Blair Basketball In the News

Versatile Villanueva searches for consistency

Friday, July 26 Updated: July 29, 11:39 AM ET
By Michael Kruse Special to ESPN.com

Editor’s note: Michael Kruse spent one day last week at one of the summer’s top tournaments with one of the nation’s top recruits, Charlie Villanueva from New Jersey’s Blair Academy.

LAS VEGAS – This is a business trip. Tuesday is a workday.

The Big Time Tournament is an opportunity for some 5,000 kids to play summer basketball. It’s an opportunity for recruiting analysts to evaluate the nation’s up-and-coming talent. And it’s an opportunity for college coaches to find their future stars. Charlie Villanueva averaged 18 points a game last year.

But for a select few – like Charlie Villanueva of the powerful Long Island Panthers travel team – last week’s adidas-sponsored tournament is a chance to make money.

“Like I always say to Charlie, he’s a corporation,” Panthers coach Gary Charles said after his team’s second win at the event.

“It’s up to him whether he’s a $100 million corporation or a $40 million corporation. And every time he steps on the floor, he either makes money or loses money. “

On this morning – the Day 2 schedule calling for a 7:15 wakeup and a 9 a.m. date with the SoCal-based Branch West Basketball Academy – Villanueva doesn’t look like a hundred mil. Or even 40.

He just looks ... sleepy.

With a donut and some orange juice serving as his only fuel, the 6-foot-10 forward from Queens, N.Y., starts slow. He misses a bunch of three-pointers. He jogs on fast breaks. He tugs on his shorts.

But Villanueva does show flashes of the kind of versatility that no other rising senior hoops prospect possesses – at least no one not named LeBron James.

He pieces together a couple pinpoint passes off dribble drives. He takes a hit and converts a strong lefty finish with a foul. He draws oohs and aahs on a ferocious double-tip tap dunk.

It’s the kind of stuff that helped Villanueva star as a 5-10 12-year-old point guard for Nate Blue’s 17-and-under Elmhurst Answers AAU team.

It’s the kind of stuff that made him a first-team all-borough performer as a 6-5 sophomore wing at Newtown High School back in Queens.

It’s the kind of stuff that allowed him to average 18 points and eight rebounds this past winter while playing alongside fellow highly-touted recruit Luol Deng at New Jersey’s Blair Academy.

And it all helps the Panthers top BWBA 76-56. Villanueva finishes with 15. But he could’ve had 35. Easy. And that’s the rap.

“I have a bad habit of playing to the level of the competition I’m playing against,” he admits. “I’m trying to get out of that. I’ve got to go out there with intensity – go out there and kill.”

But how?

“For the last two, three years, we’ve been trying to figure him out,” Charles said. “It’s just that he’s so smooth. He makes everything look so easy. He knows he’s that good. So he picks his moments.”

Sometimes to a fault.

At this particular moment, though, he has to go watch a short SAT and college prep video. The NCAA makes the Big Time brass show it to every kid out here.

This is the tournament’s mandatory educational component. It’s 17 minutes of “nothing I didn’t already know,” Villanueva reports.

With the afternoon free – the Panthers aren’t scheduled to play their second game of the day until 7:40 – Charles and his team head back to the Strip.

They go through the buffet lunch line at the Sahara. Villanueva and teammate Sammy Mejia meet “some females” and go “hang out with them.”

But enough play. An hour-long nap readies the kids for their evening game against DTA Wisconsin – a primetime matchup on Green Valley High School’s main court at the tourney headquarters in suburban Henderson.

Villanueva is a veteran at these things. He has this itinerary down pat. A self-professed former homebody, he’s been to the prestigious ABCD Camp three times. This is his third summer on the adidas circuit.

Hitting the road during the July travel period is no longer a problem for the youngest of three brothers and the son of Dominican immigrants.

“I’m pretty much used to it,” he said before Game No. 2 on Day No. 2 here in Vegas. “I live in New York, but I go to school in Jersey, so I’m used to being away from home.”

Fitness isn’t a problem, either. Not at this age.

“Going to ABCD and then Three Stripes (back-to-back events earlier this month) that was tough,” he said.

“But I had a week off before coming out here. I just try to relax as much as possible and eat the right things. That keeps me going. I’m pretty fresh right now.”

Yet he’s still trying to put together two 16-minute halves for a signature game – the type of high-energy performance in a high-profile setting that’ll earn him the coveted second slot, behind Akron’s James, in the various player rankings.

LeBron is the end-of-story No. 1 prospect in the prep Class of 2003, but there are several candidates for that next-in-line position. Villanueva’s one of them.

“He certainly should be in the conversation,” TheInsidersHoops.com national recruiting analyst Dave Telep says before tip. “He reminds me of Rodney White – only more skilled at this stage – and Rodney White was a lottery pick.”

And no wonder.

“Charlie’s best asset is that he can do so many different things,” Charles says. “You can’t bottle him up and tell him to do just one thing. That’s not how you have to treat Charlie.”

He certainly gets things done in the first half against DTA. He starts making the threes he was missing this morning. And he finishes a few breaks with some outstanding passes.

Villanueva has 17 points at the half. He ends up with 23. The Panthers win 79-59 to finish pool play 3-0.

That gets him an on-camera interview with Fox Sports Net as well as a series of leading questions from a UCLA-specific Internet recruiting maven.

Do you like UCLA? Why do you like about it? Los Angeles? The West Coast? Coach Lavin? The program’s rich history?

Villanueva answers them dutifully – all of them – before finally starting to stroll out of the Green Valley media center shortly after 10.

“I like St. John’s, Villanova, Seton Hall, Illinois and UCLA,” he says.

As for the NBA? The question continues to pop up around the Big Time. Just like it has everywhere else this spring and summer. Just like it will for the next 10 months.

“People say I can do it,” he says, “but I don’t think I’m ready. I’m just out here playing ball. I’m not focusing on the NBA. I’m looking forward to going to college.”

The League can wait, for now.

“It’s no secret he’s going to make a lot of money playing basketball,” Telep said. “Would it be totally ludicrous to think that he could make the jump? No. He certainly has the skill package that is intriguing to NBA teams. But there’s no reason to rush him to the NBA.”

Right now, though, he’s a teenager who just wants to get back to the hotel.

“I’m a little tired,” Villanueva says while making his way to the team van. “I think I’m going to go back and just hang out. But if my guys get me hype enough,” he says as he cracks a big smile, “I might go out.”

He is, after all, still a 17-year-old staying on the Strip. But the next morning is another day. Another workday. Another chance to make money here in the Sin City.

Michael Kruse writes for Basketball America and BasketballAmerica.com.

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