Basketball prospect faces high expectation at Pitt

Despite ranking as one of the top five high school seniors in the country, 2012 Pitt basketball… Despite ranking as one of the top five high school seniors in the country, 2012 Pitt basketball recruit Steven Adams just doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about.

When Pitt fans flocked to Ambridge High School on Sunday to watch Adams play in the Pittsburgh Basketball Club Legends Classic, the 6-foot-11 center from New Zealand was taken aback by the amount of support.

“I just felt honored,” Adams said after the game. “I felt special that they’d all come see me like that.”

The senior big man didn’t disappoint the large crowd, recording 12 points and 14 rebounds — including a few monstrous slam dunks — en route to a 75-56 win for his Notre Dame Prep team.

Adams has been an intriguing prospect since bursting onto the national scene two summers ago at the Adidas Nations tournament in Los Angeles, his first time playing in the U.S.

Since then, he’s been widely praised by basketball recruiting experts and has shot up the rankings from unknown to top five. Pitt fans have anxiously waited to look at potentially the next great Panther. Adams, 18, continued honing his game in his native country until early this year, when he transferred to Notre Dame Preparatory School in Fitchburg, Mass.

Sunday marked just his second time in Pittsburgh and his first time actually playing in the city. Several members of the Oakland Zoo, as well as a large media contingency, flocked to Ambridge to see the center in action. But Adams downplays all the attention he’s been receiving in the United States and said he certainly doesn’t let the praise go to his head.

“What I believe is, what happens on the court, stays on the court,” he said. “[The media and fans] can just watch me on videos on the Internet. I just look at it like, you can judge me.”

Even though he literally comes from halfway around the world, Adams said homesickness hasn’t been a problem for him at his new school. His teammates said he assimilates into American culture quite well, both on the court and off.

“He’s pretty goofy, but he brings intensity,” Sam Cassell Jr., a senior guard at Notre Dame Prep, said. “He’s a hard worker. He came in here and told us we needed to work harder.”

Adonis Filer, the team’s point guard, said that Adams hasn’t had much trouble adjusting to new teammates and a new way of life.

“He’s pretty good, socially,” Filer said. “Sometimes he might have a different word for something than we do, but we have good conversations.”

Filer said the only thing Adam’s needed to be consistently reminded about was the goaltending rule in U.S. basketball.

“We had to tell him there was goaltending here,” Filer said. “We’d be in practice, and he’d just be blocking every shot we tried to put up there.”

Before taking the court on Sunday, Adams came to the Petersen Events Center as a spectator for the Pitt men’s basketball team’s 72-60 win over Georgetown on Saturday. It was Adams’ second time watching a Pitt game in-person, but his first time seeing a Panthers victory.

“That was fun. That was amazing,” Adams said. “It was quite intimidating because the [Oakland] Zoo is, like, crazy … I was like, ‘I have to play in front of them next year?’”

Playing in New Zealand, Adams was nothing short of an unknown commodity, an anonomous star in a country that has produced only two NBA players. While Adams doesn’t necessarily shy away from the glitz and glamour, he surely doesn’t bask in it.

“I just find it weird,” he said to a throng of reporters on Sunday. “I’m not used to this kind of thing. Usually it’s only like, two people or one person with a notepad, but you’ve got cameras and microphones and stuff, it’s crazy.”

His coach at Notre Dame Prep, Ryan Hurd, explained that all of the publicity is foreign to Adams.

“A lot of the kids today get an opportunity to get accustomed to it over time,” Hurd said. “He walked off a plane and got slammed in the face with cameras and ‘What are you doing? What size is your foot?’”

But Hurd — who calls Adams a “fun, fun kid” — said the newest addition to his team at Notre Dame Prep is dealing with the media and publicity onslaught just fine.

“He just has to try to wrestle with all that and he’s doing a great job of it,” Hurd said. “He’s not trying to be anybody else. He’s just trying to be Steven, and he’s fine with that.”

Long after his Notre Dame Prep squad secured the victory and most of the reporters and fans headed for the exits, Adams sat in the bleachers getting his ankle tape removed with his teammate, Filer.

Once the trainer finished unwrapping Adams’ gigantic feet, Adams said to Filer, “Come on man, let’s go.”

Filer playfully replied, “Man, I was waiting on you!”