It was almost laughable to hear Willie Jett say it, because he said it so matter-of-factly:.

Sunday, January 02, 2000

It was almost laughable to hear Willie Jett say it, because he said it so matter-of-factly:

"We’ve got five guys that can handle the ball," said Jett, the first-year coach of Minneapolis North.

And he’s not kidding.

Of the Polars’ five varsity point guards, two are mere freshmen, two juniors and one a sophomore.

They all get minutes and – though Jett admitted "they bump heads at times" – they all get along.

"We’re all unselfish; we all get our shots," said Zack Kiekow, a junior and the only returning starter playing for what amounts to a brand-new North.

A little bit of history

Ahhh, North.

The epicenter of Minnesota’s quaking prep hoops landscape.

No other school symbolizes the current hard-court hysteria in this hockey-rich state better than North.

The school is home to five straight state tournament appearances – the first three of those were up-sized into state titles.

Khalid El-Amin, the point guard of those hoop dreams, became the poster boy for the new-breed of Minnesota’s elite basketball players.

Duke, North Carolina, the Big East, and Pac-10, they’re all in love with Minnesota prep basketball.

And if you ask anyone with any hoops sense where it all started, they’d likely answer "North." (I know I would.)

A new beginning

I told you Kiekow was a returning starter, but that’s not the whole story.

Last year, Kiekow started all right. But he started for Park Center as Jett finished his third year of coaching there.

Jett’s a story all to himself. A wandering coach, he’d spent five years at Champlin Park before moving on to Park Center. Before his prep career, he spent two years as an assistant at the University of Pittsburgh and a year at Cornell before that.

When Jett and his staff of four were asked to take over at North, the decision was an easy one. Park Center’s probably nice and all, but North is inner city. North is where it’s at.

At his mother’s request, Kiekow followed the coach.

"I don’t like to say I brought him with me," Jett said.

Because it’s more than that.

"We’re his male confidants," Jett said of he and his staff. "I’ve had a great rapport with him since he was in eighth grade."

In addition, Kiekow burns to be the best basketball player he can be.

"Zack is looking to play basketball in college," Jett said. "He wanted to go to the best place possible."

Naturally, then, he chose to follow his coach to a new beginning at North.

High school and beyond

In a way, all of the players on the North team are a lot like Kiekow.

They all want to play in college.

They all want to take basketball as far as it can go.

"That’s their goal," Jett said, "and they love that."

Clearly, Jett doesn’t discourage them.

He doesn’t tell them that sports are a crap shoot, or that they’re on avenue that pays off for one in every 2,500.

Rather, he understands them and he takes the kids and their dreams and together the coach and the kids build. They work, they sweat, they confide.

"These kids love the game," Jett said. "When they’re not playing it, they’re studying it, watching it on TV."

They live basketball. It’s Jett’s job to make sure they learn it.

He demands of them physically by running fast-paced practices and by holding weight-room sessions.

He challenges them mentally by hosting video sessions and by installing a collegiate-style offense that looks break first, set-up second

He does this even on a team with exactly zero returning varsity players from a season ago. Jett can do it because he equates his players – some of them 14-15 years old – to babies, soaking up whatever he throws at them.

The North players are basketball sponges and Jett is all wet.

The conclusion

The Polars are 4-2 after losing in last week’s Bethel Tournament championship game to Minneapolis Patrick Henry – the No. 1 ranked team in Class AAA.

Earlier in the season, North fell to Hopkins, the No. 1 ranked team in Class AAAA.

"We blew a 14-point lead," said Lionel James, one of Jett’s assistants. "We stopped running our offense. We got a big lead and sat on it"

Against Austin in the semifinals at Bethel, the Polars jumped to a 14-point halftime edge and held on to win by 14, 70-56.

"You could see them thinking back (to the Hopkins game)," James said. "They were running what they should be running."

James clearly liked what he saw.

"The best thing about this team," he said, "is we’ve got one guy with experience, we’ve go kids who were playing on the JV or not at all last year, and for them to be where they are is incredible."

Somebody should tell James that he’s not coaching with Jett at Park Center anymore.

He’s coaching at North.

In Minnesota, that’s the home of incredible basketball.