Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 20, 1994 TAG: 9401200015
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-4 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RALPH BERRIER JR. STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DUBLIN LENGTH: Medium
From a courtside seat, it appears that Hash is a good student. A basketball bookworm. Court class is in session when he plays, but the opponents are getting schooled.
Hash, a 6-foot-4 junior wing player for Pulaski County, has been a tough assignment for foes. His lesson plans on average include 20 points, seven rebounds, a few assists and a couple of steals.
And he's still learning how to play basketball.
"It's scary to watch what he does and then think, `He's only getting better,' " said Pulaski County head coach Pat Burns.
It's not that Hash is a complete basketball neophyte. He has played head and shoulders above the crowd since his middle school days, when he usually was the tallest guy on the floor. His offensive repertoire consisted of standing under the basket, catching the ball, shooting and scoring over some undersized chump.
When Hash made the varsity as a ninth-grader, Burns decided that the young man's basketball future would be brighter if he learned to play farther away from the basket. It was then that his basketball education began in earnest.
First class: Ball-handling 101.
"When I got up here," Hash recalled with a grin, "I said, ` ?' I didn't know what that word meant."
As he's learned to handle the ball better, he has become more of a penetrator. His outside shot also has improved.
"The more things I can do, the better I'll be able to help the team," Hash said. "My game has opened up a lot."
A well-rounded game suits Hash, who has talents other than sticking a ball in a hole. He sings, writes music and plays drums in his church youth band. Like basketball, music comes naturally to him. He never had a lesson on the drums.
"I just picked it up," he said.
His basketball skills are a harmonic blend of quickness (he was fourth in the 200-meter dash in the Roanoke Valley District track meet as a freshman) and leaping ability (he hopes to add a couple more inches to his 36-inch vertical leap).
Hash showed his stratospheric explosiveness against Cave Spring earlier this season, with a couple of backdoor alley-oop dunks that bedazzled the crowd.
"I'm not saying he's going to be an NBA player, but my God, look at what he can do," Burns gushed.
Colleges already are stuffing the Hash family mailbox with recruiting letters the same way Tyrone stuffs basketballs into hoops.
Some of the letters bear close-to-home postmarks from Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia, Radford University and Virginia Commonwealth. Others come from the home post offices of Wake Forest, Notre Dame, Villanova, Cincinnati, Penn State, California, Brigham Young, Auburn and Temple.
Hash estimates he has received more than 100 letters from his college basketball pen-pals, from the elite of Division I to the little guys of the small-college ranks. Someday, he hopes to actually meet the authors of these basketball love letters.
Hash, 17, is mature enough to understand that his interest in some schools may go unrequited. Because NCAA rules limit the contact between colleges and high school underclassmen, many juniors are subject to the extensive letter-writing campaigns of college coaches.
He won't know until next year which schools are sincerely interested.
"The main [letters coming most often] are from Tech and Radford," said Hash. "A lot of them are just contact letters, like from Notre Dame. Some of them come from places so far away, from people who have never seen me."
Hash got long looks from recruiters at the prestigious Prep Stars basketball camp in Charlotte, N.C., the past two summers. He played in four of the five featured games during last summer's session, scoring 10 points with a couple of dunks in his best outing.
"He's a big-time Division I player," said Burns, who favorably compares Hash with former Pulaski County standout Jonathan Penn, another athletic mid-sized player who became an all-Southern Conference performer and 1,000-point scorer at Virginia Military Institute from 1990-93.
"I told people that Jonathan Penn was just scratching the surface when he was here," said Burns. "Tyrone is more gifted than Jonathan."
Hash, who has a 3.1 grade-point-average and will take the SAT in the spring, won't have to worry about choosing a college for another year. If he continues to improve over the next 12 months, the Hash family may want to consider investing in a bigger mailbox.
by CNB