Carmen Scarpa

Carmen Scarpa has a very special photograph hanging on a wall in his room. It was taken his junior year at Andover High when his basketball team reached the state finals against a squad from Cambridge.

In the picture, Scarpa is giving an up-fake to the very tall and very talented opposing center, a center named Patrick Ewing.

Scarpa is giving up a foot and a half in the match-up, as well as a considerable amount of jumping ability and natural talent. With Ewing fully extended for the block and Scarpa crouched to make his move, the picture truly looks like a David and Goliath scene.

So what happened on the play?

"I scored," Scarpa says, "it was a lefty hook.

"I looked in and got the pass from my teammate," he continues, remembering every detail of a single play a half-decade ago, "and I just gave [Ewing] a pump fake. Unless he was trying to block it with his knees, I don't know why he jumped.

"But I just threw in a lefty hook and the place went wild--that was a great game."

There were a lot of great on-court moments in Scarpa's high school career. He started for two years on the varsity basketball team and was named all-league in his senior year. He was also a two-year all-league baseball player and the MVP of the Andover football team his senior season.

He was captain of all three squads in his senior year.

An impressive list of accomplishments for any athlete, but made extraordinary in this case by the fact that Scarpa is 5-ft, 6-in. and weighs 160 pounds.

But numbers in general are very unimportant when you're talking about Scarpa. "I get by with my mind," he explains, and you don't have to talk basketball with Scarpa very long to realize that you're dealing with an intellectual giant.

The statistics say Scarpa has contributed exactly two points, six assists, and seven turnovers in 46 minutes of playing time to the Crimson this year.

The statistics are lying.

Because statistics can't describe how much his mature influence has helped the heavily-freshmen Crimson.