And as a freshman he wasn't that good either. Athanasius.Īnd so that's the first time I saw Lew Alcindor, and he wasn't good then. His real name was Bobby Cremins, but in the program it said Bob Gremens (G-R-E-M-E-N-S), from St. Helena's in the Bronx, in Parkchester, who was probably the best two-sport athlete that Jack Curran ever coached, baseball and basketball at Molloy. The heroes of the game on the Manhattan-Bronx team, Frankie McLaughlin, who went on to play at Fordham Prep and Fordham, was an assistant to Digger at Fordham and Notre Dame, and then the head coach of Harvard, and for many years the AD at Fordham.Īnd John Thurston, a seventh grader who was from St. Pat Heelan, who was a better player, had like four points. Well, in any event, the game is played, neither of them played well. And they promoted this game because there's going to be a matchup between two eighth graders, Pat Heelan, who was probably better than Alcindor at the time, and Alcindor. The next day he profiled a skinny 6'8" kid, probably about 180 pounds or 190 pounds, from Saint Jude, Lew Alcindor. And one day he profiled a 6'7", 230-pound eighth grader from Our Lady of the Angels in Bay Ridge, a white kid by the name of Pat Heelan. Phil Pepe, the sports writer at the time, was the high school sports editor of the World-Telegram and Sun. Well, as a preliminary, they had an eighth grade all-star game, Brooklyn-Queens versus Manhattan-Bronx. Vinnie Kempton, who was Tim Kempton's father, and so on.įred Barakat, who later coached Fairfield, was the supervisor of officials, assistant commissioner of the ACC. Tony Jackson, the local guy didn't show, but they had George Blaney, Tim Shea, they had some good players in it. It was supposed to be players from Catholic colleges from around the country against local ones. They had a Catholic College All-American game. When was in the eighth grade they had, at least for one year, the only year I was aware of it, the Metropolitan Catholic Basketball Festival at Fordham. And when I went to the SLAM Summer Classic this past year (2019) I tried to pay a visit to the church but it was locked up. Now it's the Leadership Academy of Inwood, the church is still open next door. The school was at 433 West 204th Street, right behind Monsignor Kett Playground. The first time I saw Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr., was when he was in the eighth grade. Tom was gracious enough to do three 2-hour recordings during May and June of 2020 to make this happen. The following is a synthesized transcription of the late Tom Konchalski reflecting on some of the players, coaches, teams, tournaments, and moments that shaped his 43 years of evaluating college basketball prospects. These's Memoirs come directly from Tom Konchalski forwarded by Gene Doris (Its long, but memorable).
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