In the moment of chaos, with glass shards at his feet and blood dripping from his right forearm, Louie McCroskey woke up.

“Wow,” he thought. “What did I just do?”

What he did March 1 was release all the emotion he’d bottled over the years: from his days as the scrawniest kid in the Bronx’s Rosedale Park to 6:45 a.m. practices at St. Raymond’s High.

He’d focused for so long on his basketball career, which takes him to Syracuse this fall, that he’d forgotten, he said, “Louie McCroskey the person.” He’s trying to regain that balance now, hanging out with his friends and family more before he travels to SU for Summer Start in a few months.

But that March night, McCroskey’s long-fuming temper boiled over.

McCroskey, a shooting guard, picked up his fourth foul early in the third quarter of the Catholic High School division championship against Rice High. St. Raymond’s coach Oliver Antigua subbed for McCroskey and pulled him into the hallway to calm him down.

Then, McCroskey stormed toward a stairway door, cocked his fist and slammed it through the door’s window.

“I had the urge to punch something,” he said. “I just wanted to hit the wooden part. My energy got the best of me. It didn’t really hit me until I saw the blood. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten that mad. Growing up, I always had a little temper in me. But I never really did anything to endanger myself.”

McCroskey’s mother, Valerie, picked her son up and rushed him to the hospital, where he received 10 stitches. Antigua suspended McCroskey for the next game. Opposing players started whispering about McCroskey’s temper, saying he was selfish.

Later, McCroskey’s stepfather, Stanley Burrus, sat him down and talked about the incident.

“It’s only a game,” Burrus told him.

“He learned a hell of a lesson from that,” Burrus said.

Even McCroskey said the incident mellowed him. He always focused so much on basketball that, he said, “Once I step on the court, you don’t want to be around me.”

He developed that attitude when his parents and eight siblings moved 10 years ago from Manhattan to the South Bronx’s Bronxdale housing projects. (McCroskey’s biological father, Itury Kitt, had left the family, and McCroskey said he no longer talks to him. McCroskey’s mother married Burrus eight years ago.)

When McCroskey arrived in the South Bronx, lessons came with the bumps and bruises he earned at Rosedale Park.

“Growing up where I played at,” he said, “it was always a thing of survival in me.

“My mom was always encouraging us to be men.”

When McCroskey was 10, he broke his left wrist while playing for Manhattan’s Riverside Church in a game against the traditionally rugged New York Gauchos AAU team.

Though McCroskey stood only six feet as a high-school freshman, he filled his current 6-foot-5, 185-pound frame during his St. Raymond’s career. Anxious to improve, he followed the lead of teammate and South Bronx boyhood friend Julius Hodge — now a sophomore at North Carolina State — and arrived at school an hour early to practice.

“Louie had to guard Julius every day in practice,” said former St. Raymond’s head coach Gary DeCesare, who left the school last September and is now an assistant at Richmond. “When Julius used to show him up, Louie would get pissed.”

Said McCroskey: “If you did something against Julius, you earned it. That never-say-die attitude rubbed off on me.”

During McCroskey’s junior year, an injury to St. Raymond’s star guard Allan Ray thrust McCroskey into the starting lineup. DeCesare restructured the Ravens’ offense around him.

“That was kind of his coming-out party,” DeCesare said. “But he tired out toward the end of the season.”

So McCroskey followed DeCesare’s advice and shot 500 jump shots a day during the summer to hone his technique. This year, McCroskey averaged 16 points and seven rebounds and led the Ravens to a city title.

By then, he’d already committed to Syracuse and earned the late-bloomer tag that elicits a chuckle. (“My mom always told me: It’s always good to be better late than never,” he said.)

SU coaches first noticed McCroskey at last July’s ABCD Camp, which they attended to see Demetris Nichols, who had already committed. At that time, McCroskey was “99 percent” sure he would commit to Rutgers, he said.

In mid-July, SU assistant coach Troy Weaver called DeCesare to express interest in McCroskey. Weaver and SU head coach Jim Boeheim later attended a Las Vegas tournament in which McCroskey played.

At the Empire State Games, held in Syracuse from Aug. 1-3, McCroskey played in the Carrier Dome and toured SU’s campus with Weaver. McCroskey met SU guard Kueth Duany and chatted with Summer Start students. On Aug. 3, McCroskey’s Rosedale Park bruises and predawn workouts paid off when Boeheim offered him a scholarship. Nine days later, McCroskey accepted.

Now, McCroskey’s focusing on loosening up. Sure, he’ll still practice three hours a day, as he did last night. But he’s hanging out with friends and going on dates, too.

“Where have you been?” friends will say, poking fun at the gym rat’s practice schedule. A few friends jokingly compare him to Ron Artest, a hot-tempered New York City product who now plays for the NBA’s Indiana Pacers.

On Monday night, McCroskey and several buddies watched the movie “Above the Rim.” Last night, McCroskey visited his maternal grandmother, Winfred McCroskey.

Because of the window incident, McCroskey said, some people labeled him a hothead.

“I guess I take (basketball) too serious sometimes,” he said. “But I’m not going to change.”

He paused for a moment, perhaps thinking back to the blood that flowed from his arm seven weeks ago.

“It made me think,” he said. “Yeah, I have to be a gym rat. But I have to be Louie McCroskey the person, too.

“People misconstrue me. So I’m learning to smile more, have fun.”

Published on April 21, 2003 at 12:00 pm