Jenkins just keeps learning, improving

Charles Jenkins' learning curve started long before his student-of-the-game passion transformed him from low-key Hofstra recruit to a big name in college basketball. It started during many nights at the dinner table across from Charles Jenkins Sr. "Anything I wanted to do that was fun," the younger Jenkins said, "I had to make sure I did all my schoolwork first."

Jenkins, a fifth-year senior who recently earned his Hofstra diploma, learned life's hard knocks 10 years ago when he had to cope with the murder of his brother, Kareem Albritton. "At the time," he said the other day, "I basically shut down. If I didn't have my mother, my dad and my sister, I don't know where I'd have been."

They helped him learn to not give up. Later, he learned to like Hofstra when he was an honor student at Springfield Gardens High in Queens and Tom Pecora's staff visited him - in class. He sure learned how to get his shot in college ball. Before scoring 19 points Saturday against Old Dominion, he was sixth in the nation with a 23.5 average.

Having absorbed all of those lessons, the 6-3, 220-pound guard finally was in position to actually teach one this season. It goes this way: There is life after chaos; vibrant, hopeful, NBA-scouts-drawing life.

A few months ago, Hofstra's season had all the ingredients for a disaster. The popular Pecora left for another job. Replacement Tim Welsh left in disgrace after an arrest for driving while intoxicated. Two key players transferred, and the team really hadn't been so hot to begin with. On top of all that, the new coach was a little-known career assistant who was as surprised as anyone when he got the job.

When all of that happened, Jenkins did what he still does every day in practice. "Charles is the guy who pulls it all together," said that new coach, Mo Cassara.

Cassara has become a close friend of the player who shows every day how much he has grown. Jenkins has restored Hofstra's fire from the ashes, making his team (11-6 overall, 5-1 in the Colonial Athletic Association) a study in hope and perseverance.

"He wouldn't let anybody - from the team to the president to the athletic director to myself - panic," Cassara said. "He never gave anybody any reason to say, 'We've got something to worry about here' or 'I'm not buying in.' He has been a calming influence along the way."

Stoicism is another trait Jenkins learned along the way. He said that when Pecora left to coach Fordham, "Believe it or not, I was probably the first one to break down. Other guys came in to make sure I was OK."

But he knew he could not just let everything fall apart. Maturity also was an acquired skill. "It really has been a pleasure to be his parent, even aside from basketball," said Jenkins Sr., who works for UPS and is director of a home for youths.

The elder Jenkins said education was a theme with which he grew up in the South and carried into the military and through four years at Virginia Wesleyan. He was a power forward there. "I was never where he is as a player," the father said, "even though I tell him I was better."

When the father thinks of what it was like for him and his wife, Patricia, at mid-year graduation Dec. 19, he said, "Words can't describe it, seeing him up on that stage . . . "

The younger Jenkins was the first of his siblings and cousins to make it through college. A degree is one of the many things that Albritton never got to experience in his 22 years before he was shot to death in Brooklyn. Jenkins wears "22" in honor of the late mentor to whom he dedicates a Twitter feed before every game.

"Everything he didn't accomplish, I'm looking to accomplish," said Jenkins, who has come a long way from being a grieving 11-year-old who had lost interest in everything. His parents and sister convinced him with words that still are in his head: "As bad as it is, life has to go on."

The likely three-time Haggerty Award winner as the best collegiate player in New York (Chris Mullin and Jim McMillian are the only previous three-time honorees) still is inspired by the memory of shooting baskets with his brother at the hoop Charles Sr. installed at their aunt's Brooklyn home. "He was a good street basketball player," the younger brother said.

The Hofstra star learned more from playing with Albritton than watching the NBA, which he rarely did, his father said. If Jenkins ever has been caught watching basketball on TV, it likely was video of Hofstra games. He stayed on campus every summer to practice and study the sport. Now NBA scouts are studying him, every game.

They can see that he is versatile; he became the second player in Hofstra history (along with Speedy Claxton) to reach 2,000 points, 500 rebounds and 400 assists yesterday.

"There's no doubt in my mind that he can play at that level," Cassara said, reflecting on having coached Jared Dudley of the Phoenix Suns at Boston College. He sees many of Dudley's strengths in Jenkins, although the former is four inches taller.

Hofstra needs Jenkins to be its shooting guard, but his size says NBA point guard. "I know I can play the point," he said.

But if someone believes he needs to improve, chances are he'll learn.