Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 28, 1991 TAG: 9103010469
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By BOB TEITLEBAUM SPORTSWRITER
DATELINE: DALEVILLE LENGTH: Medium
One of Timesland's top juniors, he's one of the few players ever to have made the Cavaliers' varsity basketball team as a freshman. He also has a 4.0 grade point average.
"Bobby Prince will finish first in anything he tries. If he played marbles, he'd try to win the toy and go home with it," Botetourt coach Don Meredith said.
Prince, nicknamed "Wo-Wo" for "wide open, wide open" by Meredith, started playing basketball when he was 8. He wanted to start earlier, but Botetourt County didn't have recreation teams for younger players. So, in the evenings, he and a few friends would go into the gym at Colonial Elementary School and work on shooting.
Prince's father, Scott, coached an older rec league team, so the younger Prince would hang around practice and try to play against the older boys.
Although he didn't get to play much, "it helped me to go against them," Prince recalled.
Prince is only the fourth freshman to make the varsity under Meredith, who has been a head coach for more than two decades at three different schools. Two of the others, Mike Coleman at Liberty and Robert Johnson of Botetourt, set school scoring records. The other was Elton Toliver, one of Botetourt's greatest all-around athletes.
Although Botetourt had five senior starters when Prince was a freshman, Meredith said Prince was named to the varsity team because "we knew Bobby would start for us as a sophomore and be our point guard for three years."
"He needed to learn the system. He worked against Randy Burrell and Brian Wilson [Botetourt's two guards for the 1989 season] every day in practice. He never was intimidated. You have to make sure that that a freshman doesn't lose confidence."
When Prince went to high school, however, he didn't have the confidence associated with a young player talented enough to play varsity as a freshman.
He said it was because he hadn't had a good eighth-grade year, and "wondered if I could take [my game] to a high school level."
Prince, who now averages 16.7 points and 7.4 assists per game, said that after making the varsity team, he was "schooled on the court. I learned a lot from the older players."
"I've had smart kids, but Bobby's aware of everything," said Meredith. "He knows where every player is, where the officials are. He thinks about the next play and what we're going to do. He's like having a coach on the floor," said Meredith.
Meredith said that earlier this season he was upset with Prince's play. "He was making so many misdirection passes because he has such great peripheral vision. I could see what he was doing, but other players couldn't. He'd throw [the ball], and it would go whizzing by their ear. If it had hit one player, he'd have been a bloody mess."
So, Meredith said he told the team and Prince: "the first time Bobby hits a player and bloodies his nose, I'd buy [Prince] the biggest pizza in town. After that, [the other players] kept their hands and heads up."
In basketball, Prince is on the verge of breaking an assist record that he set last year. He's also one of two juniors - Craig Layman is the other - on the Botetourt team with a perfect grade-point average and one of several juniors in a race to finish with all A's and be the 1992 valedictorian.
Prince once got a B for a six-week grading period. "It didn't bother me too much because I brought it up to an A by the end of the semester. That's when grade-point averages are calculated," said Prince, who'll be 17 when he graduates.
Although his parents don't pressure him, Prince, who was 4 when he started school, said he would "have been worried if I had had a B for the semester."
by CNB