ADAMS TWP — Every time Robby Carmody steps out onto the basketball court, chants rain down on him from the opposing crowd.

“Overrated.”

“Daddy’s boy.”

It can be loud and hard to ignore, but Carmody, a 6-foot-5 junior swingman for the Mars boys basketball team and one of the top Division I recruits in the country, ignores it all.

He also withstands the holding and the grabbing and the physical play he sees from the teams the Planets play. He tunes out the chirping in his ear from someone who is guarding him, trying to throw him off his game.

“Every game, someone’s gonna talk to him and push him and say, ‘Who do you think you are?’” said Mars basketball coach Rob Carmody and Robby’s father. “Hey, that’s the reality. If you want to be a great player, there’s going to be a mark on your back.

“I always tell him,” Coach Carmody said, “take your aggression out on the rims.”

Robby Carmody has. Despite the attention and the extreme scrutiny that has come his way this season as the only returning starter from a team that went to the PIAA Class AAA title game last season, he’s averaging 24.4 points per game. He’s also the team’s leading rebounder, averaging well more than 10 per game.

Since he was young, his father prepared him for the pestering he was likely to endure.

“Just saying stuff to me while I’m shooting in the driveway or the gym, making sure I’m tuning everything out and making sure I don’t have bunny ears,” Robby Carmody said. “He’d just try to make noises in my ears, try to throw me off.”

The practice has come in handy as teams have thrown just about everything at Robby this season to try to rattle him and take him out of the game.

What it has done, however, is open up things for the supporting cast, many of whom had never even played in a varsity game before this season, players like Ben Lewis, Ben Perdziola, Cade Hetzler, Andrew Recchia and Michael Carmody.

Players who have made a big impact.

As long as Mars wins, Robby said, what he has to endure is worth it.

“He doesn’t care,” Coach Carmody said. “He’s built to take the physicality and the pushing and the shoving and he’s done a great job handling it and not losing his mind.”

While few outside of the Mars gym figured the Planets would be in position to make runs again at the WPIAL and PIAA titles, Robby Carmody knew they could.

Mars is 9-2 overall and 4-0 in the section this season.

The two losses came at a tournament in Elmira, N.Y., against two of the top teams in the country.

“We’ve jelled so well,” Robby Carmody said. “Going to New York really helped us out because we really bonded there. When you’re friends with the other guys you’re playing with, you’re going to have their back way more and be more willing to dive on the floor for them and make big plays for them.”

Robby Carmody’s talent has drawn a lot of attention from Division I college coaches, many of whom have attended Mars’ games or dropped by for practice.

Recently, Kentucky coach John Calipari swung by a practice.

For Robby, the recruiting process has been both surreal and intense.

“It’s crazy. It’s never really something you think is going to happen,” he said. “You put all the work in and all the time and effort for it to happen, but you can never expect it to happen. It’s been a true blessing.”

The most common comment Robby has heard from these giants of college basketball has also been surreal.

“A lot of them have told me I’m the hardest working player they’ve seen,” he said. “That it’s not just the physical talent, which is obviously part of it, but how hard I play. That just makes me want to work harder.”

As coaches place more pressure on him to narrow down his choices — he’s received ample interest from schools like Kentucky, Indiana, Butler, South Carolina, UCLA, Arizona, Pitt and many, many others — Robby is instead focusing on helping his team win.

Now.

The future will be there.

The present will never come again.

“I enjoy playing with my friends,” said Robby, who recently surpassed 1,000 career points.

He remembers well watching the players who came before him notching that milestone at Mars and wanting to join them one day.

“It was a dream of mine since I was a little kid and it’s crazy that it finally came true,” Carmody said.