Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 12, 1994 TAG: 9404120088
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DOUG DOUGHTY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"After about three days of watching him make everything he put up," Smith said, "I decided to keep my mouth shut."
Somewhere in the frozen tundra of Alaska or the deserts of Nevada, there might be another boys' basketball player who has attempted and made as many 3-point shots as Staples, but, to this day, he hasn't come forward.
In the nation, Staples is Mr. 3-Pointer. In the state of Virginia, he is Mr. Basketball.
Staples is the second player from Roanoke to be chosen Mr. Basketball in the 13 years that the Roanoke Times & World-News has been ranking the top players in the state. George Lynch, now with the Los Angeles Lakers, was the first Roanoke player to be so recognized in 1989.
Staples also is the second player from Oak Hill Academy to be chosen Mr. Basketball, joining 1991 selection Cory Alexander. Staples and Alexander will be teammates next year at Virginia.
Also UVa-bound is this year's choice for Ms. Basketball, 5-foot-7 Tiffany Bower from Monacan High School outside Richmond. Bower, who had 46 points in the East Region championship game, was voted Group AAA state player of the year.
"She has wonderful court awareness and is as fine a passer as I've ever seen," said Rosalie Wallace, who inherited Bower as a junior, after she had spent her first two years at Lee-Davis and Clover Hill. "There's no doubt in my mind she can play at the highest level."
Staples, a 6-2 guard, was a McDonald's and Parade All-America selection, and on Monday he was chosen to the third five-man All-America team picked by USA Today.
"I was shocked by that because he was not among the top 25 players [picked by USA Today] before the season," Smith said. "He was rewarded for his senior year. I can tell you, he had no ties to the people who picked the team."
It was the culmination of a career that took Staples from Patrick Henry High School, which won the Group AAA state championship when he was a sophomore; to Prospect Hall in Hagerstown, Md., where he helped start the program; to Oak Hill, which finished No. 1 in the country this year.
"I didn't intend to go to three schools in three years," Staples said, "but I was only looking to better myself. I'm not afraid to make changes. My main goals were Bower to make McDonald's All-American and to win a national championship; I'm not sure I would have gotten either one by staying where I was."
That's not to say Staples had a problem with academics or any of the other distractions that have short-circuited many promising careers. He met NCAA academic standards before he even enrolled at Oak Hill.
"I can remember calling home once and telling my dad [Bruce] how bored I was," Staples said. "He told me, `You don't know how good you've got it.' You can't help but do right at Oak Hill because it's out in the middle of nowhere. But I've never had a discipline problem."
Smith, whose home is across a driveway from the Oak Hill gymnasium, says he can remember many a night when Staples would shoot and do footwork drills until 11 p.m.
"He doesn't want to leave when you leave," Smith said. "I just give him the keys. Most kids I wouldn't let lock the gym. They'd leave the balls lying around or the lights on, but not Curtis.
"He as good a kid as has come through this program. Never have I wanted more for a kid to make it. I know Curtis will be a success at whatever he does because he's dedicated. I was around 20 kids this weekend at the Magic Johnson Classic, and you can't say that about 18 of them."
Added Howard Garfinkel, who has observed Staples at various sessions of the Five-Star Basketball Camps: "He's in a class with Grant Hill as far as personage, and I don't say that too often. So, he can't fail."
It would be wrong to call Staples a self-made player because he was blessed with natural ability, but he has lifted weights to improve his strength and drilled relentlessly to improve his quickness. He had three dunks Thursday in the Capital Classic and 35 in 34 regular-season games.
"I was a lot smaller than everybody when I was younger," said Staples, who played football - he was a wide receiver - until the ninth grade. He excelled at basketball, however, and set a scoring record at Breckinridge Junior High with 43 points.
"I took him out the last quarter," said Moir Hill, a teacher and coach at Breckinridge for the past 32 years. "Then, the next year, Derrick [Hines] came along and scored 44 in a game. What I remember about Curtis is the way he really extended himself to make people with lesser ability feel good about themselves."
In high school, Staples played on teams that were ranked No. 12 (Patrick Henry), No. 6 (Prospect Hall) and No. 1 (Oak Hill) in the country and had a combined record of 82-4.
"I had been reading articles that said Oak Hill had one of the best frontcourts in the country," Staples said, "so, I wasn't sure how I would fit in. I knew I was going to be all right when Coach Smith told me if I didn't shoot, he was going to take me out. I loved that role."
Oak Hill had never made as many 3-pointers as a team as Staples had as an individual (164). Only once had the Warriors exceeded Staples' 342 attempts.
"I wasn't aware of how many 3-pointers I was taking till coach Smith told me I was on pace to break the [school] record," Staples said. "My dad told me once, `Curt, all you're doing is shooting threes; you need to show more of a medium-range game.' "
Nothing to it.
"Last year [as a junior] he shot mostly coming off screens, so I didn't know if he could put the ball on the floor," Smith said. "Believe me, he can shoot off the dribble. He is a better player than I thought he was."
Staples has a unique shooting style in which he releases the ball slightly left of center, "but I learned a long time ago that few things are as important as repetition," Smith said. "I've tried not to mess with his mechanics. The only things I've told him are to have his feet set and his shoulders square to the basket."
Staples joins a Virginia team with an abundance of guards, including Alexander and ACC all-rookie selection Harold Deane, who was projected as a backup but started 27 of 30 games after Alexander was injured.
"With Jamal Robinson and Harold Deane coming on, I feel people are questioning me," Staples said. "I can't predict the future, but if I come in and work hard, I feel I'm going to play a lot, regardless of the situation. Coach [Jeff] Jones wouldn't have recruited me without some higher plan."
by CNB