Scoring record becomes albatross around Prince’s neck

SAN DIEGO – Epiphanny Prince’s teammates were giddy. They laughed while passing up open shots to get the ball back to her.

Even opposing players were smiling as she sank shot after shot after shot Feb. 1 at the Murry Bergtraum High gym in New York, en route to a record 113 points.

“They were laughing, too,” Prince said. “Because we’re all friends, we play against each other a lot, so I knew them. And after the game they told me congratulations and everything. … I was smiling.”

Yet more than a month later, the 18-year-old guard from Brooklyn frowns as she recounts the day between glances down at e-mails on her Sidekick.

She can’t shake the feeling that the high school girls basketball record wasn’t worth it.

“I felt like if I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t,” she said.

Prince was in San Diego this week to play in the McDonald’s All-American game with the nation’s best high school basketball players, a bunch that’s accustomed to pressure and swarms of attention from recruiters and scouts.

Her scoring feat – surpassing Cheryl Miller’s 1982 record of 105 – was perhaps the ultimate attention-getter. Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Miller herself – all weighed in praising Prince or defending her sportsmanship.

Yet the opposing coach and observers in the media have repeatedly criticized her coach, Ed Grezinsky, maintaining he should have pulled her when the game against Brandeis High was no longer competitive. The final score was 137-32.

Frank Deford, writing for Sports Illustrated, called Grezinsky a “jackass” and “bully” and said Prince “doesn’t deserve the record.” The renowned former UCLA coach John Wooden, who lends his legendary name to the McDonald’s All-American game, also was critical.

“I don’t like one-man games,” he said. “She must be tremendous to do that, no question about it. And she could be a team player, too. But things like that do not impress me, not at all.”

Prince, whose team lost in the New York state Class AA championship game this month, appears exhausted from the criticism. She scored just two points in the All-American game Wednesday.

“In the beginning it was all right. But after a while I didn’t like my coach getting all that negative publicity, because he really takes care of us,” she said. “People that didn’t even know him, they was judging him and stuff. He said he didn’t care about it, but I cared about it, and my teammates, we were kinda mad about it.”

It began easily enough, according to Prince, whose previous record was 51 points. She started by sinking more pull-up jump shots than usual while “clowning around” during warm-ups. A whistle launched play, and the basket simply seemed bigger.

“The shots that I was taking, they were all just pouring in,” said Prince, who eventually sank 54 of 60 shots. “We were just doing the plays, and I ended up open in the beginning. So I started shooting the ball and it was going in.”

She was double- and triple-teamed, but “I was just dribbling around ‘em, yeah. In and out, between my legs, behind my back and crossing it over.” She had four 3-pointers, but most of the points were from layups and fast breaks. At the half, she said Grezinsky told her, “I had 59 points and to keep going because I could probably do something special. So I went for it.”

Prince said she wasn’t keeping track of her tally. “I didn’t know I did it. After the game they told me how much I had,” she said.

She had planned to attend a Rutgers game after hers was over, and said she was “aggravated” when she had to wait around to pose for pictures and answer questions at a press conference.

She made it by halftime to the game at Rutgers, the New Jersey university she’ll attend this fall.

Prince lives in a Brooklyn apartment with her parents and 12-year-old brother Emeek. Her father Jerry is in construction. Mother Kathy works for the transit department.

In her sophomore year, Prince’s team was named national champions by USA Today. But she was making C’s and lower, and her chances of playing at a big-time college were fading, despite her talents.

She brought her transcripts along on an unofficial visit to Rutgers the following summer. The renowned coach there, C. Vivian Stringer, “told me I had to step it up,” Prince said.

She did, raising her grades to A’s and B’s in her junior and senior years.

Prince will be the first in her family to attend college.