Last weekend at a high school shootout at North Park College in Chicago, Eastern men’s basketball coach Rick Samuels expressed interest in a recruit out of Chicago.

Matt Marino, a senior at St. Patrick High School is the targeted prospect. More importantly, Marino, who is the starting point guard for St. Pat’s, has led his Shamrocks to a 17-1 record earning his team the eighth ranking in the state.

The ranking is the highest for any St. Patrick’s basketball team during the season.

Before the season, Marino played on an AAU team called the Illinois Warriors. The Warriors are the same team NBA star Darius Miles played on just two years ago.

“Matt has played with guys you’ll hear about playing in the NBA in the next ten years,” Matt’s older brother Mike Marino said.

According to his brother, Matt hasn’t always been the basketball star he is now.

“When we were younger, Matt was the quintessential tag-along,” the elder Marino said. “Matt used to want to play basketball with us but we used to tell him he stinks and wouldn’t let him play.”

He no longer has to worry about his brothers letting him play, he now has to worry about scouts critiquing every decision he makes on the court.

However, when scouts come to watch him play, he feels no pressure.

“Half the time I don’t know who’s in the crowd during the game,” Matt Marino said. “I don’t know if there are scouts in the crowd until they come talk to me after the game.”

St. Pat’s head coach Mike Bailey also reminds Marino from time to time if the Shamrocks weren’t having such a successful season, he wouldn’t be scouted as heavily.

Marino realizes in order to continue to succeed individually his team needs to win.

“Coach Bailey always tells us we can lose any game to any team,” Marino said. “We have to treat every team as if they’re a quality opponent.”

In basketball, and most other sports for that matter, people talk about whether a player is coachable or not. Marino said he knows he is one of the more talented players on his team, but he also realizes that doesn’t mean his coach can’t get on him.

“He’ll get on me the same way he’ll get on a junior,” Marino said. “He still tells me everything I’m doing wrong, and it makes me better.

“He tells me I’m doing a good job, but not to get a high head,” Marino said. “Coach explains the season as a marathon and each game is a mile of that marathon. We have to run each mile one at a time.”

In his years of coaching at St. Patrick, Bailey has seen many good basketball players, but feels Marino is one of the best, if not the best leader he has ever seen.

“He’s as good as anyone,” Bailey said. “He does it by example, he’s vocal, he practices and plays hard and he works at his game. There is no harder worker than Matt.”

One method Bailey uses to measure a player is whether or not he is a gym rat.

“There is no hungrier gym rat,” Bailey said.

Bailey said Samuels has heard some good things about Marino and has asked him for some game tape.

Marino said he would be interested in going to Eastern for a number of reasons.

“I know my brother’s there, and the majority of Pat’s kids have gone there the last two to three years,so i know people there,” Marino said. “I also like that it’s not too far from home and it’s a Division I-A basketball program.”

If Marino were to come to Eastern, he said he wouldn’t want to be one of those kids who rides the bench until his senior year.

“I want to go somewhere and play quality minutes for the team as a sophomore, junior or even a freshman,” Marino said.

Marino said he hasn’t talked to Samuels yet because the Eastern head coach was on the road with the team. However, Bailey knows Samuels and is impressed with what he does at Eastern.

“Coach Samuels is a class act and has an outstanding basketball program,” Bailey said. “He’s one of the first guys high school coaches turn to and he’s always been helpful.”

When it comes time for Marino to make his decision, Bailey feels it won’t depend completely on basketball. He said Marino will go where he and his family feel he fits best.

One place he will be sure to visit will be his brother’s house at Eastern.

“I’ll come down and visit Mike and talk to coach and after the season, I’ll check out the teams and programs and make my decision,” Marino said.