NCAA: In a game of tall men, Filipino American stands out

Kehei Clark's toughness and quickness makes up for his height.

With his team two points behind and less than 6 seconds on the clock and his team facing elimination in the NCAA Final Four game to determine the best college basketball team in the nation, Kehei Clark stood at the free throw line.

Clark made his first free throw making it a one-basket game. He missed his second free throw and a teammate tipped it into away from the opponents, Clark, noted for his speed, was the first to the ball. He could have passed to his fellow guard who was calling for the ball. Instead, he saw teammate forward Mamadi Diakite alone 20 feet away from the basket. In one movement,  Diakite caught the ball, turns around and shoots at the basket. Swish! Game tied. Overtime!

“(Clark) made an unbelievable play to find Diakite, and then Diakite had the wherewithal to shoot it immediately. Made a tough shot. … Obviously, it was a huge play. Play of the game,” said Purdue coach Matt Painter.

And the rest, as they say, is history. The University of Virginia went on to win the entire tournament.

Clark, whose mother is from the Philippines, is Virginia's starting guard and he's only a freshman. 

Recruiters who came to see him always departed with the same reservations.

“Every single one said he was too small,” said Derrick Taylor, Clark’s coach at Taft High School in Woodland Hills, Calif., “and it didn’t matter how productive he was.”

“I always have something to prove,” Clark said in an interview with Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times.  “Being my size, I never pass the eye test.”

While recruiting  Clark, Virginia coach Tony Bennett t. said he saw past a 5-foot-9, 155-pound frame.

“So many people get caught up in dimensions, and there’s value and importance in that,” Bennett said, “but toughness, quickness, feel, savvy, those things (matter).”

His quickness brought another dimension to an already very good team. His defensive tenacity. come in large part from his father, Malik, a 5-10½ guard who played for the University of Hawaii-Hilo and named his son after the city on the island of Maui where he had proposed to his wife.

KIHEI CLARK: "He's a bulldog," says his coach.

Not a prolific scorer - yet - his ability to penetrate the other team's defense and then pass to an unguarded teammate because the defense zoom in to stop Clark, gives the Cavaliers an option they didn't have before. 

Clark's father knew all about facing doubts and he he knew his son would face his own doubters. That’s why he taught his son how to stay in front of the player he was defending.

In one game, all by himself, he forced a 10-second violation when he kept the other team's point guard from crossing half-court.

Next year, with the experience of March Madness under his belt, Clark will be a veteran and one of the team's leaders in charge of team's offense.

It's a challenge Clark looks forward to on the road to his ultimate goal, playing in the NBA.

“He’s a tough, competitive guy,” Bennett said. “He’s one of the smaller guys I’ve ever recruited, but he doesn’t back down. Whenever you’re a smaller guy, that’s your life. You learn you don’t back down, and he’s a bulldog, pit bull, warrior-type player who knows how to play the game.”

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