Erical and Clarence Paris had installed a trophy case in their house with five, maybe six shelves. In it they kept every honor their son Biko had achieved since he was a 5-year-old playing “Bitty’’ basketball.

“Plaques. Medals,’’ Clarence recalls. “MVP trophies. Mr. Bitty. Itty Bitty. All that.’’

The warnings about Hurricane Katrina already had flashed. The evacuation notices had been issued. Biko left for Texas on a Friday with his mother and other family members. His father and grandmother stayed in New Orleans.

“I just thought it was going to be another storm like it always was,’’ Clarence said. “But it was totally different.’’

Before the storm hit, Clarence went to the trophy case, saw the MVP plaque from Biko’s sophomore year at John Curtis Christian School and put it on top of the shelf.

The storm hit Monday, the levees broke Tuesday. The water flushed families from their homes, left bodies in the streets, and rung up damages of nearly $90 billion. Nearly everything about the New Orleans Biko had known was washed away. But his family was able to hang on to that plaque.

“It still has some debris on it,’’ Biko said. “The flood marks. The water. You can see it. But that was the only one my dad was able to save.’’

Biko never played another game for John Curtis. School was supposed to start the Monday the storm hit. “Aug. 29,’’ Erical recalled. Biko couldn’t bring himself to go back to New Orleans for almost a year. “I wasn’t even going to go to school,’’ Biko said. “I could have sat out and waited to go back to New Orleans and repeated.’’

His mother wouldn’t allow it. She told him, “Things don’t just stop when you hit a fork in the road.’’

“He was wishing we could come back,’’ Erical said. “But when he realized we couldn’t come back here and we couldn’t just wait without him being in somebody’s school, he accepted going.’’

After the 2005 storm, he spent the next two years playing point guard for Cypress Community Christian School in Houston, a program that cranks out Division 1 athletes. How he got to Boston College was serendipitous - a chance meeting with a coach, who was there at the right time, even though he was looking for a different player. Two years later Paris is the starting point guard and cocaptain of a team trying to make a repeat appearance in the NCAA Tournament.

“To be honest with you,’’ Paris said. “I feel like if it wasn’t for the hurricane I wouldn’t even be here at Boston College.’’

“Had to be 500 tapes,’’ Clarence said.

Erical put them all in a plastic bin, and put the bin in a closet. The tapes survived and each one has a name. Bitty ball with D.J. Augustin. The state tournament game where John Curtis nearly beat Tyrus Thomas’s McKinley High School. AAU with Monta Ellis (now with the Golden State Warriors), Glen “Big Baby’’ Davis, and LSU’s Tasmin Mitchell. The list goes on.

“I’ll just watch it just to remember where I came from,’’ Paris said.

Paris always thought he would end up at Louisiana State. Maybe Texas Tech or Baylor, South Carolina or Oklahoma. Somewhere in the South. BC was never on his radar, and he was never on its.

John Curtis was more of a football juggernaut than a basketball one. When current Southern Cal running back Joe McKnight wasn’t in the backfield for John Curtis, he was in the backcourt with Paris. The lineup was full of football players: Jonathan English, now a defensive tackle at Arizona State, and Fred Holmes, who played linebacker for UCLA. But the goal for the basketball team was to get out of the first round of the state tournament.

In a lot of ways, Cypress Christian and Houston were altogether different.

“New Orleans was a small little city,’’ Paris said. “I knew it like the back of my hand. But Houston was just so big. We would have games in Houston - in-city games - and it would take an hour to get there.’’

The lifestyle was different. Paris’s mother would fly back and forth to New Orleans to check on the house and the contractors hired to repair it. Biko and his cousin stayed in an apartment in Houston.

“Junior and senior year, you kind of can say that I basically lived by myself,’’ Biko said.

“They had to grow up fast, and fend for themselves,’’ Erical said.

The time he did spend in Texas, Clarence worked for the school, driving buses to games and field trips, which meant he was able to see Biko play. Where John Curtis was a basketball underdog, Cypress Christian had a hoops pedigree.

Paris played on a team with Hasheem Thabeet, now with the Memphis Grizzlies, Steve Tchiengang, now at Vanderbilt. Antoine Sam now at Texas State. Garland Judkins now at Arizona.

The exposure there was different.

Tim Floyd, who had taken the head coaching job in January 2005, had heard of Paris, having been the coach of the New Orleans Hornets in 2003-04, and he had the chance to see Paris play in an AAU tournament in Orlando, Fla., and wanted to bring him west.

Paris visited the Los Angeles campus the same weekend as O.J. Mayo, the player the Trojans planned to build around. The possibility of playing with Mayo intrigued Paris. Meanwhile, Floyd wanted Paris’s commitment.

