Article on Durley: "Unleash the beast"

[Sir Lawrence]

A pretty good read:

http://www.foxsportshouston.com/01/30/12/Durley-all-grown-up/landing.html?blockID=655732&feedID=3803

January 30, 2012
RICHMOND, Texas – They don't play contact sports in Saudi Arabia. Or at least they didn't until Aaron Durley got the ball in a soccer game.

Durley was always the big kid. You may first have been introduced to him a few years ago as a 6-foot-8, 245-pound 13-year-old first baseman for his Saudi Arabian Little League World Series team, coached by his father, an American working in the Saudi Arabian oil industry. It was a novelty that generated enough fame he was a guest on Jimmy Kimmel's late-night talk show. But he was big minute he was born, when the nurses were snapping photos of this 22-inch-long baby with their hands up next to his feet.

"I'm like, 'Hello, sew me up,'" said his mother, Dana.

And this was a kid born two months premature. Aaron never did stop being enormous, and at some point between the flashbulbs of his birth and his move from Saudi Arabia to the United States at 13, Durley was just another kid trying to score a goal in a soccer game. To hear his father, James, describe it was like playing a game of marbles with a bowling ball. 

"He took out like two or three smaller kids along the way, and then he took out the coach that was playing with them," James Durley said. "After he did that, the coach took him out and said, 'Aaron, you're way bigger than the other kids. You shouldn't be doing that.'"

And so it was Aaron realized he could hurt people. Aaron doesn't like hurting people. That brings us to the present day. Aaron Durley has grown up, but he isn't that much bigger than he was when he shared the stage with Kimmel. He's 6-10, 280 pounds and his mom thinks he is still growing. He complains of ankle, knee and back pain, just like he did when he was an 11-year-old kid growing from 6-4 to 6-8.

"He's eating me out of house and home," she says.

Durley is a center for Fort Bush Bend High School just outside Houston, where he is not the biggest attraction. He shares the frontcourt with Cameron Ridley, a 6-10, 245-pound center who is a top-25 player in the class of 2012 while Scout.com doesn't rank Durley among its top 100 prospects. The two rarely even play at the same time, because Fort Bend coach Ronnie Courtney likes to run a full-court press, and that doesn't work as well with a pair of centers.

Truth be told, Courtney still is searching for the best way to utilize the biggest guy on the team.

"Aaron is one of those guys that has not found his niche," Courtney said. "He does so many things. I'm trying to get him something he can put his finger on and be really good at."

Courtney says Durley is among the team's best 3-point shooters, dribbles better than any big man he's ever had and is quick on his feet for a guy his size. In a game last week, Durley caught the ball outside the lane, then drove for a dunk. It was a flicker of dominance, but just a flicker. Durley Courtney said it was the first time he had ever see him do that.

"This dude, if he ever let the light come on, he would be a force to reckon with," Courtney said.

But the issue isn't so much one of illumination as it is one of empathy.

"He knows if he really puts himself into it and goes full force, he would hurt somebody," Courtney said.

Aaron is self-aware enough to know this. He's a "yes sir, no ma'am" kind of kid who is comfortable on camera. Polite and affable. Quick to smile.

"He's a gentle giant," Dana said.

Aaron is working on roughing up the gentle a little.

"I think there's certain times I'm not using (my size) the best way I can," he said. "As long as I keep growing mentally and physically, where I'll end up in three or four years can be something me and my family can be proud of."

The specifics of this untapped potential are the reason there is such considerable optimism about his career as a major-conference basketball player.  He needs to face people his own size, for once. Courtney says facing Ridley seems to bring out the beast in Durley, and when Durley played pickup games on recruiting visits to mid-major schools, he stunned the coaches and himself.

"He came back from a mid-major school visit and he was like, 'Mom, I think I hurt them,'" Dana said. "'I was just doing work on them.' I said, 'Aaron, to me, that's not where you need to be. You need to be challenged.'"

He needs to be challenged physically, which is the obvious part. The part some people miss is that he also needs to feel comfortable psychologically, which hasn't come easy. This is an American kid who grew up mostly in Saudi Arabia, where western culture is blocked out entirely and where people tend to live in small, familial communities. 

It's a bubble. 

"It's like growing up in the 50s," Dana said.

James and Dana liked the bubble, but thought they'd be stupid to have a 6-8, 260-pound kid going to school in a culture where knocking people over on the way to scoring a goal was considered a bad thing.

He needed to be someplace where knocking people over on the way to a goal isn't just considered OK, it's considered awesome. In America, James said, "It would have been perfectly acceptable."

