ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, March 6, 1997 TAG: 9703060052
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE
SOURCE: DOUG DOUGHTY THE ROANOKE TIMES
Freshman center Colin Ducharme, once a candidate to be redshirted, has become a major contributor for Virginia in its bid to make the Division I men's basketball tournament.
Virginia men's basketball coach Jeff Jones was so impressed with Colin Ducharme's effort against Virginia Tech last week that he put together a tape of Ducharme's highlights and showed it to the rest of the team.
Maybe he should have sent it to the ACC media.
The dawning of Ducharme continued Sunday, when he had 15 points and five blocked shots in an 81-74 victory over Maryland. Never mind that he missed making the ACC All-Freshman team by 10 votes.
``I've seen him progress to where he's an important part of the team,'' Maryland coach Gary Williams said. ``He's given them another good player, a guy who you have to respect out there on the court. You're always looking for ways to lay off people [but] you have to play him.''
That wasn't necessarily the case a month ago, when, after an impressive start, Ducharme hit a plateau. At Duke, Jones became so angry with his freshman center that he banished him to the end of the bench and told him to stay there.
``I've had a lot of people say, `How can you put up with that?''' Ducharme said of Jones' verbal tirades. ``I can take it as criticism or I can take it as coaching. When I'm stinking the court up, I have to pick out pieces of what he's saying and react positively.''
Those episodes are becoming more and more infrequent. For one thing, Jones can't afford to take Ducharme off the floor, where he has averaged 12 points and six rebounds in the last three games.
``There are other kids who maybe wouldn't respond the way he has,'' Jones said. ``He's like a really, really smart, big, goofy kid. You've got to get his attention.''
Few basketball players have arrived at Virginia with more impressive academic credentials than Ducharme, who scored close to 1,400 on the Scholastic Assessment Test. His course load for the spring semester: Chemistry, Economics, Spanish, Calculus and Anthropology.
``I'd just as soon not come up here and be a one-dimensional guy,'' he said. ``I don't want just to play basketball. I don't want just to get by.''
Ducharme intends to major in astro-physics, a curriculum that future doctors sometimes pursue. Ducharme said it is merely a field that interests him and that he does not like medicine.
``He doesn't just think about basketball and he doesn't just think about school,'' Jones said. ``He's got it all in there and it's always going. He hates being idle - physically idle - and I'm sure there's never a moment when he's mentally idle.
``Colin puts himself in situations where he catches a lot of flak - some good-natured, some not - just because he's outrageous and he says outrageous things. He does things than make his teammates laugh at him or laugh with him or get angry, but he's very well-liked.''
Teammate Curtis Staples said in the preseason that the players had nicknamed Ducharme ``the White Rodman.'' It wasn't clear if that was a reference to Ducharme's rebounding or his high-legged running style, which may come from his days as a hurdler at Douglas Freeman High School in Richmond.
Ducharme also played tight end for the Freeman football team and was named All-Central Region as a senior. He was an All-Group AAA pick in basketball, but there was talk that he would be redshirted by UVa, which had signed another promising big man, Melvin Whitaker.
``Not only did we think redshirting was a good idea as a staff,'' Jones said, ``but, it was an option that he wanted. When we signed Colin, that was absolutely the plan.''
Whitaker subsequently was arrested for malicious wounding and, when it became apparent that freshman big man Scott Johnson would not be returning, Jones made a stop at Freeman to have lunch with Ducharme during the spring.
``He told me they were looking for me to come in and play,'' Ducharme said. ``It did put some pressure on me. I don't mind pressure, but it made my summer a lot more difficult because I had only five months to become an ACC player.''
At the time, Ducharme weighed 255 pounds. By the time the season started, he was slightly over 240 and had lowered his body fat from 16 to 6 percent. He is listed at 6 feet 9 but says he is closer to 6-71/2 in bare feet.
That puts him at a big disadvantage against taller centers like North Carolina's 7-3 Serge Zwikker and Wake Forest's 6-11 Tim Duncan.
Ducharme was not rated among the top 100 prospects in the country by recruiting analyst Bob Gibbons, but he has relegated two more highly regarded UVa recruits, Kris Hunter and Craig McAndrew, to the bench. How could the ``experts'' have been so wrong?
``He was unpolished,'' Jones said. ``He was - and is - mechanical. Offensively, he seemed herky-jerky. Unless you looked beyond appearances, you didn't realize that he was getting more accomplished than players who looked better. ''
Only two ACC freshmen started more games than Ducharme, who often played his best at the end of close games and didn't seem the least bit fazed at being introduced with the starting lineups at places like Cameron Indoor Stadium or the Dean Smith Center.
``It's a mixture of being a little naive and a little bit off-the-wall,'' Jones said. ``Plus, he's confident. And, why shouldn't he be? He's been a success at anything he's ever tried to do.''
LENGTH: Long : 105 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: DON PETERSEN THE ROANOKE TIMES. 1. UVa's Colin Ducharmeby CNBhas had a solid first season, ranking among the ACC's freshman
leaders in several categories. However, the Richmond native was not
named to the league's All-Freshman team. 2. (headshot) Ducharme.
color. Graphic: Chart by staff: Dawning of Ducharme. color. KEYWORDS: MGR