COREY "HOMICIDE" WILLIAMS:
KILLA SEASON IS COMING

Corey "Homicide" Williams was in touch with me. Seems like he will be running with Ron Artest at KINGDOME with TEAM K1X this summer. Considering Homo dropped 26 on Artest right after he was named NBA Defensive player of the year, they might be worth checking out. He's with the Dakota Wizards [D-League] now and will be in NYC all summer. K1X will be dropping his first sneaker at the Down-Low championship. Here he talks smack about Alimoe.

Jamal Crawford exploded for 52 points in my sleep. The Knicks were ahead and I'd been working hard all week at my new magazine internship. I was supposed to go to the movies, but the trip to moviefone.com come was just too much for me and I fell into a deep slumber with the Knicks safely ahead by 20. Checking Yahoo! Sports this morning for a Woj column, I saw the box score and was psyched to see Crawford went nut on the Heat.

Sometimes that happens, someone goes nut and drops an insane amount of points. Not that 52 is the most ever scored in a game, but is surely is an insane number. Guys like Antonio Daniels, David Lee, and Jose Calderon all wish they'd get a 50+ game, just one; for sure the next contracts they sign would be triple the previous.

There are a few instances that come to mind from when I was younger and guys I knew would score a bunch of points out of the blue. The first time was a kid named Brandon McBeth, who had a twin brother Brian, when he was a senior in high school. He didn't play with me, but he was my brother's teammate through junior-high into high school where they were teammates on the varsity at Archbishop Molloy. One night a ragged Bayonne High School made the trip from North Jersey out to what is called Jack Curran Gymnasium at Molloy now, it was not yet then.

Bayonne, to their credit, played hard every minute. They did however allow the JV players who'd played in the game before come up to the varsity level to deepen their bench. It didn't matter. Brandon dropped 29 in three quarters and Bayonne left Queens winless that night and the victims of a romping at the hands of the Stanners. Macbeth just seemed to be making every shot count. I'd seen the kid play 100+ times in my life and that one night he'd really been the best player on the court. Even with all of Molloy's D1 talent that year Reggie Brown who went to Richmond, big Uka Agbai who played at Boston College, point guard Justin Wilson who played at U. Maryland-Baltimore County and a few other guys who went to D2 and 3 schools, Brandon Macbeth still scored more in one single game than anyone on the team. Brandon Macbeth went on to spend four years, with his brother, on the basketball team at Wesleyan University after high school. I hear they're doing well.

The second time, well I'll get to the second time in a minute, but the third time was rather recently. As Assistant Coach to head Coach Jimmy "Belly" Bellington of the St. Pancras Cougars CYO 7th grade team, we see a lot of good teams, but we feel like we really have some good players. We're like 9-1 and haven't lost since the first week of the season. We've got a kid, Andrew "ICE" Winters who is scoring in double figures every game and, more impressively, is scoring 10 points or more in a single quarter almost every game. If he makes the right decisions he'll be a really good player in the CHSAA in a year our two. Then there is Chris "Speedy Morman," a quick/smart point guard that already has a ton of playing time under his belt, Timmy Bellington who is a guard who has some potential, little Nicholas "Niko" Ebert a first-year back-up point guard who is really athletic and then, Chucky Meyers.

Chucky came off the bench against Ridgewood-Glendale area rival Our Lady of Miraculous Medal. Aside from an early effort by O.L.M.M. we lead the entire way en route to a nearly 30-point blowout. Chuck, a second year forward, went off like and animal making every try he throw, slapped, pushed or hammered toward the basket in the second half. He'd rarely scored 10 in the previous games, if ever, and playing out the entire second half he finished with 26 points, freezing Ice’s previous high of 20.

To leave myself for last, my best game of all time might have been against a few future college players, one D1 player who had the biggest ego I'd ever seen, the summer I was going into the 9th grade. It was Jack Curran's Basketball Camp at Molloy; I'd decided to go at the last minute, pretty much because I wasn't going there for high school, another story. Fran Leary was my coach and we were in a league that featured Kevin Hamilton, who played at Holy Cross U., Wendell Gibson who played at Hofstra if I remember right, a kid named Giles Jackson who went on to Molloy and then Bishop Loughlin who was just a killer and the MVP of camp that week, a bunch of other kids who would play high school and college ball. My team was a little less stacked in terms of future college players but in the first two camp games I scored 29 and 23 respectively. While I scored in double digits the rest of the week, I can still score too (laugh now), but even though I never really played serious organized ball again, I still chase those 52 point days.

THE
SMARTEST
POINT GUARD
EVER!

Pictured here is Brian Earl: The smartest point guard in organized basketball history. Earl played in every minute of 34 college games in the backcourt for the Princeton Tigers and was the point man in more winning games than any other player in Princeton or Ivy League history. Playing in a league of smart kid schools, Earl was the most dominant player in the Ivy of his time. He finished 1st all-time in 3-Point-Shooting, 5th in scoring, 6th in assists and 7th in steals and took home the Ivy League Player of the Year in 1998-1999.

He had decent help though, Princeton’s coach for 3 of Earl’s 4-years was Bill Carmody guided his non-scholarship squad to a 26-9 record against teams that offered scholarships during that time. The Tigers went 27-2 and were ranked as high as #7, with big wins over Georgetown, Wake Forrest, UNLV and Rutgers during Earl’s junior year in 1997-98. Earl was the backbone, an Ivy League standout of national fame with a game every million dollar banker or oil man could safely tell their sons to model after while they’re busy robbing the middle class. However as many 6’2 college guards come to know, size and speed are the substance of the next level.

On the pro side of things, Earl was less lucky. Drafted into the USBL by the old-Atlantic City Seaguls, Earl played in the little-known EBA with the Harrisburg Horizon. There he allegedly helped the team win the league title before signing to play professionally in the UK. In mid-season, his club, the Manchester Jets folded and Earl has been off the radar ever since.