basically, by doing this (the NCAA) is trying to keep black athletes out.

“I know that I would be upset if I wasn’t accepted because of a standardized test. When you don’t score well on a test like the SAT, that doesn’t mean that you are not capable to be competitive in college. To hinder someone’s ability to get ahead is wrong, especially when tests are used like that.”

The true story behind Boyd, he says, is that he is an example of how the system should work.

He believes that instead of spending time denying opportunity by creating tougher admission standards, the NCAA should be more concerned about making sure college athletes get an education and graduate.

As a freshman at USC, Boyd had more than his share of problems academically. His grades were so bad after his first two semesters that Coach George Raveling was told not to expect him to be enrolled as a sophomore.

“I can still remember people in our academic counseling office telling us during Mark’s freshman year that there is no way that he would make it to his second year,” Raveling said. “The only way that he was going to stay eligible was for him to take (seven) summer school courses.”

With the help of Raveling, Boyd responded the only way he knew--to come back fighting.

Boyd credits Raveling.

“I just wasn’t ready academically my freshman year,” Boyd said. “I had problems adjusting to a new environment and I made it tough on myself. The person who was there for me was Coach Raveling. I had never had a father figure in my life, and he became one for me. I watched and learned from him. He helped me grow as a person, on and off the court.”