Scoop this. Scoop that.

Strolling into the Neumann-Goretti High School (Pa.) gym eight years ago, Antonio ‘Scoop’ Jardine was the raw city kid from Philadelphia. He was the kid who thought he was ready to play high school basketball in seventh grade. The kid who had a big game — but an even bigger head.

‘When he came in, he was the big kid on the block,’ said Carl Arrigale, Jardine’s head coach at Neumann-Goretti. ‘You know, the big shot. Coming in, it was all, ‘Scoop this, Scoop that.”

Eight years later, Jardine stands in the Carmelo K. Anthony Basketball Center among the media horde, a world away from where he started.

It’s ‘Scoop this, Scoop that.’ But eight years later, Jardine is no longer the raw city kid from the streets of Philadelphia. No longer the kid who thinks he has earned anything. No longer embracing the attention, but deflecting it.

‘We have more than just me,’ Jardine says. ‘We have Kris Joseph, Rick Jackson, Brandon Triche back from last year’s team.’

He’s preparing for a junior season in which he will enter Syracuse’s starting lineup after playing a key role off SU head coach Jim Boeheim’s bench last season. And he’ll be relied upon to fill the void left by the departing Andy Rautins.

It took 22 years, with plenty of bumps along the way. But Jardine is where he wants to be.

‘My savior’

Pop. Pop.

Gunshots. In the streets of Philadelphia, they’re all too familiar.

‘I’ve seen a lot. I’ve seen murders. Drugs. Everything,’ Jardine said. ‘Where I come from, it’s really tough.’

He looks at his eighth grade class picture. Twenty-five kids. And today six of them — one in four — are dead.

The first step in Jardine’s journey took him through, and out of, those streets of Philadelphia. To do that required not falling into the trap. For Jardine, to do that required basketball.

‘It’s easy to take that path because that’s all you know,’ Jardine said. ‘Basketball was my savior. Basketball got me up out of there.’

Basketball talent got Jardine and fellow SU star Rick Jackson from playground leagues in seventh grade to Neumann-Goretti, a rising program that was starting to attract inner-city talent. Jardine was so anxious to get there, Arrigale said, that he applied for enrollment after seventh grade.

And so came the first turn in Jardine’s path. From the streets that hardened him to a private Catholic high school that made him a basketball player.

‘It was the turning point of my life,’ Jardine said. ‘I was in a different environment. I was able to be around kids every day that were trying to make something of themselves.’

With the four years at Neumann-Goretti came the maturation of Scoop Jardine, the basketball player and the person. And during the maturation, there were learning experiences. Like when he wanted to transfer from Neumann-Goretti during that freshman season.

Arrigale said Jardine had little interest in guarding anybody. Arrigale had no interest in playing Jardine. And Jardine had no interest in riding the bench when he felt he deserved to play. He had a name in Philadelphia, and there were plenty of public schools that would give him playing time.

He talked to his father, the elder Antonio. He talked to his grandmother, Deborah Jardine, with whom he lived while attending Neumann-Goretti. And with a little push from his father, Jardine chose to finish what he started.

‘I told him he wasn’t quitting,’ Antonio Jardine said. ‘You’re going to stick it out. You wanted to come here. You have to wait your turn.’

When he stayed, the maturation as a basketball player came right away, toward the end of that freshman season at Neumann-Goretti. It came when he went up against a future NBA player — the Houston Rockets’ Kyle Lowry — and scored 15 points in the fourth quarter, only to see the agony of defeat as his potential game-winning buzzer-beater clanged off the back iron.

And it came two games later against an Austin Freeman-led DeMatha High School, with Syracuse assistant coach Mike Hopkins in the stands for a showcase game in Springfield, Mass. Jardine went off for 36 points in a Neumann-Goretti win.

‘He was confident,’ Hopkins said of Jardine’s recruitment. ‘He was playing with older players, and it didn’t matter.’

‘Some guys,’ he added, ‘just have it.’

Jardine had made it to Division I basketball. But there was still a long way to go.

‘One little mistake’

Bang. Screams.

One shot to the stomach. Jardine was with his cousin near the 1800 block of South Sixth Street when it happened. Less than a week before Jardine was headed to Syracuse for summer classes prior to his freshman season, this was another curveball.

Not a month later, he got the call from his mother. He didn’t want to step out of class.