“He called the first day you could offer scholarships,’’ Clarence said. “He called him at 8 in the morning.’’

Clarence recalled Floyd telling him, “It wasn’t my assistant coach that came and told me. I watched him myself and I like him a whole lot. And I’m offering him a scholarship right now, before anybody else can offer him.’’

But after Paris gave USC a verbal commitment, things became unstable. The Trojans started considering a handful of California kids, the most prominent being point guard Brandon Jennings.

Jennings had been waffling between USC and Connecticut, but gave a commitment to the Trojans in August 2006. He retracted his commitment eight months later, saying he wanted to go to Arizona. Ultimately, he bypassed college and played a year in Italy.

Paris, meanwhile, was uncomfortable sitting in limbo.

“As I committed things changed, and the coaches weren’t saying the same things they were saying before I committed,’’ Biko said.

He talked it over with his parents and his high school coach.

“They were saying that I’m going to spend the next four years there, and they’re going to be like my family,’’ Paris said. “So if I’m going to be there I want to be comfortable and I want to be sure.’’

Paris backed out of the USC offer.

“He just had a gut feeling,’’ Clarence said. “It wasn’t any bad blood. He just changed his mind.’’

The morning after he withdrew his commitment from USC, Paris had a 6:30 a.m. practice at Cypress Christian.

Boston College associate coach Pat Duquette was in the gym, but he was there to look at Tchiengang. Word of Paris’s decision had yet to make the rounds in recruiting circles.

Duquette, just being cordial, walked up to Paris and said, “Congratulations on USC.’’

Paris told him he had changed his mind the night before.

“Honestly?’’ Duquette said.

Tyrese Rice, then a rising junior and still unproven, was the only point guard on the Eagles roster after the 2006-07 season. Duquette got on the phone with coach Al Skinner. Paris’s father rounded up some game tapes. Skinner came out to Texas to see Biko practice. Paris came to The Heights to visit. Skinner offered him a scholarship.

“I didn’t even look at any other schools,’’ Biko said.

Rice was a junior when Paris was a freshman. There was a possibility Rice would enter the NBA draft at the end of the season, but not a guarantee. There was a chance Rice and Paris could split time in the backcourt, but Skinner told him it was most likely that Paris would have to wait his turn behind Rice.

“I was expecting it,’’ Paris said. “I knew everything that was going to happen when I got here. There wasn’t anything under the rug. It wasn’t like they were trying to hide anything from me. I respect them as a coaching staff for doing that. They just told me what was real and that’s exactly how it happened.’’

Paris watched for two seasons. Every so often Skinner would call him into his office. He would say, “I appreciate you working hard in practice every day. Keep working hard.’’

His minutes were inconsistent (he averaged fewer minutes last year, 12.4 per game, than he did his freshman season, 23.1) even though his effort in practice never wavered. And to some degree, Skinner felt awful for putting Paris in that position, particularly last season, when there were points throughout the Eagles’ 22-12 season when a case could have been made that BC played better when Paris was on the floor.

“He could have very easily been a distraction last year,’’ Skinner said. “He’s obviously good enough to play, good enough to help the team be successful. It had to be very difficult for him at times playing behind a guy that was first-team All-ACC.’’

Patience was something Paris embraced.

“In the beginning I didn’t see that,’’ Paris said. “I felt that I should be playing. I’m in practice going hard every day, going at Tyrese every single day, making him better.’’

Everyone else’s role was clear; Paris had to discover his. He decided to be as much of a leader from the bench as possible.

“When I watched [the starters] play last year, I didn’t just watch their performance - whether they were scoring baskets or blocking shots - I would watch their demeanor, how they carried themselves,’’ Paris said.

He would watch for the temper of Rakim Sanders. He would go to the gym with young fireball Reggie Jackson and just figure out the things that make him comfortable on the basketball court. He’d pick Rice’s brain for little moves or quick calls to make on the floor. And in doing those things, he became a player his teammates turned to.

“It takes a special individual to be able to handle that and handle it well,’’ Skinner said. “It’s an indication of what his intangibles are.’’

Skinner named Paris one of the cocaptains, and the message behind the decision was subtle.

“When you talk about Biko Paris, you’ve got to talk about the team, because that’s what he embraces,’’ Skinner said.

Paris embraces it as much as he embraces his past in New Orleans. And even though it’s not the type of honor he can have put in a trophy case, he’ll look at it the same.

“A lot of the things I had back home that I lost I didn’t cherish,’’ Paris said. “All those trophies I had, I didn’t cherish it. It was like ‘Oh well, it’s a trophy.’ It constantly runs through my mind. Before I go to sleep. Before practice. While I’m on the court. Things run through my mind. This could be the last time for anything. Now, everything I get, I cherish it.’’

Julian Benbow can be reached at jbenbow@globe.com.