UNO basketball has landed a 27-year-old New Orleans native in the transfer portal

Would you have guessed he was a tattoo artist and didn’t graduate high school before being found at a men’s league by a SUNO assistant coach?

Fox 8 story
You get these out of the ordinary stories at the NAIA level because eligibility is very loose. Last stop on the college basketball train.

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These players have toiled in the anonymity of junior college basketball and played for Power 5 DI programs. They stocked shelves at grocery stores and taught in schools. They used COVID years, sat out due to transferring, and experienced an excess of redshirt seasons due to injury. Some spent a few years in the real world before returning to college to take another shot at their basketball dreams. One even served a four-year prison sentence.

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The Oldest Non-Division I Players In College Basketball 2023–24

"Hey Jamal, I'm 18 year old John here to tutor you with you accounting homework."

"frick you mean boy"

I went to Southern Union JC for a year after I graduated HS. We had a guard, Alex Dillard, that was about 23 or 24 (4-5 years older than most students). He was really good and ended up going to Arkansas the next 2 years. He was on the Championship team and set the SEC record for 3s in a game at the time. He was about 26 when he left Arkansas and played 10 years professionally overseas.

Ervin Johnson was about 21 or 22 when he started at UNO. He was about to turn 26 when he got drafted. He dropped out of HS in the 10th grade and didn't play basketball for like 5 years before he went to school. Rodman has a similar story with a massive growth spurt.

It's a lot common in football, especially with former service members. There are a ton of those..

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Ervin Johnson was about 21 or 22 when he started at UNO. He was about to turn 26 when he got drafted.

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And he was a 1st round pick in 1993. Other draft picks that year: Chris Webber, Penny Hardaway, Allan Houston, Jamal Mashburn, Isaiah Rider, and Bobby Hurley

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Whoever did the Hurley draft eval should not be working in basketball at any level.

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I think Hurley was pretty good in the NBA. But had a horrific car accident. He was never right after that..

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Whoever did the Hurley draft eval should not be working in basketball at any level.

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Or maybe him almost dying in a car wreck 19 games into his career had an affect

Hurley, who wasn't wearing a seat belt, was launched 100 feet from the car and suffered two collapsed lungs, a ruptured trachea, broken ribs, a compression fracture in his back and several injuries to his wrists and legs.

Those are the blackest college uniforms in the history of college sports

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Can you name an NBA level skill he possessed?

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He was a great passer. Even after that accident (where he was inflated and deformed like the Michellen man), he still played 250 NBA games. You can't suck and last 6 seasons in the NBA. We'll just never know how he might have turned out.

I never liked Hurley, but he was tough and efficient. There was one great matchup with him against Kidd in the tournament, where Cal upset Duke. I had to look it up. Kidd was a freshman and had 14 points. Hurley scores 32, which was super high for him. Not a lot of people went off on Kidd like that..

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