His best friend, Lawrence ‘Boo’ Rose, had passed away.

‘It was the worst moment of my life,’ Jardine said. ‘Just because how much he meant to me. How much we meant to each other. For him to pass away was really tough. It was hard for me. It took me a while to get over it.’

He carries the memory of his cousin with him every day, a tattoo imprinted on his right shoulder:

‘R.I.P. Boo.’

With that began a self-admitted up-and-down freshman season for Jardine. He went from the bench, buried in a highly touted recruiting class, to starting because of an injury to Eric Devendorf. Then suspended. Then back to the bench.

Jardine was out of shape as he came to Syracuse. He came in at about 16 percent body fat, Hopkins said, after Neumann-Goretti coach Arrigale originally worried about Jardine filling out his frame.

‘I think he got a little bored in high school,’ Arrigale said. ‘It kind of cost him at the end of his senior year. Then he got slapped in the face when he first got to college.’

Despite that, Jardine played well enough. And he got the call-up to a starting role after the season-ending injury to Devendorf. He impressed in his opportunity, scoring what was then a career-high 18 points against Northeastern on Dec. 30, 2007.

Not more than a month later came the next turn in Jardine’s career. Something he says ‘opened his eyes.’ An indefinite suspension came when Jardine knowingly allowed his cousin, Robert Washington, to purchase $115.65 of food and drinks on a stolen SU student identification card, according to an article published in The Daily Orange on Jan. 31, 2008.

Jardine was never charged with a crime, and he was back on the court two games later at Villanova. But for a week, he saw it all slipping away.

‘Going through that situation makes you cherish everything,’ Jardine said. ‘Because everything could have been taken away from me for one mistake. I could have been back in Philly, where I started. Because I made one little mistake.’

And he swore it wouldn’t happen again. He leaned on his grandmother for that support, that discipline she instilled in him during their time together.

He now admits that through it all, he was immature. But perspective was gained. And it helped him get through the next turn.

‘You have to think first before you act,’ Deborah Jardine said. ‘Because every action has a reaction. It has positive consequences and negative consequences. He started thinking differently. He started focusing on what being a basketball player really meant to him. His freshman year was a learning experience for him.’

‘Just his time’

Keep. Going.

That’s what Jardine would tell himself each time the pain started. The pain from the stress fracture in his left leg that would eventually force him to redshirt in 2008-09.

‘I was going through so much,’ Jardine said. ‘I knew I was hurt, but I didn’t want to sit out.’

To Jardine, the injury was another step down after his freshman season. But he used it to get back up. Basketball was taken away from him for the first time. But he used the experience to get closer to the game he loves.

Knowing the extra weight was to blame for the stress fracture, he shed 15 pounds, getting below 10 percent body fat. He saw the game from a different perspective on the bench.

‘He stopped talking about being good,’ Hopkins said. ‘And he started working on being good.’

Adds Antonio Jardine, ‘You can’t just come in and think your talent alone is good enough. So he had to make his body and his mind prepared for that.’

It’s why no one close to him was surprised when he took the next step last year, coming right in and scoring 12 points in the Orange’s first game against Albany. From there, the career-bests kept pouring in.

And to Wes Johnson, who saw it all unfold behind the scenes with Jardine while he sat out during his transfer season, it was what was supposed to happen.

‘I just looked at Scoop, at all the time he sat out and all the work he put in,’ Johnson said. ‘It was just his time. It was perfect timing when he slid right in and did what he did.’

‘Willing to change’

When Scoop Jardine says the two words, he is talking about his long path to where he stands today, at the forefront of the No. 10 basketball program in the nation.

‘I changed.’

In Philadelphia, change from playground ball to basketball. At Syracuse, change in actions. Change in diet and change in results.

‘You really look at a kid coming in as a boy and now becoming a man,’ Hopkins said. ‘He has proven that. I just respect him so much. Change is a scary thing for a lot of people. He was willing to change.’

Change adds up. It adds up to starting lineup fixture come Friday. Antonio Jardine will be in the stands, making the same 254-mile trip from Philadelphia to Syracuse he makes for each one of Scoop’s games.

Antonio will return to Philadelphia after the game. Scoop, carrying everything with him, is here to stay.

Said Scoop Jardine: ‘I finally realize what I can be.’

bplogiur@syr.edu

Published on November 10, 2010 at 12:00 pm