Note to NBA scouts: Michael Doleac shaves twice a week now. That's what he says anyway (there is evidence to the contrary). This is up from quarterly shaves last year. Clearly, this is progress. Also, his feet appear to be slowing down - growth-wise, that is. Size 18, same as his age. His shoes can double as snowboards.
Bottom line: It appears that the S.S. Dolie, as he's sometimes called, is arriving - pulling into port, if you will. The Doleac watch goes on . . .For a guy who averages a so-so eight points and eight rebounds a game for the University of Utah and plays only about half a game, Doleac gets a surprising amount of attention.
At last summer's Olympic Festival, Jerry West singled out Doleac when asked to name NBA prospects in the festival. Bucky Buckwalter, senior scouting consultant for the Portland Trailblazers, told the Doleacs, his neighbors, that NBA teams are looking a him.
"I've heard a lot of NBA people talk about him," says Ute assistant coach Jeff Judkins, a former NBA player himself. "I've had a lot of scouts talk to me about him. They all know he's a ways away, but when he's a senior you'll see a very good player."
It's been this way since the first time Doleac stepped on the floor for the Utes, and Bobby Knight, the guy who once booted Doleac's father out of practice, gushed about The Kid after he helped Utah upset Indiana.
Perhaps Colorado State coach Stew Morrill summed up Doleac's intrigue best:
"It's hard to imagine that's he's only 18."
Doleac won't turn 19 until June. Most kids his age would be graduating from high school this spring. Doleac will have finished his second year of college by then.
Size plus inexperience, youth, a soft shooting touch, brains and good hands equal potential. Doleac has played just three years of organized basketball, not counting the two years he sat on the bench in high school - on the END of the bench - and the year he was cut from the squad. Now he's starting for the 12th-ranked team in the country and preparing for his second NCAA tournament.
For the record, Doleac is 6-foot-11, 260 pounds, and his first year of weightlifting has improved his bench press from 135 pounds to 300 pounds. But he might actually be blessed with more brain than brawn. A whiz in the classroom, he is a premed major and hopes to become a doctor or possibly an orthodonist like his father, although his hands could be a problem. Picture your dentist sticking a catcher's mitt in your mouth.
It wouldn't be the first time that Doleac's size has determined the direction of his life. He probably wouldn't be playing basketball today if he had been able to fit into ski boots, but that's another story.
When Doleac was born, the doctor held him up like the catch of the day and exclaimed to his mother, "Whoa! Marge, how did you do this?" The baby was a whopping 10 pounds, 14 ounces, and 23 inches long. By age two, he was 40 pounds and 40 inches.
"He was this big Great Dane puppy," recalls Marge.
He was clumsy - he collected a variety of bruises and broken bones - and he was quiet - he didn't begin talking until he was 21/2 - which might have obscured the fact that he had a brain to match his big body.
"I didn't think there was anything unusual about him till the first grade, when his teacher asked if she could test him," says Marge. "He knocked it dead. They were all alarmed. They wanted to accelerate him and put him in special classes, but I said no."
He wound up being accelerated anyway. The Doleacs, an Army family, were stationed for a time in Alaska. The schools there combined the fifth and sixth grades, and Doleac easily completed both grades within a year. When his father, Phil, retired from the Army and moved his family to Portland, Ore., Mike didn't bother repeating sixth grade. He skipped a grade, even though he was already young for his own grade.
"I was always the big guy so it didn't hurt me to be the youngest," recalls Doleac.
He also was among the smartest, which enabled him to keep up with students nearly two years older than he was. He breezed through high school with a 3.8 grade point average and blames basketball for not getting a 4.0.
By his own recollection, Doleac was "a horrible basketball player." After being cut from his ninth-grade basketball team, he stopped eating, figuring that if he weighed less he would jump higher. When his parents realized what was happening, they ordered him to eat. It was probably the last time anyone had to do that.
Doleac was a modest 5-foot-10 in ninth grade, but during the next three years he grew nearly a foot. "You could see him do this," says Marge. "He'd get tired and eat everything in sight. All he did was eat and sleep."
