Well, it’s just a laaaaazy summer day here at Shell Games. Nothing really interesting to talk about right now. No games, no nothin. But I pulled up the straw hat long enough to check in at the Washington Times’ excellent D1scourse blog, which is counting down the top 20 Maryland ballers of all time. Number 11, I was happy to see, is the underrated Laron Profit.
Profit was a team stalwart during my college years, 1995-1999. He never really developed a consistent jumper, but man, could he throw down a lob. Him and Terrell Stokes were one mind on those. It was pretty stuff. Profit played with the Wizards and Kobe’s Lakers for a while before a ruptured achilles put him out the league. Most recently, however, he was playing for a champion Argentinean team. It’s a shame that Terps team never got past the Sweet 16. Whatever…at least they went dancing all four years he was there.
Anyhoo, the blog post revealed the existence of a magical piece of archival footage: Laron draining a three on the road to upset Tim Duncan’s Wake Forest squad. We went nuts in the dorms after he hit that…kicking Beast Ice cans down the hallway and what not. And we thought we’d live forever.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBXKsH8khh8]
The starting lineup of Francis, Morris, Profit, Ekeze, and Dixon should have won the hole thing in 1998-1999. That team was almost unbeatable at Cole. For once, the Terps actually had that blue chip one-and-done best player in the country guy. Ahhh the memories.
Estancia sedienta mis amigos.
Francis was awesome but he screwed up the chemistry among the senior guys on that team who had been playing together for three years as well as younger guys like Terrence Morris and Dixon/Baxter. They weren’t able to plug him in seamlessly enough so that they were a unit. At the end of the day it was Francis et al and it should’ve been a more cooperative approach.