By Sridhar Pappu
“What time you got to leave?”
Thirty minutes later Squirt arrives, his gym bag flung over his shoulder. Five-six and 155 pounds, he has a thin goatee, an almost triangular smile, and sharp features. He’s wearing a look that says, “I know I’m only five six, but I’m gonna outrun you to the basket, break up your passes, and let you know about it later.” Two years ago he was a star, averaging 14.5 points and 6.5 assists a game in his senior season for Thornridge High School. Topflight Division I schools such as the universities of Colorado and Illinois were interested in him, as were most of the schools in the Missouri Valley and Mid-Continent conferences. In 1995 basketball talent scout Larry Butler called him the most exciting as well as the quickest player in Illinois. But in the middle of his senior season Squirt got into a fight with another student in the locker room. “My mama always told me to defend myself,” he says, “so I defended myself.” He was suspended from school and returned to find that only four schools were still interested in him–Chicago State, Western Michigan, Southern Illinois, and Weber State in Ogden, Utah.
“What time do you got class?” Gary asks him.
“You told me?”
Chicago State is on the bottom rung of area colleges, yet there’s a belief among the students that hard work and dedication can pay off–that from here there’s nowhere to go but up. The same sense of possibility has long surrounded the basketball team–if the school could just find the right coach, one who could persuade some of the city’s high school talent to stay close to home instead of going to Michigan or Syracuse or even Ball State, it could become a perennial power, just as Cleveland State once was and the University of Cincinnati is now.
