Leven Brings Crowd to Feet

Steve Leven's play at this weekend's Charlie Weber Invitational showed the Insiders Report why he was in the slam dunk contest at this June's DC Pro-AM. In the DC Blue Devils quarterfinal game against National Christian Academy, he brought the crowd to its feet when he power dunked over NCA's Jabbar Young, a 6-10, 265 pound center.

Leven is a solid 6-5, 190 swingman who last season played for coach Chris Chaney at the Newport School in Kensington, MD. When he was re-classified as a junior, he decided to head to the Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina, where Chaney is the new head coach.

A native of Sydney, Australia, Levin said he returned to the states two weeks ago, just before the terrorists attacked the US. "That was really scary," he said. "I was lucky to have left when I did."

Yesterday, was his first day at Laurinburg. "I really wasn't in good shape today," he told us Sunday.

He has two leaders among his list of schools: Texas and Georgia. He's setting up official visits with both schools now. He had unofficial visits earlier at Indiana and Virginia.

Previously he also mentioned Charlotte, Rutgers, Virginia Tech and California. "But, Coach Chaney has a better handle on that," Leven noted. "There are more ACC, Pac-10 and SEC schools that are interested."

Leven, who said his GPA was actually 2.7 when he left Newport, scored a 990 on the SAT. He said he is missing some core courses which he will take care of this year. "I'm hoping to get my GPA up to 3.0," he added.

Previously he told us that he would like to major in sports science and minor in business management. "We call it body sciences in Australia," he said. "I took a night course in it while I was home."

Leven did a little recruiting while he was in Australia. A friend of his, Brook Pearce, is joining him at Laurinburg.

"I think I'll be playing on both the high school and prep A teams," Leven said. "That'll be about 60 games by the time the seasons are over."