Making The Elite Leap Ccs Basketball Star Andre Ervin Takes A Shot At Hoopfest’S Best
Rejected at 20, a champion at 24, Andre Ervin bounds into this weekend’s Hoopfest with a humble resume and a regal dream.
He’s not talking championship in the Action Sporstwear Men’s Elite Division at this weekend’s Hoopfest, although he won’t rule it out.
A team of no-names won it last year, so why not Ervin and three teammates calling themselves You Know?
It’s just that his fertile mind won’t let him stop with Hoopfest, you know?
Coming off a Northwest community college championship last March, Ervin and Co. could spring a surprise or two in an open division that includes the defending champions from Tacoma plus foursomes from Atlanta, Los Angeles and Chicago here by invitation.
The world’s biggest 3-on-3 street basketball tournament, Hoopfest will draw well over 100,000 to downtown streets, sidewalks and its signature greenbelt, Riverfront Park. A record 21,304 players on 5,425 teams will pound the pavement from Saturday morning through late Sunday afternoon for pride and a another T-shirt.
Weather is expected to cooperate, with highs expected in the upper 70s to low 80s Saturday and Sunday.
“It looks like a winner,” said Paul Bos, forecaster for the National Weather Service in Spokane.
A high jumper who had hoped to play Division I basketball at Eastern Washington University, Ervin failed to impress former Eagles coach Steve Aggers.
Defense was a foreign concept, for starters, but here is a 6-foot-8 track star who runs, swats and slams, the stuff of street legends.
Ervin had to content himself at Eastern with clearing 7-feet, 2-inches in the high jump. He took an interest in film and music production and got on with life without varsity basketball.
But last year he was back in school, this time for computer training. And this time the door to the basketball office was wide open.
Sam Brasch saw in Ervin more than a one-dimensional leaper. Falling into his lap was a mobile big man who could - and would - usher Brasch’s Spokane Community College program back to prominence.
Ervin and the Sasquatch won the Northwest community college championship they hope to nail down again next March.
Actually, hope is too light a word. As Ervin puts it with a smile, “What we have coming back is almost unfair at the community college level.”
If coaches at Wenatchee and Walla Walla CC have reason to be a little concerned, the seasoned elite of this tournament will have to be convinced that Ervin’s career is dream material.
Last year’s champions - Kevin Baker, Chris Spivey and Jason James - return with the same name, Da Bus Drivers, and a new and impressive fourth man, former Gonzaga Bulldog Lorenzo Rollins.
Team Grainger, upset in last year’s locally televised finals, probably won’t carry a lot of apprehension with them on the plane from Atlanta. After they lost here, they went on to win the Super Bowl of ratball, the Hoop It Up world finals.
There are open division regulars here who seem to improve with age, including ex-Washington State guard Chris Winkler. Winkler, 36, now living in Beaverton, Ore., was on top of his game last year with his Rock ‘n Fire teammates Tony Beo, Heath Dolven and Mark Olenius.
As for chemistry, it can’t get much better than ex-Gonzaga Bulldogs guard Ryan Floyd teamed with former Zags big man Jeremy Eaton. Floyd, the 6-10 Eaton, Jason Rubright and Scott Spink make up the Old Dogs.
Former champions also figure in pre-tournament championship speculation. Ex-Pepperdine star Shann Ferch and NBC Thunder are two-time champs (‘94 and ‘97). State Farm Insurance was there in 1995. The Whitworth Pirates named Phat Steppin’ who won it in ‘98 are back.
The aptly named Don’t Know When To Quit - four mid-thirtysomething former Oregon Ducks led by 6-11 Greg Senior - are strong enough to get on a roll.
As for versatility, among the most impressive here is Paul Mencke, who completed the difficult Pac-10 basketball/ football double at Washington State as a quarterback/wide receiver and forward.
If for Ervin this weekend holds nothing more than two and a barbecue, he has another route to a memory.
“I’m going for the slam dunk championship,” he said. “The guy who won it last year was pretty creative. Black guy. Bald. Solid (Vashon Weaver). I think he had some kids lined up and dunked over them. I’ll have to come up with something different.”
Teamed with 6-10 Nick Fusare, guard Dashawn Bedford and Zedric Harris - three who hope to line up with him next season at SCC - Ervin may come in with his game dulled by inactivity.
“I took a break after the season,” he said. “I’ll have to get the feel of the streets. The last time I was out on the concrete, I felt like I couldn’t jump.”
That’d be a first.
Still, he allows himself to look beyond next March, when his collegiate eligibility will finally expire after four seasons of track and two of CC hoop.
The dream?
“It might sound way-out, but I’d like to play in the NBA and high jump in the Olympics,” Ervin said Wednesday.
The ultimate double. OK, so it is a little out there, but Ervin did have that 7-2 at Eastern, “by 5 inches” and plans to get serious about it again under noted track coach Gary Baskett.
“I really think with coach Baskett working with me I can go 7-5 or 7-7,” Ervin said. “High jumpers mature in their mid-to-late 20s. I’d have to go 7-5 (actually 7-4-1/2) to get to the (Olympic) Trials. I’m looking at 2004. Right now my focus is basketball.”
But the NBA? That’s quite a ride for a guy who remembers spending four winters at Eastern “sitting on the couch, upset, because I wanted to be a double-sporter.”
He says he was encouraged by former EWU coach John Wade, who was fired and replaced by Aggers, who in time built a strong program where many said it couldn’t be done.
Still, Aggers may have misjudged this one.
“Coach Wade told me to come in, practice and earn a scholarship for the next season,” said Ervin, who came out of Mount Tahoma (Tacoma) High School. “Coach Aggers didn’t think I had Division I skills, even though I took people to the rack and dunked.
“I think at the time he had a Big 12 mentality (Aggers came to Eastern out of the Kansas State program). I still think I could have played - and dominated - in the Big Sky.”
Ervin says he’s studied projections in the NBA draft and sees players with his background, from community colleges, who have no inclination or hope of playing on in college, and may find themselves in an NBA training camp.
He says if he wrangles an invite to an elite summer league or rookie camp he can take it from there.
“I’d have to have a boom year, a huge year, but we’ll see,” he said. “I’m learning how to play this game. I’m getting the mental part of it.
“Going to SCC was the best thing that could have happened to me,” Ervin said. “Not only for basketball, but I’m computer literate now. I have a degree (from EWU). I’m putting together my own recording company. I’ve got 10-15 artists. I just finishing mixing the first album, mastering it on CD.
“If sports doesn’t work out,” he said, “I can be an entertainment entrepreneur.”
This sidebar appeared with the story:
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Center court
Saturday highlights
12:30 - 1 p.m.: Women’s slam dunk competition
1 p.m - 2 p.m.: Men’s slam dunk
Sunday highlights
12:30 p.m.: Women’s elite division championship, followed by selected division championship games
5:30 p.m.: 6-foot under championship game
6:15 p.m.: Men’s elite division championship game