BearTalk

In the 200-page hard-bound edition of the Louisville media guide, sophomore forward Samardo Samuels lists his favorite sports figures.

Favorite basketball player: Kobe Bryant. Favorite TV personality: Dick Vitale. Favorite non-basketball athlete: Terrell Owens.

The guy he doesn’t mention is a fellow Jamaican whose school was just 10 minutes away from the one Samuels attended.

“Usain Bolt,” Samuels said of the Olympic gold-medal sprint sensation and world-recordholder.

Both grew up in the Trelawny parish, or county, and Bolt is only about one year older than Samuels.

“We’d see each other at the bus stops,” said Samuels, the Cardinal’s leading scorer and rebounder. “We’d be at the game arcade all the time.”

Samuels said the two never crossed paths on the athletic field.

“He never played basketball. He tried to play because of his (6-foot-5) height. But he wasn’t as good, so he quit early,” Samuels said.

Samuels said even when Bolt was young, watching him on the track was an occasion no one wanted to miss.

“I used to leave school early when they said he was going to run. Oh my God, he was fast,” Samuels said. “Everybody was like, `Why don’t you want to run? You’re just as tall.’ I was like, man, I don’t think I’ve got as much speed.”