Not surprisingly, his coordination suffered. He was 13th man on a 13-man basketball team. "He played about three minutes a game as a junior, and that's probably an exaggeration," says Phil. "He was big and clumsy."
Doleac was an avid skier, but when the growing spurts began he outgrew his equipment. He got new ski boots for Christmas, but quickly outgrew them, as well. He rented boots, but soon he couldn't find any that fit. Finally, he borrowed a pair of Size 15s from his father's friend, but they were too small. After he miserable day of skiing with aching feet, he decided he was finished with the sport. In place of skiing, he began to play basketball in his free time, and his game began to improve.
The summer after his junior year he was invited to play on a local AAU team. Phil, who had played freshman basketball at West Point for Bobby Knight (and was kicked once kicked out of practice for having the audacity to laugh), was intrigued by his son's improvement. He asked a coaching friend for his opinion, and the coach alerted Utah coach Rick Majerus.
Majerus agreed to take a look. Doleac's AAU team was playing in a summer tournament in Long Beach, and Majerus watched. Doleac didn't even play until the second half. Majerus was mildly interested anyway. Doleac "didn't know what he was doing out there," but he had a soft shooting touch and he could catch. He also pulled for his teammates and played hard. And then there was that body.
"He wasn't built like a tall guy; he had regular proportions," recalls Majerus.
Majerus invited him to attend his basketball camp later that summer. At the camp, Majerus noticed that Doleac assimilated everything he was taught. If he was shown something in the morning session, he was applying it in the afternoon session. He also showed up at 6:30 each morning, well before the arrival of the other campers, and stayed late after practice. After only three days, Majerus offered Doleac a scholarship. Doleac was stunned.
"I had no idea it was coming," he says. "I had never thought of playing college basketball."
Doleac signed a letter of intent with the Utes, then returned home for his senior year. He started at center and led Central Catholic High to the state championship, earning all-state honors. Still, he was never recruited, and that has been a source of embarrassment for Oregon and Oregon State.
"Everyone snickered at us when we signed him," says Majerus.
Doleac was so young - he came to Utah only three months after his 17th birthday - that his parents considered sending him to prep school, but that would have been a waste of time for him academically. Majerus also considered redshirting him, but a friend convinced him that Utah needed him immediately.
Since then, Doleac has been predictably erratic for a player of such inexperience. He has had five double-doubles this year, but there also have been several three- and four-point performances. His offense is in its infancy, and his foot speed isn't anything to brag about, but he is a good rebounder and a surprisingly adept passer. The popular reasoning is that if he continues to improve, he will be a force.
"His progess over the last three years really has been dramatic," says the Trail Blazers' Buckwalter. "With his work ethic and the way he approaches things, he's got a decent chance (to play in the NBA)."
For his part, Majerus says he hasn't pushed Doleac, yet. "I cut him a little slack," says Utah's hard-driving, intense coach. "He's so young. I've got to back off on the basketball stuff. I'm not as demanding with him as some of the others. I'd like to spend more time with him, get him to practice early, give him special sessions, get him in the film room more often.
"But he's got a lot of responsibility academically. He has other issues. He's 18. He's going through a lot of things you usually go through when you're living under your own roof. You know, he talks to me about girl problems, and I'm not the best guy to talk to about that; I have them in spades."
If there is one arena in which Majerus does push Doleac, it's in the classroom, where he receives a steady diet of chemistry, biology, cell biology and calculus, along with a dash of Intellectual Traditions of the West. After missing 18 days of class because of basketball travel, he pulled a disappointing 2.47 GPA in his first quarter of school last year. Majerus threatened to redshirt him if he didn't improve in the spring. Doleac reponded with a 3.89.
Majerus recently threw one of his patented rabid fits at Doleac after reviewing one of his weekly grade reports. "I started seething and foaming at the mouth," says Majerus. "I told him, `Maybe that 3.7 or 3.6 is OK with you, but it's not with me, not until I know it's the best you can do.' "
Doleac can expect similar demands for his basketball performances in the future. Meanwhile, basketball aficionados can sit back and watch the making of Michael Doleac.