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Monday, August 7, 2000
Making Sensley JULIAN Sensley looked different as he entered the Kaimuki High School Gym last weekend for a NCAA Summer League game.
Ever since leaving Hawaii a year
ago to attend a prep school on the
East Coast, former Kalaheo star
Julian Sensley has a new
look and a new gameBy Pat Bigold
Star-BulletinThe hair was frosted yellow, the gait was slower and more confident than it was when he left Kalaheo as a junior a year ago.
He's two inches taller, he looks more mature. You can see it in the eyes and hear it in the voice.
Sensley, whose life is now on the fast track to big-time basketball, stands 6-foot-9 and weighs 235 pounds.
He has a 32-inch vertical leap and plays only shooting guard or small forward these days.
"I don't even see down low in the block anymore," he said.
He's got one more year to play in the elite Class A division of the New England Prep School Athletic Conference at St. Thomas More High School in Oakdale, Conn. That's where he's prepping for a Division I college hoop career that, according to the experts, should lead to the NBA.
Basketballphenoms.com ranks Sensley No. 6 out of the top 100 players in the class of 2001.
"Players are ranked by their potential to make it big in college and NBA," reads the introduction to the rankings.
Sensley, who struggled with a C average in the classroom at Kalaheo, seems to have scaled the academic hurdle to Division I. He improved to a solid 3.2 GPA at St. Thomas More. "I'll take my SAT next month and I should be OK," he said.
He led his team in 3-point shooting last season, averaging 18 points a game, eight rebounds, three to four assists and two blocks.His life is now spelled b-a-s-k-e-t-b-a-l-l.
Sensley came home last month but soon disappeared for several weeks to criss-cross the continental U.S. honing his skills.
On June 27, he was one of 60 players invited to attend a camp in Washington, D.C., hosted by the NBA Players Association.
While in camp, Sensley got to play one-on-one with Kobe Bryant, losing 11-6.
"He's the next Michael Jordan," said Sensley of the experience which told him how hard he has to work to make the league. "He just blew by me and he wasn't even trying hard."
Then Sensley packed off to Los Angeles where he had two-to-three-hour sessions with Grant Hill's shooting coach, Chip Harris, before flying to New Jersey for the adidas ABCD Camp.
Then the jet-lagged Sensley flew to Las Vegas to play for the L.A. Rockfish in the sixth annual adidas Big Time Tournament where he was named to the all-tournament team.
"I'm here mostly to relax," said Sensley, nursing a minor left shoulder injury he sustained in a small Los Angeles tournament last month.
He's made a few NBA friends since last year.
"I stay in touch with Jerome Williams of the Detroit Pistons," said Sensley.
"He's kinda my boy. We stay in touch on the internet."
Sensley said he'll never forget the humbling he received in the one-on-one duel with Bryant.
"He killed me," he said. "He's unbelievable. He was hitting fade-away jumpers and just taking me off the dribble. The thing is he's only three or four years older than me."
But Sensley said he wasn't discouraged at seeing wide a chasm there is now between him and the NBA.
"I've improved so much over a year since leaving Kalaheo, so I think I can get there if I stay on the right track and keep working hard."
He's getting "financial aid" to attend a prep school that normally charges more than $17,000 a year for tuition, and only players seen as diamonds in the rough are sent there.
"Other than the basketball players, you got some rich kids out there," said Sensley. "Denzel Washington's son will be a sophomore there this year."
The location of the small campus makes it easy for students to focus.
"I'm way out in the boonies," said Sensley.
"There ain't much to do out there in the woods."
Ranked as high as he is by recruiting services in print and on the net, the idea of skipping college and declaring for the NBA draft has been broached to Sensley.
"People have talked to me about skipping and all that stuff but I want to go to college and get that experience," he said.
Who talks to him about going pro?
"Let's just say friends," said Sensley, who is verbally committed to the University of California.
Asked if he thinks he could be distracted by NBA money, Sensley said, "Money can wait. I want to get a degree, especially at Berkeley, that's a great school. I should take advantage because that's like one-hundred-something-thousand dollars in scholarship given to me right there."
But he's not closing his mind.
"Of course, if you can go top five as a pick, why not go? You can't turn that down. But my chances would have to be real good. "
He said he listens intently to only two people for advice these days. His mother, Susan Carson, and California head coach Ben Braun.
"Away from my mom he's like my mentor," said Sensley. "Those are two most important people in my life."