Budinger named San Diego's third Mr. Basketball
- 03-27-2006
- By Tom Shanahan, San Diego Hall of Champions
Bill Walton doesn't need to move over. The Basketball Hall-of-Famer from Helix High in La Mesa is still the best high school basketball player to come out of San Diego. Some basketball people long in the tooth will even tell you Walton may be the most dominant high school player ever.
Remember the story of then-UCLA assistant coach Denny Crum returning to Westwood from scouting one of Walton's games as a Helix senior? He told legendary UCLA coach John Wooden that he just saw a player better than former UCLA center Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar).
"Better than Lewis?" Wooden is supposed to have said as he motioned Crum into his office. "Close the door."
But maybe it's OK for another San Diego boys basketball star to join Walton in San Diego's elite-of-the-elite room. Budinger is CalHiSports' first Mr. Basketball from San Diego since Walton in 1970.
Similar to Budinger, Walton had little talent around him en route to a CIF San Diego Section title, but Walton's Highlanders routinely routed teams in a 33-0 season with Walton pulled from games early.
Walton and Budinger are different types of players, of course. Walton was a 6-foot-11 big man who played in an era when centers dominated the game.
Budinger plays in an era when the game revolves around open-court players with three-point shooting range. He scored 50 points with 6-of-9 shooting from three-point range and pulled down 11 rebounds as the Mavericks beat Eastlake to win their first CIF San Diego Section Division I boys basketball title.
Budinger, a 6-8, 220-pound guard/forward bound for Arizona, is only the second San Diego boy named to the McDonald's High School All-America Game, an event that pre-dated Walton's high school career and is now in its 29th year when it's played March 29 at San Diego State's Cox Arena.
The first McDonald's All-American was St. Augustine's Jelani McCoy, another UCLA center. But Budinger leaped over any comparisons to McCoy when he emerged as a dominant player as a sophomore and a junior. He first drew comparisons to Jud Buechler, the former Poway High, Arizona and NBA player with a volleyball background similar to Budinger.
But by Budinger senior year he was considered to have surpassed Buechler, too, for second to Walton in the minds of many San Diego basketball observers.
Budinger is the third San Diegan named Mr. Basketball, with Walton having followed Hoover's Bill McColl in 1947. There is a red hair comparison between Walton and Budinger, but Budinger actually might have more in common with McColl as a two-sport athlete. McColl went on to become an All-American football player at Stanford and a Chicago Bears tight end before he became a doctor and performed ground-breaking leprosy research in South Korea in the early 1960s.
Budinger, for all his basketball talent, might be a better volleyball player. He was considered the top prep and junior volleyball player in the nation who was on a straight line path to U.S. Olympic and national team careers.
But Budinger said when he orally committed in August to Arizona, a school with no volleyball program, he wanted to test how far he could take his basketball career by concentrating on the sport for the first time in his career.
He may not become a doctor like McColl and he may not win the NCAA Player of the Year trophy and Sullivan Award as the nation's best amateur athlete like Walton, but Chase Budinger belongs in their company.
Contact Tom Shanahan at 619-699-2334 or toms@sdhoc.com.
