LV smothers the others. He slow-dances way too close for their comfort. He waves his wings-of-the-condor arms to distract them. He jumps so high when they shoot he’s courting altitude sickness.
LV is 6 feet 5 inches, with quickness, a 40-inch vertical leap and a big man’s reach. That’s why DePaul men’s basketball coach Dave Leitao assigns him to cover the opposition’s best regardless of size.
The 6-1 squirt of a guard who scores 20 points per game and might be Conference USA player of the year? Got him. The 6-8 forward rebounder who scores 16 a game? Got him.
You don’t read about LV’s job in the box score. There are no numbers to explain the truth about how LV gets in their heads, how he disrupts their styles, how he gives the Blue Demons a weapon that can be a 10-point differential.
Nobody saw it coming. Not even LeVar Seals himself when he starred at Providence-St. Mel High School. He was the scorer back then, the guy opponents worried about burning them.
These days, Seals’ high school coach is an assistant coach at Seton Hall. What Bill Garrett sees on TV stuns him.
“He’s a defensive specialist,” said Garrett, laughing so hard he almost loses his breath. “LeVar is DePaul’s stopper. If you knew him, it’s just so funny. There were at least two or three guys on his team who were better defenders. When I watch now, I say, `Who is that guy?'”
Passage of time
It seems like a hundred years ago, and it seems like the blink of an eye. Where did the time go so quickly?
Seals, 22, is a senior. When LV explains that he chose to play college basketball at DePaul to hang with his old AAU teammate Amari Sawyer and that coach Pat Kennedy liked him, he’s digging deep into the DePaul archives.
Sawyer? Gone to some distant place after an unfinished college career. Kennedy? At Towson State, his second head-coaching job since DePaul.
“It’s a long time ago,” Seals said of his 2001-2002 freshman season.
Sitting in a Holiday Inn lobby in Hattiesburg, Miss., LV laughed often as he talked. On the court, Seals frowns with intensity. Off the court, Seals seems serene. His father, Ben Seals, said he “trusts God with everything.”
LV has enjoyed staying home.
“All my life I played in front of my family,” Seals said. “That’s something I didn’t want to stop.”
LV grew up on Chicago’s West Side. Mother Judy Seals steered him to her alma mater because she knew he would get a good education at Providence-St. Mel.
“That was the most important thing to me,” said Judy Seals, who operates a day-care center in Sauk Village where she and her husband live.
LV’s accurate, midrange left-handed jumper brought him nearly as much mail as Santa Claus and he committed early to DePaul after averaging 22 points per game as a junior. Then he broke his right foot going up for a layup and missed most of his senior season. None of that, however, altered Seals’ offensive mentality going into college.
“To be honest, I was looking at being a scorer, progressing my way up each year,” Seals said. “I’m surprised I’m a defensive guy.”
LV was a freshman reserve when he first saw action against Syracuse, drawing high-scoring forward Preston Shumpert.
“I had two fouls in like two seconds,” Seals said. “The game was going 100 m.p.h. I’m looking at his name on his back as he goes by. I thought, `I can’t let that happen again.'”
Seals learned to rivet his eyes to the ballhandler’s stomach. In recent weeks, Seals has covered 6-1 Marquette playmaker Travis Diener, whom he held well under his average. He also covered Memphis’ 6-7 Rodney Carney and limited him to five points.
“That’s a guy you have to interrupt his rhythm and stride,” Seals said.
Leitao admires Seals’ gritty work ethic and the results it produces.
“He has developed through practice,” Leitao said. “He’ll take on anybody if we ask him to. He takes pride in it.”
Seals’ fearlessness taking on opponents’ big guns earns him raves from teammates.
“He’s our sparkplug on defense,” guard Sammy Mejia said. “He’s locking down their best players. It makes it so much easier for us to play support defense. He’s never tired and we just feed off that.”
Trash-talking accompanies the image of playing tight defense, but Seals said the language isn’t usually that ugly.
“It’s not real trash,” he said. “It’s more like, `Miss one for me.’ I’m not innocent, but it’s not bad.”
Defense, LV is aware, is less about talk than action.
“College basketball is who imposes their will,” Seals said. “If you have five guys who are passionate, who are willing to do anything to win, it’s hard to beat a team that’s desperate.”
A demanding father
Some of Seals’ commitment emanates from his father, Ben, 65, a retired construction worker who grew up in Mississippi and played high school ball in the 1950s. He attends every home game and he has been a coach in the stands.
“Every mistake I made, my dad yelled,” LV said. “Even now at a timeout, I can hear him. As I got older I got selective listening.”
As a kid, Seals shot at a back-yard hoop with older boys and all he wanted to do was “score, score, score,” the elder Seals said. “Basketball was his dream all his life.”
Dad says “good job” more than ever, but still can’t get over the fact LV, who is averaging 9.1 points per game, doesn’t score more.
“I’ve been telling him all year he has to shoot the ball,” he said.
LV is more interested in winning titles. Last season DePaul tied for a share of the regular-season Conference USA title and players were honored with rings. This season the Blue Demons are 15-5 going into a difficult Saturday matchup with Cincinnati, a team Seals said is always a measuring stick.
Seals said he is more mature and a better all-around player. He hated how 9-19 felt his freshman season and he loved what 22-10 felt like last season. He flashes the ring to the team’s newcomers and tells them what they can accomplish.
“You all have a chance to get more than one,” Seals said. “It’s up to you all how hard you work. They don’t understand how hard they have to work to get that ring.”
Seals knows.
Even if Garrett or his dad find it tough to understand how, in the process LeVar Seals has discovered who is he.
