Promising Freshman Guards of the America East
by Jay Pearlman
Just like coaches, in this day and age radio and TV analysts rely on tape (“discs” we call them now), and rarely travel to watch games out-of-town. But for season-openers there’s no useful tape, so there I went up to Orono, Maine last Monday evening to watch an exhibition game against the University of New Brunswick to prep for Maine-Harvard yesterday afternoon. I expected to see Kevin Reed, back for his senior season off a medical redshirt year, raining three’s, John Sheets handle the ball and shoot a high percentage of threes, and Philippe Tchekane-Bofia (say that three times fast) pound the boards and score inside. What I didn’t expect to see was 6-4 freshman point guard Junior Bernal, the best player on the team before even a single game was played, and everyone in the gym knowing it.
Kudos to Maine’s third-year coach Ted Woodward for keeping this future star in-state. A New York kid, Bernal attended high school at the Hyde School in Bath, then a year at well-known Maine Central Institute. Now, he doesn’t shoot outside yes (if he did he’d be playing at Duke and draftable this spring). But he does everything else, and I mean everything. A big point guard with terrific speed, long arms and big hands, he’s lightning quick, jumps, dribbles with both hands, sees the court to distribute, crosses in front to get a shot (mostly left to right for now), penetrates, slashes, posts up with moves like a center, rebounds, and will score, score, score!
For rather obvious reasons, Coach Woodward downplayed the young man’s abilities, speaking of him as merely one of a nice group of freshmen, hoping he can blend in and help the team in his first college year. Showing my age, I compared Bernal to Walt Frazier at Southern Illinois – that’s Frazier before he was a terrific shooter – and I could see the little smile sneak onto Coach’s face as he deflected the analogy. Now, to teach him to shoot.
Then there was Friday night at Boston University’s Agannis Arena, watching the season-opener against George Washington in that great gym too little used for basketball. I was surprised to hear that Corey Hassan transferred, in addition to graduations of Kevin Gardner and Shaun Wynn; I was looking forward to seeing former Notre Damer Omari Peterkin rebound. Veteran coach Dennis Wolff has five freshmen to blend in, including two guards and a swing-man. He started Newton North’s Corey Lowe at the point in his very first college game, and also started Milwaukee’s smooth 6-3 ½ lefty Sherrod Smith at the three. But somewhere along the way, in came that other Maine guard, 6-2 ½ Carlos Strong from Deering High School in Portland, and he proceeded to light it up from way out, often without a dribble, keeping his young team in the game with last year’s near-perfect GW. I have BU on the radio Tuesday evening (expect Strong to be a starter by then), so I know I’ll get a chance to speak with Coach Wolff. But knowing him just a bit, like his counterpart at Maine, Wolff is going deflect both compliments on his recruiting and praise and pressure bestowed on his freshman.
Now, don’t be deceived by Maine’s and BU’s opening losses. Bernal is a freshman point guard who opened up 260 miles from home (trust me on the mileage). They’re picked second in the America East, could win 20 games, and Bernal should be a conference Player of the Year candidate as a freshman, competing with the likes of Albany’s Jamar Wilson and Vermont’s Mike Trimboli. As for BU, opening with GW provided both a difficult test and the opportunity for Wolff to search for a lineup. We can assume Strong will be a part of that the rest of the year, and likely the leading scorer.
So New England hoops fans will have a treat these next few years: watching these two terrific guards from Maine, Junior Bernal and Carlos Strong. It will be less of a treat for opposing America East coaches.
