Mann Wants to Prove He’ll Do Right Thing

About a year from now, if one kid’s “hoop dream” comes true, the top high school basketball player in California’s class of 1996 will sign a college letter of intent.

And with those few strokes of his pen, Olujumi Mann of Santa Ana Valley will have achieved one of the most important goals of his life.

“My plan is to prove all those people wrong who say that I’m going to mess things up,” Mann said. “I want to show the people who have supported me that all their work wasn’t for naught.”

Mann, a 6-foot-4, 183-pound point guard with a spectacular arsenal of playmaking and scoring skills, is the consensus choice of college coaches and talent evaluators as the outstanding junior prospect in the state.

After transferring from Mater Dei, he averaged 22 points, six rebounds and seven assists as a sophomore last season, leading Santa Ana Valley to the Southern Section Division I-AA semifinals. A Times first-team all-county selection, Mann also made 73 three-pointers (44.5% from the field) and had 116 steals.

“I have a tremendous amount of respect for Olujumi Mann,” said Bob Gottlieb, a former college coach who is active as an Orange County youth league coach and personal instructor. Gottlieb’s son, Doug, a senior point guard at Tustin, signed with Notre Dame last week.

“If he stays healthy, and with normal maturity, Olujumi is not only an NBA prospect, I think he has a chance to be the next Magic Johnson. He has the talent, skill and instincts. But he hasn’t done a very good job academically, either at Mater Dei or Santa Ana Valley.”

It’s academics that is foremost on the minds of Mann and his father, Richard, a loan services manager for a Huntington Beach mortgage company who played freshman basketball at Purdue in 1970-71. Richard Mann raised his son as a single parent living in Albuquerque, N.M., before a job transfer brought him to Orange County eight years ago. He has since remarried.

“My counselor (Lynn Kramer) tells me every day that I need to have at least a ‘C’ average to play as a freshman in college,” said Mann, who plans to take the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test in January, with hopes of achieving the necessary score on his SAT in time to sign a letter of intent next November (this year’s one-week signing period for seniors ends Wednesday).

Mann’s first name might be unique to him--according to Richard Mann, “Olujumi” was an African king whose name means “God Gave Us This Much Love in Our Child”--but college coaches throughout the country have been talking about him since he helped lead Pat Barrett’s Performance Training Institute team to a third-place finish at the 14-and-under AAU championships four years ago.

“(Mann) is one of the outstanding juniors in the country,” said one college assistant coach. “He can penetrate, he’s strong, he can create shots, and he has a great court awareness. As he matures and understands the game more and more, he will be one of the truly outstanding guards in college basketball.”

Mann, who turned 18 last Monday, makes no secret of his favorite college: UCLA. He has been a regular visitor to Pauley Pavilion since he was in eighth grade. Mann knows most of the Bruin players, and was a PTI teammate last spring of 6-10 center-forward Jelani McCoy, a San Diego St. Augustine senior who signed with UCLA last week. On the day he gave the Bruins an oral commitment, McCoy called Mann and urged him to join him at UCLA next year.

However, Mann said he is also considering three other schools: California, Kentucky and Purdue. He said he will “definitely” attend the UCLA-Kentucky game Dec. 3 at The Pond of Anaheim, part of the John R. Wooden Classic that also includes a game between Kansas and Massachusetts.

But first there is the matter of a game to be played the night before, when Santa Ana Valley plays host to Tustin in a dream matchup of two top point guards: Mann and Gottlieb. And if Mann has his way, it won’t be the last time he goes head-to-head with Gottlieb, whose game he says he admires.

“I’d like to win the NCAA championship my freshman year in college, and be a big part of it,” he said. “And you know who I’d like to win it against? Notre Dame and Doug Gottlieb.”

Notes

Glen Giesen (6-6, 295) of Sunny Hills, one of the top offensive line prospects in Southern California, said he will take recruiting trips to four schools: Nebraska, Colorado, Arizona and UCLA. At UCLA, he would be reunited with a former teammate, Brian Willmer, a redshirt freshman linebacker.

One of the premier community college prospects in California, sophomore linebacker Kasun Charles (6-2, 230) of Long Beach City College, was shot and killed last Monday night near his Wilmington home. Police believe the incident was gang-related, though Charles was not known to be connected to any gangs. Charles, a Wilmington Banning graduate and the Vikings’ defensive leader, had already lined up recruiting trips to USC, UCLA, Pittsburgh and San Diego State before he was killed.

Hoop report: Los Alamitos point guard Ali Ton, a 6-footer who averaged about 10 assists and four steals last season and was an All-Empire League choice, has not been offered a scholarship to a Division I school. He has been contacted by coaches from Long Beach State, Cal Poly Pomona and several Division III schools, including Claremont-Mudd and Redlands. Brigham Young had showed interest during the summer, but not recently. Ton, a native of Turkey who came to the United States three years ago, hopes to attract some scholarship offers from larger schools this season.

Early returns: Former Mater Dei guard Miles Simon, a 6-4 freshman and key member of Arizona’s highly regarded recruiting class, was high scorer with 25 points in the Wildcats’ annual Red-Blue scrimmage last week. Simon hit eight of 12 shots, including the game-winning basket in the final second. “I knew Miles would be good, but he has exceeded my expectations so far,” Arizona Coach Lute Olson said. “Other than Damon Stoudamire, he’s been our best three-point shooter. He comes from a great program, which makes our job so much easier.”

Stanford Coach Mike Montgomery, on Servite High’s Mark Seaton, a 6-9 forward who signed with the Cardinal last week: “Mark should be a great fit for us, playing with (7-1 freshman center) Tim Young. He has matured physically, and made tremendous improvement over the summer. It was real important for us that he committed early; he became the centerpiece for the rest of our recruiting class.” Seaton was one of 16 seniors from the western United States selected recently to the Long Beach Press-Telegram’s annual Best in the West basketball team. He finished seventh in balloting by college coaches and scouts, behind Tustin guard Doug Gottlieb. The top vote-getter was 6-7 guard-forward Paul Pierce of Inglewood High, who received 506 of a possible 510 points.

More Pac-10 news: Cal lost one of its top recruits when 6-7 forward Derek Hood of Kansas City, Mo., signed with Arkansas. Hood had visited Berkeley recently, and also considered Kansas. However, the Bears fared better out of state (signing 6-9 Shareef Abdur-Rahim of Marietta, Ga., and 6-10 Kenyon Jones of Savannah, Ga.) than USC, which lost Jones, 6-7 Juan Gaston of Decatur, Ga. (Georgia Tech) and 6-6 Michael Gill of Washington, D.C. (Pittsburgh) . . . 5-10 point guard Duane Davis of Los Angeles Fairfax chose Arizona State over Santa Clara . . . Donte Quinine, a 6-6 swingman from Rowland Heights Rowland who had orally committed to Oregon, changed his mind and signed with Utah. However, the Ducks are considered the favorite to sign former UC Santa Barbara standout Rob Ramaker, now at Santa Barbara City College. Ramaker, a 6-10 forward, was one of the top freshmen in the Big West last season. If he signs with Oregon, Ramaker would rejoin 6-8 forward Kyle Milling, who also left UCSB after last season.

New Nevada Las Vegas Coach Tim Grgurich has confided to friends that he believes he has a chance to sign the top two seniors in California--Pierce and 6-5 Tommy Prince of Compton Dominguez. Both have decided to wait until April before signing letters of intent, a fact that Grgurich believes should help UNLV.