U.S. OLYMPIC FESTIVAL LOS ANGELES 1991 : NOTEBOOK

Jerry West knows a great basketball player when he sees one and the Laker general manager says he saw one Tuesday night as Glenn Robinson led the North team to the festival gold medal.

“He’s going to be a great player for years to come,” West said of the 18-year-old Indiana prep sensation.

East Coach Mike Jarvis of George Washington University, who coached Patrick Ewing at Cambridge High in Massachusetts, said watching Robinson play is “like watching a great thoroughbred at Hollywood Park and he’s got about an eighth of a mile to go and he’s got to turn it on. That’s what he did. He just said ‘Let me go get it’ and he went and got it.”

Basketball fans, however, will have to wait awhile to catch Robinson on the collegiate level. He will sit out his freshman season at Purdue because his college entrance scores were too low.