KID STUFF

He was cut from his seventh-grade team, didn’t join the Maryland lineup until midway through this season and, in a bar bet, might be the only Terrapin starter you can’t name.

Baxter, Dixon, Blake, Mouton and ... ?

At last weekend’s East Regional finals, though, Maryland sophomore forward Chris Wilcox shared the floor with three or four future NBA stars and might have more upside than any of them. It took only a few runs up and down the court to imagine Wilcox running with the (Chicago) Bulls.

He arrived late to an already great ensemble, like Ringo to the Beatles, yet Wilcox must continue providing the critical backbeat if Maryland is to prevail at this weekend’s Fab Four convention in Atlanta.

Wilcox represents the “kid” component in a Maryland lineup that features three savvy seniors--Lonny Baxter, Juan Dixon, Byron Mouton--and a junior guard, Steve Blake, who will be making his 103rd start Saturday when the Terrapins take on Kansas in the second national semifinal game.

Wilcox won’t be hard to spot; he’ll be the guy wearing goose bumps.

Wilcox, who averaged only 8.6 minutes a game as a freshman, had about as much to do with last year’s Final Four run as the Terrapin towel boy.

“I wasn’t a key player,” Wilcox said. “Last year, I was like a last option.”

As he sat behind an all-star cast, Wilcox wondered if he made a mistake when he wandered north out of Whiteville, N.C., to attend Maryland.

After all, aren’t incoming star freshmen supposed to call their own shots?

“I would call home and say, ‘Mom, I want to leave,’” Wilcox said. “I never really meant it, but I always said it. The next day I’d have a great practice and I’d say, ‘nah.’”

Different story this season, as Wilcox inherited the power forward position from Terence Morris, a much-touted player who never quite lived up to his hype.

Wilcox has exceeded expectations. He has been an adrenaline injection into a squad that is so well oiled it sometimes takes on the collective look of a bunch of guys watching clothes dry at a Laundromat.

Wilcox, a 6-foot-10 player with silky smooth skills and a flair for the dramatic, might be the tomahawk-jam jolt needed to push Maryland to the national title.

“I bring a lot of excitement to the team, a lot of energy,” he said. “I play hard and do the little things. I think that’s why my teammates like me and I earned a starting spot.”

The basketball nuts and bolts of it?

Wilcox is such an athletic load at power forward that opposing defenses cannot simply gang up on center Baxter. Wilcox is one of the reasons Baxter was able to score 29 points against Connecticut in last Sunday’s East Regional final.

Players who insist on double-teaming Baxter are often left looking up at Wilcox in a slam-dunk picture pose.

Wilcox scored 13 points in 25 minutes in the victory over Connecticut. For the season, he averages 12 points and seven rebounds.

“Chris is one of those special people,” Maryland Coach Gary Williams said. “He can do some things. But he really had to learn how to play basketball.”

Wilcox has been a quick study, and Williams isn’t blowing smoke when he says his sophomore “got a chance to be one of the best players to play at Maryland.”

This is significant praise when you consider Len Bias, Joe Smith and Steve Francis were all terrific Terrapins.

Wilcox can only laugh when mentioned in this light.

Once, he couldn’t crack the starting lineup at Chadbourn Middle School in Whiteville.

“I know there’s probably a lot of players that got cut their first time, but it was tough,” Wilcox said. “The next day, they post your name up there in school, right there. They post it on the board and your name ain’t on there, and you’re like, ‘What happened? What happened?’”

What happened was Cathy Barnett, the Chadbourn coach, didn’t deem Wilcox worthy.

Wilcox’s mother and godmother tried to buck up the kid through this mini-crisis. They told Chris the now-famous story of another player from North Carolina who turned out OK after getting cut from his high school basketball team.

“My god mom always told me, ‘You remember Michael Jordan got cut?’ and I’d say, ‘But Mom, I’m not Michael Jordan.’”

It was incredible Wilcox didn’t make the team, considering that at 6-2, he was taller than anyone in the student body and most of the school’s administrators.

“I say I wouldn’t have cut me,” Wilcox joked, “but I don’t know. I was 6-2 at the time but I couldn’t jump, I couldn’t do a lot of stuff.”

Reaction from peers was predictable.

“‘Oh, he got cut, he’s sorry,’ that’s what people said.”

For a lot of uncoordinated kids, this would have been end of story. For Wilcox, it was the beginning.

“I worked on my game every day,” he said. “I would leave home early in the morning and I wouldn’t come home until late at night.”

Wilcox made Barnett’s eighth-grade team.

Wilcox said Barnett died a few years ago.

“I wish she was still alive so she could see where I’m at now,” he said.

It has been quite a ride. Wilcox played his freshman year at West Columbus High, then transferred to Whiteville for his next two years, leading the team to the state finals as a junior.

Wilcox dreamed of attending North Carolina, but he was struggling with his grades. While the Tar Heels’ interest waned, Maryland and North Carolina State kept close watch on Wilcox’s academic progress.

In part to upgrade his learning environment, Wilcox transferred to Enloe High in Raleigh for his senior year. His mom, Deborah Brown, helped her son study for the SAT by making him pick a word out of the dictionary every day and use it during the day in conversation.

One day, Wilcox was summoned to see the assistant principal.

“I thought I was in trouble,” Wilcox said.

Actually, the news was good. Wilcox had passed his SAT.

“She had tears in her eyes she was so happy for me,” Wilcox says. “That was such a great feeling.”

Maryland coaches were on the horn as soon as they heard Wilcox had made the grade.

Wilcox isn’t at the top of his game yet, but is climbing fast. It didn’t hurt that he had his “coming-out” game this year against Duke, finishing with 23 points and 11 rebounds in the Feb. 17 victory.

Wilcox, not surprisingly, is a hot topic on NBA Internet sites. He probably would be a first-round pick if he declared for the draft. NBAdraft.net has projected Wilcox as the No. 7 prospect and remarks, “it’s obvious that he is the most talented player at Maryland.”

Matthew J. Mauer of the NBA Draft Report says Wilcox is “a superstar athlete who is just starting to scratch the surface of his game. He can rebound, block shots and runs the floor faster than most guards.”

A recent Chicago Tribune survey of NBA scouts and officials projected Wilcox as the No. 15 pick, sandwiched between Gonzaga guard Dan Dickau at No. 14 and No. 16 Carlos Boozer of Duke. Times NBA writer Mark Heisler ranked Wilcox as the 11th best prospect two weeks ago.

This is all fascinating and flattering. But, as of now, Wilcox says he is returning for his junior season at Maryland.

“There are a lot of things I’ve got to work on,” he says. “Hopefully I can work on them over the summer and prepare myself and do great next year. I’m not planning on going anywhere.”

Next year, Wilcox would make the leap from support player to superstar. He would also be able to put to test all he has learned.

“Just playing with Juan Dixon and Lonny Baxter, they did a great job of helping prepare me,” Wilcox says. “They pushed me every day in practice and made me work harder. I thank them for that.”

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