Idaho’s Mike Scott takes advantage of his opportunity this season

With the biggest opportunity of his basketball career in front of him, Mike Scott spent this last summer in the only sanctuary he knew.

It was a gym at a park just around the way from his Los Angeles home. As a teenager and even through his junior college stint at Antelope Valley College, Scott made the walk through his dangerous neighborhood to spend as many of his spare hours as he could inside the gym, working on his game, getting better.

Scott was disgusted with his junior season, his first, at the University of Idaho. Starting sparingly, he averaged 2.2 assists and 8.7 points per game.

It ate at him. So he went to the gym.

“I could’ve had a way better season. That whole summer I had that in my mind. I worked my tail off,” Scott said. “I was working every day, was a work in process. Through that whole summer I was putting in the work.”

The work he put in has paid off. There was no doubt throughout preseason practices and scrimmages as to who Idaho’s starting point guard would be.

Scott took hold of the job, was voted captain, and has improved in every major statistical category save for free-throw percentage.

Most important for the Vandals, through 18 games, his assist-to-turnover ratio is 5.4 to 1.6. He’s only turned the ball over more than three times in six of the games. He’s also raised his scoring average to 14.1 per game.

It probably helped having a seven-year NBA point guard in his corner over the summer – Idaho Director of Player Development Milt Palacio.

When Palacio, who arrived at the beginning of the 2013-14 season, first laid eyes on Scott, he saw a player who could see the floor and anticipate where his teammates were.

He also saw a chubby kid who was as much as 15 pounds overweight for a point guard.

“This year I call him Mike 2.0. (I tell him), ‘Last year you were chubby. You’re a chubby kid,’ ” Palacio said. “And I told him that’s something you really have to work on this summer is getting your body in shape to play at a high level to be as good as you say you want to be.”

Palacio can relate to Scott in more ways than being a hopeful professional point guard. He grew up only a 15-minute walk away from where Scott did. He’s well aware of the gym where Scott worked on his craft growing up.

He’s also aware of how dangerous it was and how important basketball was to stay off of the streets.

“He was in the red neighborhood and I was in the blue neighborhood. (They were) rival gangs, so I know exactly where he’s from,” Palacio said. “Me and him we were joking the other day. In college when you went home, sometimes you’re like, ‘I have to get out of here, I have to get back to Idaho.’ It was for me like that, it was like, ‘Let me get back to Colorado State.’ ”

Scott’s coach at Antelope Valley, John Taylor, recognized the same thing. Taylor took a look around Scott’s neighborhood one night when giving his point guard a ride home after practice. He wasn’t encouraged by what he saw.

“I said, ‘Mike, whatever you do, get your education,’ ” Taylor said. “And he looked at me and said, ‘Yes sir.’ I’m pretty sure he’s on his way to graduating so I’m very pleased with that.”

Scott is well on his way toward doing what he hopes will help him parlay his collegiate career toward one that will pay him to play basketball. He knows what he has to do to accomplish that dream.

“We all know I’m good on offense. Can I stop somebody?” Scott said. “I just have to be able to lock up and keep my man in front of me. Of course you could always have better leadership. Every day you could learn from that. My biggest thing is defensively.”

He hopes that leads to his dream career.

“I want play as far as I can as long as I can. I want to make money off what I love to do,” he said.