USF's Tucker making path to NBA glorious

Daily Review
November 12, 2000

SAN FRANCISCO -- He hears the seductive call of the NBA. He knows it is there, longs to be a part of it, longs for the life it would bring. The money, the game, the fame, the fashion. The league is his constant daydream.

But each time his imagination speeds him to the future, his coach and his mother pull him back into the present and a thousand memories take him back to his humble past.

A past which includes a nomadic childhood, a fleeting attraction to the cheap wealth of drug dealing, being exiled to a faraway boot camp, where the virtue of dedication was discovered during the decidedly unglamorous labor of baking cookies, cakes and muffins.

It is this past, filled with enough lessons, big and small, to provide perspective, that keeps Darrell Tucker from getting carried away with himself and his dream.

Which would not be all that difficult given the athletic ability the sophomore forward has shown at the University of San Francisco and the potent allure of the greatest basketball league in the world.

"There's always that talk," Dons coach Phil Mathews says. "I told Darrell, 'If I think you're ready and they're going to draft you in the lottery, I'll be the first one to kick your butt out the door.' If that time comes and we consult people and they say he's not ready, I'll tell him that. But (the NBA) should be a goal of his.

"I also remind him that the landscape is littered with guys who thought they were ready and they weren't. Most of those guys are nowhere now."

One thing Tucker knows is Mathews will not accept him being one of those "nowhere" guys. Just as the player is aware of his limitless potential, so is the coach.

Though Tucker concedes he might declare for early eligibility should the conditions be favorable, he says he is in no hurry to turn pro. He is enjoying the college experience, including the competition, to such a degree he says he is more deeply committed to USF now than he was as a freshman.

"It crosses my mind nearly every day," Tucker says. "But I use it for motivation. I know if I want to get to that level, there are a lot of things I have to do. I feel I'm in a situation where I can learn to do those things, make them a habit."

Tucker, 20, has the baller's body and all the required talent. He is 6-foot-9, 240 pounds, with every chapter in God's book of basketball skills. He can jump-shoot it from 18 feet, jump-hook it from 8 feet or simply jump and get the ball in traffic.

He can, conceivably, lead USF to its first 20-win season since Quintin Dailey and Wallace Bryant pushed the Dons to a 25-6 mark in 1981-82.

Tucker's freshman season included a 40-minute game, a 23-rebound game, a four-steal game and six consecutive games in which he scored 20 or more points. Should he continue his current trajectory, he will take his place in USF's line of distinguished hoop greats -- the Bill Russells, K.C. Joneses, Phil Smiths and Bill Cartwrights.

As it is, the sophomore forward from McClymonds High is the most extensively gifted player to arrive at USF since the school reinstituted its basketball program 15 years ago.

Tucker last season became the first freshman to lead the West Coast Conference in scoring, his 16.9 average tying that of Gonzaga guard Richie Frahm for conference high. He was WCC Freshman of the Year and the conference Player of the Month for February, the most crucial month of the season.

Tucker is the kind of player college teams build around. He has enough big-man skills to play power forward, even some center. But his ball skills have convinced Mathews to play Tucker at small forward.

"He can shoot the ball," says Mathews, whose draconian approach leaves no room for hyperbole. "He is a very good shooter, with range. I'll play him at (power forward) on defense, but he'll be at (small forward) on offense because I want to put the ball in his hands a lot. I want him to touch the ball on every possession."

In Tucker, the coach has found that rare player for whom he will make concessions. A believer in man-to-man defense, Mathews will predominantly employ a zone this season because the Dons can't afford to have Tucker -- or 7-foot center Hondre Brewer, a St. Joseph High product -- on the bench in foul trouble.

"He is going to score, but we need him to do more," Mathews says. "He has to be a double-double guy. He has that kind of skill. If he gets 25 points and four rebounds, I'm going to be all over him. He can be a 25-10 guy -- some nights 25-15."

Such lofty numbers, Tucker says, are "very reasonable." Then again, the player may feel compelled to agree with most anything his coach says -- as much out of respect as from loyalty.

Mathews' strong belief in seeing talent grow into ambition -- both his daughters are teachers -- serves Tucker a daily dose of reality.

"He's our boss," Tucker says. "He tells us to do something a certain way, that's what we have to do. It's tough love. He kind of reminds me of a military general. But we have a good relationship. I know he wants to see me achieve the things I want."

The other primary influence on Tucker is his mother, Sheila, and the son sees similarities between mother and coach.

"Sometimes I call looking for sympathy," he says. "And she's worse than coach.

"I'll never forget my first week at prep school, they put me out there selling baked goods. It was cold, snowing. I called home, told her I couldn't do this. She told me to stay there and bite the bullet."

Ah, yes. Prep school. After being named the Bay Area High School Player of the Year after his senior season at McClymonds, Tucker spent a long year at Redemption Academy in upstate New York. It provided solitude, removing him from unsavory temptations in the Bay Area, and it introduced a carefree young man to the world of rigid discipline.

Redemption, in retrospect, was where Tucker experienced his personal awakening.

"Redemption was strict," he says. "You get penalized for everything you do wrong. Things you're not used to doing ... like if you don't tie your tie straight, you get penalized.

"It's like a boot camp. At 8 o'clock they wake you up by banging on the bunk beds. If you get in trouble, you might have to go to the bakery for 12 hours and bake cookies and corn muffins. If I baked a bad batch, I had to do it all over. Then I'd have to go sell'em."

Which, all things considered, is a much more noble endeavor than one of Tucker's options before he left Oakland.

Tucker was the subject of occasional overtures from "friends" trying to recruit him to sell drugs on the streets. He heard about the easy money, saw fellow teen-agers pulling wads of cash from the pockets. He saw their gold jewelry, their $180 sneakers.

Yet he never got caught in the vortex of self-destruction.

"For a minute," he concedes now, "it was hard to say no. I don't know what kept me from buying into it, but ... it was pretty powerful."

Sheila Tucker, who raised Darrell and his older brother, Marquis, as a single parent, says the powerful force guiding her son through those social pitfalls was God and extended family.

Darrell Tucker believes he has come this far for a reason. He believes he passed through Mack for a reason, endured Redemption for a reason, is at USF for a reason.

For these are segments of his journey, vignettes in his extended dream. The one in which he is the next link of the chain that began with the late Jim Pollard, went through Bill Russell and Paul Silas and currently ends at Antonio Davis -- Oakland Athletic League products answering the call of the NBA.