At Harcum College, Division I talents rekindle their dreams

Kamall Richards understands how the sausage gets made in big-time college hoops. Richards isn't sure if he'd still be at Xavier if he hadn't torn his ACL last season as a freshman reserve. He does know that he was released from his scholarship and he needed to start over.

That's the short version of how Richards - from Henryville, Pa., in the Poconos - ended up playing this season in a converted CYO gym on the Main Line.

He's the leading scorer for Harcum College, a squad that is maybe the best-kept secret in Philadelphia basketball, with consistent Division I talent, players who needed a way station to and sometimes from D-I, for all sorts of reasons.

"It's definitely a tough mind-set going from playing in front of 15,000 in a Big East arena to a couple of hundred in Harcum's gym," Richards, who has Rhode Island and other schools interested, said after a game last week. "I'm used to it now."

A former manager at Villanova when Steve Lappas coached the Wildcats, head coach Drew Kelly built his powerhouse program from the ground up. That gym at Our Mother of Good Counsel in Bryn Mawr represents an upgrade from the linoleum floor in Harcum's basement court down the street. People walking by on Lancaster Avenue generally have no idea the place across from the Acme houses a group that reached last season's National Junior College Athletic Association Division I Final Four.

Five players from that 2013-14 team went on to Division I schools - to Miami, New Mexico, George Mason, St. Peter's and Iona. Two more got scholarships to D-II schools, at Virginia Union and East Stroudsburg. Kelly has had eight classes leave him and 22 players went on to D-I, including Charles Okwandu, a center on Connecticut's 2011 championship team.

From last year's team, Shevon Thompson is leading George Mason in scoring (13.1 ppg.) and his 11.5 rebounds a game are fifth in Division I, which has the 6-foot-11 center from Jamaica hitting the radar of NBA scouts.

"He's just an amazing story," Kelly said of Thompson. "He went to Midland College in Texas as a freshman, we didn't know who he was. He averaged like one point a game. He scored like 30-something points the whole year. A new coach came in. They end up releasing Shevon."

Midland is a junior college, mind you. No reason for Kelly to get excited.

"My one assistant coach knew someone who knew him, basically," Kelly said. "He kept saying, 'We should take this kid.' I was looking at his stats: 'Why should we take him?' Literally, middle of August, I had one scholarship. He's 6-11. I said, 'What the hell.' I had never seen him play."

The first day of school, Kelly saw the pickup games going on and was relieved to see the mystery guy wasn't terrible.

"He just worked so hard," Kelly said. "He's such a great kid. He worked and worked and worked. He started as ninth man and ended up arguably as our best player."

Kelly had been an assistant at Haverford College and the College of New Jersey and was head coach at Bucks County Community College, making $3,500 a season.

"Honestly, when I took the job I was just trying to survive in the profession," said Kelly, who is also the school's athletic director. "Coaching is such a cutthroat thing. Harcum has allowed me to find my niche."

Harcum's niche is being the only Division I JUCO in NJCAA Region 19, which includes Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. That allows the team 15 full scholarships. It has 13 this year.

The team plays fast but not out of control. The mantra is to attack, but open guys get the ball and the ball swings around effectively. Last week, the guard-heavy Bears, ranked 16th in the nation, beat Burlington, 120-88, to improve to 20-3.

That night, Leo Vincent knocked down eight three-pointers, good for 31 points. Afterward, Vincent, from Bensalem, talked about how he had been at Sacred Heart but left the Division I school. An assistant coach at Sacred Heart told him Harcum was a good place to go and get exposure, to get back to D-I.

"They ended up not bringing [Vincent] back. He'll definitely be a one-year guy," Kelly said. "It offers him a chance to reopen his recruitment, reestablish himself as a basketball player. People come to junior college for all different reasons. He's a really good kid. He's actually a good student. A lot of people, myself included, you go away to college, things don't go as planned."

Another starter, Elliott Smith, from Pittsburg, Calif., had committed to Florida International when the NCAA clearinghouse ruled he had to take the ACT again. By the time he could, it was September, Kelly said. He was cleared to play after the new score was posted but it was too late, so he'll go to FIU next year.

Kelly makes the point to his guys that it isn't all about next year. Enough have seen D-I up close to understand what he's saying.

"It's kind of the irony of the whole thing: When guys go individualist and think they need to put up numbers to get recruited, sometimes it doesn't work out," Harcum's coach said. "I told the current guys when we got to 20-3, 'I hope you have great success from here. The reality is, this might be the best team you ever play on in the rest of your career.' "