A Player Rises Through the Cracks

As for Williams, Schofield said in an interview three weeks ago that he entered PCA needing to pass 12 of the 16 core courses required by the NCAA and also needed a qualifying SAT score. But Tonya Edwards said Williams rarely attended class and stopped coming to school after about a month. She said Williams earned no grades or credits.

"He was there for a short period of time, but didn't graduate with us," said Denyse Alibocas, former director of PCA's high school and one of its teachers. "He really wasn't that enthused about it. He wasn't so keen on classrooms to begin with. He was just really never there."

Schofield, however, said his primary motivation for working with young players is to help them academically. In the interview with The Post three weeks ago, Schofield said Williams passed seven core courses during the 2000-01 school year while he was enrolled at PCA.

After one season, Jesse Edwards decided to sever ties with Schofield. The school still accepts a few postgraduate students but hasn't fielded a basketball team in two years, Edwards said.

Williams had grown three inches since leaving Franklin and was a 6-9, 170-pound point guard. George Washington was in pursuit.

But Williams needed to find a new school to become eligible to play under NCAA rules. The previous May, Schofield met with Rev. Arlene Mills of Celestial Tabernacle Church in Northeast Philadelphia. Mills had been operating Celestial Christian Academy, a private school offering kindergarten through eighth grade. Schofield proposed creating a prep school that would cater to potential college basketball players.

Mills agreed and said she told Schofield the church would need until January 2002 to be ready to open. Mills said she didn't hear from Schofield again that summer. In early September 2001, however, Mills was called to the reception area at the church and found the players towering over the grade-schoolers.

"I called them trees because that's how they looked to me," said Mills, 71, who lives in a rowhouse not far from the church.

After consulting with her church's board of directors, she agreed to open the prep school the following week, even though the church had done little preparation.

Williams was among at least 16 players brought to the school by Schofield, according to the church's records. By late November, six more players had registered. Most were from Philadelphia, but Keith Butler was an imposing center from North Cambridge Catholic High School in Cambridge, Mass. Guard Malik McCullough attended the Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics in New York. He had graduated from high school, but needed to earn a qualifying score on the SAT.

Schofield said Williams still needed to pass five core courses when he enrolled at Celestial.

Mills said that because of the haphazard opening, the schools had time to hire a single teacher: a Temple student from Africa. Mills said Schofield, as he did at PCA, filed the Clearinghouse paperwork. Mills quickly identified the curriculum and materials for the lone teacher.