And Marcaccini Played On : Notre Dame Swingman Didn’t Sell Himself Short--He Just Sold Shorts--and With Much Practice During the Summer Won a Scholarship to Indiana

There’s nothing too unusual about Monte Marcaccini.

He is just your average teen-age milkaholic from Italy who walks his dog at a basketball court. . . .

A run-of-the-mill high school senior who sells shorts to NBA and NFL players. . . .

A regular guy who began playing organized basketball only three years before signing to play at Indiana.

Marcaccini always has been Mr. Fun. A bit strange, but liked by everyone.

“He’s different than anyone you’ve ever met,” said buddy and teammate Ryan Stromsborg. “He’s just Monte. It’s hard to explain.”

Also difficult to explain is how a gangly kid who played basketball as though he was on a playground during an earthquake became the San Fernando Valley’s most sought-after player almost overnight.

Now Marcaccini is also Mr. Fundamentals.

Last season, Marcaccini, a 6-foot-5 1/2 swingman, led a mediocre Notre Dame team with 21.4 points and 11.5 rebounds per game, but college coaches were not impressed. Only a few local schools even bothered to send letters.

The new Marcaccini, who has a “90210” haircut and occasionally must wipe his bangs out of his eyes on the court, is a solidly built 210 pounds, having gained 20 pounds during the off-season. He is as much a threat to swish a 15-foot jump shot as he is to vault over a guard and dunk in his face or leave a trail of bodies on his way to a rebound.

“I was hearing people who had bets saying I probably wouldn’t go Division I,” Marcaccini said. “I thought maybe some of them were right because I had a good junior year but not a great year. But then I kind of went into hiding and worked on my game for four hours every day.

“When I came out, people were saying, ‘Where did this guy come from?’ ”

Monte Marcaccini is from Italy.

Actually, he was born in Santa Monica but was raised in Rome. His father, Giancarlo, is a native Italian and international businessman. His mother, Alicia, was born in the Valley.

The family--also included is former Notre Dame basketball star G.C., who was redshirted last season at UC Santa Barbara and has transferred to College of the Canyons--has bounced between Italy and Southern California for the past 18 years.

Marcaccini’s early years were spent in Italy where basketball was merely a game he watched on television. Swimming. That was his sport. Marcaccini, 17, was a full-fledged, record-holding, medal-winning swimming phenom in Italy. He would wake up and swim for three hours before 8 a.m. every day.

“I didn’t want to swim,” Marcaccini said. “My mom wanted me to swim. I hated it. I liked it until I was swimming every day. I wasn’t even going to school, I was just swimming. I was supposed to be an Olympian and all that.”

Finally, Marcaccini said, he convinced his mother that swimming wasn’t for him. When he moved to Southern California in the eighth grade, he started to play the sport he had seen on TV in Italy.

“I always loved basketball,” he said. “Any time it was on television, I would watch it. I always wanted to play basketball and when I got a chance, I just got an obsession.”

Marcaccini, already accustomed to spending the day’s early hours in a pool, began spending those hours on a basketball court. He said he sometimes woke up early, played basketball at a nearby park from 6 to 7:30 a.m., then after school until 10 p.m.

“If you want to reach him, you have to go to the park,” said Glen Carson, a senior guard at Notre Dame. “He’s never at home.”

There are even ways to work basketball into his other commitments--when he’s walking the dog, for example.

“I kind of get in trouble sometimes because I take the dog to the park and I go in the gym and play basketball,” he said. “Sometimes, he kind of runs in the gym and interrupts the game.”

Rude dog. Interrupting Marcaccini at work. Yes, basketball is a game and he loves it, but there’s something serious to this too.

“He plays his butt off every day,” Stromsborg said. “He just wants to get better is what it comes down to. He honestly believes that if he just plays and keeps playing, he’s going to be one of the best.”

That is what has happened over the past 12 months. Marcaccini, who played basketball basically on talent alone, spent the summer before his junior year in Italy and did not play basketball at all. But with the prospect of a college scholarship, Marcaccini stayed in California last summer to play in tournaments.

