updated 5:54 a.m. ET April 1, 2006

LAURINBURG, N.C. - What’s left of the gym floor is littered with debris, and only one of the wooden backboards has a rim. The bleachers that used to seat standing-room only crowds a few years ago are falling apart, too.

As prep basketball powers go, the Laurinburg Institute appears to be crumbling — anywhere but on the court, that is. The Tigers are 64-1 over the past two seasons even without a homecourt advantage, and 21 graduates played Division I basketball this season.

That includes two who went to the Final Four with LSU (Chris Johnson and Magnum Rolle) and five who made the round of eight with Memphis (Antonio Anderson, Kareem Cooper, Joey Dorsey, Robert Dozier and Shawne Williams).

“Here’s my question to you,” headmaster Frank “Bishop” McDuffie said with a knowing smile. “What would happen if we had a gym? What would our record be?”

The on-campus gym was condemned seven years ago after a moisture problem with the adjacent swimming pool caused part of the roof to collapse. With no funds for repairs, the ’Tute — as the school about 90 miles south of Raleigh is known — practices and plays home games wherever it can find space.

Often, that means driving as far as 30 miles, where coach Billy Reid sometimes pays to rent the gym.

“Coach always finds a place for us to play,” guard Saiquon Stone said. “He takes care of us.”

Laurinburg still thrives, in part because of its rich basketball tradition and in part because of Reid. A former student at the school, he played professionally in Europe for 16 seasons before returning to the United States as a college assistant.

He was working at his alma mater, the University of San Francisco, when he called McDuffie last September. Reid planned to apply for a spot on the staff of George Mason coach Jim Larranaga, and he wanted to use McDuffie as a reference.

Well, at the same time, McDuffie was looking for a coach, since Chris Chaney had left for another prep school in North Carolina. Reid ended up taking the job and showed up a week later.

March Madness slide shows AP   Title time Best images from Florida-UCLA in men’s championship game. AP   Turtle wax Top images from Maryland’s overtime win over Duke for its first NCAA title. Reuters   The Final Four See images of Saturday's games where four teams become two. Getty Images   Eight is great Click to see images from the Elite Eight round of the 2006 NCAA tournament. Getty Images   Super Sweet 16 The best images from NCAA Tournament's second weekend. AP   Round 1 & 2 Best images from opening weekend of Big Dance.

“I felt a little bad when I came back and saw we didn’t have a gym, and over the past years, I hadn’t done anything to help with that,” Reid said. “I was kind of away for a while, and I haven’t been giving back. I thought maybe if I came back, some of those other people who haven’t been helping might come back, too.”

But as McDuffie is quick to point out, the Laurinburg Institute is much more than a basketball factory. His grandparents founded the school in 1904 at the behest of Booker T. Washington, making it the oldest historically black boarding school in the nation.

McDuffie is a third-generation headmaster of the school — his father served in the role from 1953-1990 — and a list of graduates includes famed jazz musician Dizzy Gillespie and former Bermuda Premier John Swann.

It also has past NBA greats Sam Jones and Charlie Scott, as well as Charlie Davis, who in 1971 became the first black to be named Atlantic Coast Conference Player of the Year while starring at Wake Forest.

He gives much of the credit to the Laurinburg Institute, since it helped him get his academic resume in order.

Slide show   Week in Sports Pictures Flying on the hardwood, racing on the rink, getting physical on the gridiron, and much more. more photos

“I wouldn’t have gotten into Wake Forest without being able to go to Laurinburg,” Davis said. “People take that for granted now, but in 1967, there weren’t places that African-Americans could go to do that. It just speaks volumes about Laurinburg’s place in history.”

Players continue to take advantage of the school, even though Reid had a tough time putting a team together this season since he started so late. Two of the top players are Stone and center Phil Jones, both natives of Brooklyn who arrived at Laurinburg’s tiny, small-town campus last fall.

“It’s an experience you can’t forget out here,” Stone said. “You learn to like it, it basically humbles you. It’s not the best living conditions, but you deal with it.”

Renaldo Balkman could have warned him about that. Now a junior at South Carolina, he helped the Gamecocks win their second straight NIT title this season and was picked as the MVP of the tournament.

He came to Laurinburg from his hometown of Tampa, Fla., and the pace of life at the school also surprised him.

“Florida is kind of slow, and I’m in Columbia, S.C., now, and that’s even slower,” Balkman said. “But Laurinburg is the slowest. There’s only one thing to do, that’s basketball and school. That helped me a lot, too. When I got there, there were no distractions.”

It’s all part of the school’s charm. Since it started keeping records in 1954, the Laurinburg Institute proudly proclaims that 83 percent of its graduates have earned college diplomas. McDuffie is just as proud of this as he is of the success on the basketball court.

If someone wants to call his school a “basketball factory,” that’s OK with him.

“Not a bad title, as far as I’m concerned,” McDuffie said. “People want to feel that, if you’re a basketball production site, then you should not be something else. I think we are an academic-prep program that has a heck of basketball production capacity.”

MORE FROM COLLEGE BASKETBALL

College basketball Section Front

UCLA will make noise eventually   Vote: Who will be player of the year? Beyond the Arc: ’Nova facing issues with frosh Seton Hall basketball player charged with DWI Beyond the Arc: Celebrating college hoops’ last Rebels 5 Razorbacks suspended for opener Beyond the Arc: Carolina will be scary good by March Men’s Top 25 preview, analysis, stats, more Davis: Kansas tops 2009-10 hoops storylines Elite scorers, sleeper teams, top conferences, more College basketball Section Front   Add College basketball headlines to your news reader: