Times01

SELDEN, N.Y., — Mo Manning had been away from basketball for nearly five years. There was the occasional pickup game in a park or a gym, but for the most part he avoided it. There were too many questions from guys he had known when he was a star high school player, all-Long Island three years in a row, and the 1997 Suffolk County player of the year. But after leaving Bridgehampton High School without a diploma, he tried a prep school and left there without a diploma. There was no college basketball in his future.
"Hey, Mo," guys would say, "how come you're not playing ball somewhere?"
And so, uncomfortable, he didn't return to those games. He worked odd jobs. There was landscaping; there was sanitation. He fathered a son.
Then, a chance meeting with Suffolk County Community College Coach Rich Wrase changed Manning's life. Manning went to Suffolk's Ammerman Campus here, and last season led the Clippers to the National Junior College Athletic Association's Division III championship, and was named the most valuable player in the tournament. On Thursday, the Clippers seek to repeat as they play Gloucester C.C. of Sewell, N.J., in the opening round of the national championship tournament at Delhi, N.Y.
Suffolk has the longest current winning streak in college basketball, at any level, with 49 victories. The last time the Clippers lost was on Jan. 18, 2003, to Sullivan Community College, 76-73. They were 31-1 last season and are 31-0 this season. They have been ranked No. 1 in the nation among in the junior-college Division III all season, and Gloucester (29-1) has been ranked second.
And Manning once again, as Wrase said, is the "heart and soul" of the team, averaging close to 24 points a game on a combination of deep 3-pointers and slashing drives to the hoop. What a difference a year and a half makes.
That was when Charles Maurice Manning, then 22, ran into Wrase. They had crossed paths when Wrase coached the Westhampton High School team and the rangy, 6-foot-2 Manning was the scoring machine for Bridgehampton.
"What are you going to do with your life?" asked Wrase, who has been the Suffolk head coach for three years.
As Wrase recalled recently, "Mo gave me a look like `That's a great question. I hadn't thought much about it.' " But it was as if a light had been turned on. "Are you going to do odd jobs the rest of your life?" Wrase said.
Then Wrase suggested that Manning enroll at Suffolk, where he could get credits to earn his high school diploma and then get an associate's degree for two years of junior college work. And perhaps he could play well enough to get a scholarship to a university.
Little did either know at the time that there was indeed a pot of glory at the end of their rainbow.
Manning was one of Wrase's best recruiting moves — and he has made several, all in the area since he recruits almost exclusively from Suffolk County high schools. Division III teams are not allowed to give scholarships, but students can receive financial aid based on need. That, and a serious attitude in the classroom, is motivation enough for many of the players. And there is something else.
"It's a place where you feel you're getting a second chance," said Aaron Cummings, the 5-9 point guard, who recently established the Suffolk single-season record for assists, averaging close to 10 a game. "Some of us were a little lost when we came here. It's a place where you can get a focus."
Like almost every other player on the team, Cummings went somewhere else first and found it not to his taste. Cummings, who had played for Bayshore High School, enrolled at Fresno (Calif.) Community College, but early on there was a change of coaches and he found himself with less playing time. He left and then, as with the other players, he discovered Coach Wrase.
It is a team that can fast break, or, if the situation calls for it, can play a heady halfcourt game. It all begins, however, with Cummings, flying downcourt with his legs and the ball and the "King of the Court" tattoo on his left shoulder all a-blur.
"He plays an old-style game," Wrase said. "I call him a retro point guard. He always looks to pass first. He sees the open man even before the open man is open. He's uncanny. My biggest problem with Aaron is I'd like him to shoot more."
Manning said that it is "a pleasure" playing on a team with Cummings. But with such other standouts as forwards Marcelle Street, who made all-region, and Vernon Alonzo, and several superb bench players, Manning said that "any of about eight guys are capable of dropping 20 points or more at any time."
Cummings, a sophomore who was a backup point guard last season, recalled the game against Monroe earlier this season, when the Clippers were down by 14 at the half. Their streak stood at 37.
"The Monroe players kept hollering, `The streak's over, man, the streak's over!' " Cummings said. "Well, we wanted the streak to continue, but we wanted to win the game even more."
Suffolk scored more than 60 points in the second half, as Wrase recalled, and won, 104-101. "They were like a different team," he said. They have also won two games, back-to-back, in overtime.
"Coach Wrase has the ability to take the pressure off the players," said Art Del Duca, the school's athletic director. "It's a gift."
Wrase, 52, had been a high school coach for 18 years in Suffolk County, but said he wanted to try coaching at the college level. "It's pure basketball," he said. "No frills. No dorms."
The Suffolk basketball budget is about $20,000 a year, which includes equipment, transportation and salaries. Wrase makes $8,000 a year and supplements his income by teaching American history at Eastport-South Manor High School in Manorville. "This is coaching kids who want to play basketball, who want to make something of their lives," he said. "I love it."
As for the winning streak, Suffolk still has a long way to go to break the Division III record of 89 consecutive victories, by Indian Hills Community College, in Ottumwa, Iowa, from 1996-99. But if Selden does threaten that mark, Manning will be watching it from another vantage point. Manning has accepted a scholarship to Kentucky Wesleyan.
"But our job right now," Manning said, "is to keep the streak alive, and defend our title."

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