All told, Marcaccini played in about 60 games during the summer. Improving, he said, in every one.

Notre Dame Coach Mick Cady, whom Marcaccini said was instrumental in his improvement over the summer, said Marcaccini has improved his ballhandling and decision-making skills, as well as his strength. “When he goes to the hole,” Cady said, “you’d better get out of the way.”

It was during those summer games that the name Monte Marcaccini started to get around.

The letters poured in. Marcaccini, who for a while was wallpapering his room with the letters, estimates that 60 schools have contacted him since the summer. Then came the phone calls at a staggering rate.

“It was getting so bad that I’d get at least 15 calls a day,” he said. “A lot of schools don’t go by the one-call-a-week rule. If I was home, I was talking on the phone. I was playing Nintendo and talking to coaches.

“They ask me about my dog. Everything. One guy talked to my housekeeper for half an hour, and she doesn’t even speak English.”

Marcaccini said he was on the line with a coach, whom he chose not to identify, when he told the coach he had to leave to get his hair cut. Two days later, a letter from that school arrived, inquiring: “How was your haircut?”

Indiana was not among the schools to send Marcaccini a letter. Indiana Coach Bob Knight was tipped off to Marcaccini by Utah Coach Rick Majerus, who was recruiting Marcaccini. Majerus had run out of scholarships, so he asked him: “How would you like to play for a friend of mine, Bobby Knight?”

Marcaccini sent Knight a highlight film of his play over the summer. It was actually one of two highlight films Marcaccini had of himself. The one he sent to Knight showed him shooting, passing, playing defense, dribbling, the whole package. The other, which Marcaccini kept, was of dunks. Nothing but dunks.

“I still go home every day and watch it,” he said.

Knight was sufficiently impressed by the tape to invite Marcaccini to the Bloomington campus for a visit the week before the early-signing period. Marcaccini signed once he had assurance he would not have to redshirt.

Knight said Marcaccini should fit into the Indiana system well.

“He has all the ingredients to be a good player at his size,” Knight said. “He’s a tough-minded kid who has excellent athletic skill and good basketball sense.”

Marcaccini seems unconcerned about Knight’s reputation as a fiery coach--and one who often is regarded with equal parts hatred and respect.

“He’s not like other people say,” Marcaccini said. “He’s a funny guy, but just real intense. I’m sure the other side of him I didn’t get to see as much as I will, though.”

There is another side to Marcaccini. When he arrived at Notre Dame, he was, according to Stromsborg, “a goofball.” He had long, braided hair. But that was short-lived, Marcaccini said.

“I came the first day and the dean cut it off at the door,” he said.

Marcaccini is one of the team jokers. He is easygoing and liked by just about everyone. Everyone except, perhaps, Stromsborg’s mother. See, one of the things Marcaccini enjoys almost as much as basketball is milk. And he often goes to the Stromsborgs’ house after a hard workout and, well, cleans them out.

“I have slowed down now, but I could just go home and drink a whole carton of milk,” Marcaccini said. “(Stromsborg’s mother) got mad at me because I’d come over and drink all their milk.”

His image and popularity even have resulted in financial gain for Marcaccini. He and Mark Sprague, a former coach of Marcaccini’s in a recreational league, have joined in the basketball shorts business.

It started with Marcaccini putting the words “Shoot To Kill” on the seat of a pair of shorts and a logo on the thigh. “Everywhere we went, everyone wanted to buy them,” Marcaccini said. “So we made about 100 pairs and they were gone in a week.”

Sprague screens the logo on the shorts, which he buys from a company in Baltimore, and Marcaccini sells them. The pair have sold shorts to NBA players Harold Miner and Duane Cooper, whom Sprague knew from attending USC, and Andre Rison of the Atlanta Falcons.

Marcaccini likely will stop selling the shorts when he gets to Indiana because the business would be considered an NCAA violation. But for now, he keeps churning them out, selling about 40 pairs a week, he said.

“I could sell more pairs than that,” he said, “if I had more time.”

More time is one luxury Marcaccini probably will never have. Not as long as there is an open basketball court.