Wilbekin is always ahead of schedule

Scottie Wilbekin was 14 years old and in the eighth grade the first time Tom Topping saw him work out. One practice and Topping had seen enough. The kid from Gainesville was immediately elevated to the Nike Team Florida 16-and-under squad.

“We wanted him to play with our 16-and-under team, which was made up of tenth graders,” Topping said Tuesday night. “That was two full years ahead of where he was but he would have wasted his time playing with kids his own age. The following year, he played again with the 16s and last year (spring/summer of 2009) he played with the 17-and-unders. That’s the thing about Scottie — he’s always been able to handle playing at a level higher than his age and he’s always handled it well.”

The fact that Wilbekin can adapt to playing with older guys has never been important than it is right now when he’s making a decision about foregoing his senior year at The Rock School to sign a basketball scholarship at the University of Florida. If he stays in high school, he could be on the McDonald’s All-American watch list even though The Rock School has withdrawn from the FHSAA and will play as an independent, much like Montverde Academy. Wilbekin’s play at the Boo Williams Nike tournament in Hampton, Virginia a couple of weekends ago pretty much sealed that. Wilbekin was so good that some basketball recruiting experts pegged him as perhaps one of the point guards for the class of 2011, right up there with Quinn Cook (6-0, 166, Hyattsville, MD DeMatha Catholic #19 ESPNU Super 60).

On the other hand, he could be playing for Billy Donovan and the Florida Gators next year and there is no question he will get good minutes off the bench on a roster that is front court heavy and needing some depth in the backcourt. Kenny Boynton and Erving Walker both averaged more than 32 minutes a game last season in Florida’s backcourt. They had to. There wasn’t any depth.

Wilbekin could be that point guard off the bench or he could take a turn on the wing. He’s become an accomplished three-point shooter. At one game in Hampton, Wilbekin was 8-8 from the field including 4-4 from the three-point line and 4-4 from the foul line. His 25-point, zero-turnover game turned everybody’s head including the Florida coaching staff.

The Gators were already recruiting Wilbekin for 2011, but Brandon Knight (6-4, 190, Fort Lauderdale, FL Pine Crest #4 ESPNU 100) chose Kentucky over the Gators and Ray McCallum (6-1, 179, Beverly Hills, MI Detroit Country Day #17 ESPNU 100) chose to stay home and play for his dad at the University of Detroit rather than play for UF. That left the Gators with a shrinking set of options. The choices were Brandon Young (6-3, 175, Washington, DC Friendship Collegiate), Chris Denson (6-2, 175, Columbus, GA Shaw) or possibly take a player whose grades and game were good enough to skip his senior season.

The two choices who have emerged are Wilbekin (6-2, 180, Gainesville, FL The Rock School) and Matt Carlino (6-2, 180, Bloomington, IN South). Both Wilbekin and Carlino are fundamentally sound players who make good decisions with the ball in their hands and can consistently knock down three-point shots.

Carlino visited Florida this past weekend but he still has a visit agenda that includes UCLA, UNLV and Butler sometime between May 2-8. The Florida staff would love to have recruiting done long before May but that would mean one of two things: either Carlino makes up his mind quickly and eliminates the other visits or else Wilbekin decides he really wants to skip his senior year.

Right now, it’s in the thinking and praying stage for Wilbekin.

“It’s a tough decision that my dad and I are going to make,” Wilbekin said Tuesday night. “We’ve got to think about it and pray about it.”

If he decides to forego his senior year at The Rock, Topping has no doubt that Wilbekin will adapt to the new level of play quickly. Wilbekin, Topping says, is one of those kids who surveys the situation, figures out what he has to do to succeed and then goes about the business of adapting.

In that respect, Topping says Wilbekin is a lot like another of his former players who went on to play basketball for Donovan at Florida — Nick Calathes.

“We’ve been seeing all the similarities between Nick and Scottie for the last three years,” Topping said. “Both these kids have a very high basketball IQ and you could say they get it. They both know how to overcome whatever limitations others put on them. Just when you say they can’t do something, they get in the gym, work their butts off and go out there and do it. Scottie works out like a mad man. He is the ultimate gym rat.

“I don’t think there is anything that Scottie can’t do on the basketball court when he puts his mind to it. He’s a guy who last year as a sophomore in high school guarded Brandon Knight. Everybody was talking that it was a mismatch but I knew he would do well and truthfully, he did exactly what he was supposed to do. He went out there and defended him and played great defense. I can’t say I was surprised at all.”

When Wilbekin finished his AAU season for Nike Team Florida last summer, he made the decision that it was time to get in the weight room. Long and lean at 160-165 last summer, he’s now a sturdy 180 and somewhat of a weight room warrior.

The added strength paid off with an outstanding high school season in which he got the Rock to the regional finals before they lost to Arlington Country Day. The recent Boo Williams Tournament is further proof that a stronger Scottie Wilbekin is a better Scottie Wilbekin.

“It’s definitely true that I’m stronger and playing with more confidence,” Wilbekin said. “Working out in the gym every day with Coach Hardin and doing weight training and biometrics has helped a lot.”

Topping says that the strength has given Wilbekin the confidence to take his game to another level.

“Look, he was good … almost even a great player last year,” Topping said. “He was the MVP of the Desert Duel in Las Vegas, which was our last tournament of the year. He was on the verge of becoming an elite player then but he went home, got in the weight room and he’s bigger, stronger, more confident and it shows in the way he finishes now.

“Whether it’s shooting threes when he comes off ball screens, finishing at the basket on drives over bigger guys, finishing on pullups in the lane or finishing by getting the ball to the open man when he drives, Scottie has become such a good finisher and that’s what the strength has done for him. He’s has become that rare point guard who is both a creator and a finisher.”

So now Wilbekin will pray, think, talk things over with his dad and at some point in the very near future, decide if he wants to take that next big step and become a Florida Gator. Meanwhile he’s putting in 3-5 hours a day working on his game and adding even more strength in the weight room.

If he decides to become a Gator, he knows what he has to do to prepare himself to play college basketball at the Southeastern Conference level.

“What I do best is passing, shooting and play good defense,” he said. “But, I can always work on my shooting and get better and I can improve my ball defense. I think I play good defense but I know that’s an area I can always improve. That’s something I can work on. I can keep on getting stronger, too. I really do want to be a good basketball player.”

Being a good basketball player — even being a Florida Gator — would simply be one more rung on a ladder he began climbing years ago.

“This is a big deal,” Wilbekin said. “I’ve been working hard and my dad has trained me to work hard since I was six years old. I always believed this could be a possibility someday.”

Franz Beard
Back in January of 1969, the late, great Jack Hairston, then the sports editor of the Jacksonville Journal, called me on the phone one night and asked me if I wanted to work for him. I said yes. The entire interview took 30 seconds. It's my experience that whenever the interview lasts 30 seconds or less, I get the job. In the 48 years that I've been writing and getting paid for it, I've covered Super Bowls, World Series, NCAA basketball championships, BCS championship games, heavyweight title fights and what seems like thousands of college football, baseball and basketball games. I'm a columnist and special assignments editor for Gator Country once again, writing about the only team that ever mattered to me, the Florida Gators.