So at 13 Aaron moved to Houston to live with Dana's parents. It was a heartbreaking time for Dana, who had to let her son move away a few years earlier than most moms would want, and it was a socially challenging one for Aaron, who realized he didn't understand the nuances of American culture.

"He had stuff stolen from him, he had his feelings hurt," Dana said. "Coming from the Little League World Series, he had to deal with jealousy and he didn't know where that was coming from. He's a good kid. He makes As and Bs. He loves school. He just doesn't get the relationships or the jargon.  He's cautious, almost to a fault."

So here was this enormous kid who grew up in Saudi Arabia, who had no friends, who was living with his grandparents and trying to understand how to relate to teenagers in a new culture while just trying not to hurt anybody.

"Aaron is a misfit toy," Dana said.

In the recruiting process, Aaron learned there was an Island of Misfit Toys out there, and it was the basketball team at a Jesuit, Roman Catholic university in Milwaukee, Wis.

Marquette had guys who were junior college transfers, guys who were unnoticed as recruits. It has one guy, a forward from Aaron's own high school named Chris Otule, who has an artificial eye.

It seemed like the kind of place a misfit might fit in. According to Dana, there's something about coach Buzz Williams.

"Somehow he completely can see something other people don't," she said.

At Marquette, they're looking at Aaron in the same way they looked at Otule, who was mostly ignored as a recruit and was averaging more than 17 minutes per game for the 17th-ranked Golden Eagles before losing his season to a knee injury.

"Determining the future of big guys is at times, very dicey," Williams said in November. "But our entire staff has seen Aaron multiple times and similar to where Chris was at this time in his development, I believe Aaron is on that same trajectory."

James thinks his son has some maturing to do. He thinks it's going to take good work by Williams and his staff to coax out Aaron's full potential. So many people don't understand Aaron, James says. They just see a big kid.

It has been five years since Aaron last played in the Little League World Series. It's been about nine than that since that formative soccer game in Saudi Arabia.

Which means that in just a few months, Aaron Durley won't have to worry about hurting people anymore.

"When I get up to Marquette," he said, "they'll unleash the beast."

[esotericmindguy]

Cue the Roseboro bit....

Good article.

[Tugg Speedman]

He's the best 3 point shooter on his team! Wow

[CTWarrior]

If you're going to take a flier on a kid, a 6-10 280 lb-er with solid academics and athletic ability is a good flier to take.  I have no idea how this will work out, but these are the kinds of things you need to do when trying to upgrade the program to the next level.  I look forward to Aaron joining the team.

[BrewCity83]

Awesome.  I can't wait to see this kid after Buzz gets ahold of him.

[Silkk the Shaka]

I can't wait to see what Durley can do after two years of playing against Gardner and Otule every day in practice and a couple off seasons with Todd Smith.  The fact that his coach praises his ball handling is encouraging.  It means he must have good hand-eye coordination.  If passivity is what he needs to get over to tap into his full potential, I'm confident this staff can cure him of that.  Got a really good feeling about Durley.

[🏀]

Good article. Will be fun watching him progress.

[MU_Iceman]

I think the best thing about this article is how both he and his parents seem to think that he needs to come up here and develop into a player...they all know and accept the fact that he's a bit of a project.  I can't wait to see how his career plays out!

[mu_hilltopper]

Marquette:  The Island of Misfit Toys

[Les Nessman]

Marquette:  The Island of Misfit Toys

The Marquette Misfit Toys would be an amazing mascot. A little odd, but totally unforgettable.

[reinko]

Marquette:  The Island of Misfit Toys

[GGGG]

The Marquette Misfit Toys would be an amazing mascot. A little odd, but totally unforgettable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SH1j1luFOw&feature=related

I vote for the polka-dot elephant.

[tower912]

6'11, 280.   Check.   Interesting backstory, check.    Wants to work, check.   Co-ordinated, but needs to learn how to use his physicality to play basketball, yes please.      I would like some of the guys who were trashing him to come back and explain why this is a bad signing.   

[MU Fan in Connecticut]

"Nobody wants a Charlie in the Box!?"

[Tugg Speedman]

Seriously ...

If Durley is a legit high-major project that we want, and this article suggests he is, then we have no room for Philip Nolan.

It seems like Nolan wants to come to MU.  So how does MU make room for a top 100 6' 10" guy?  Which misfit toy gets voted off the island?

Added later

http://espn.go.com/college-sports/basketball/recruiting/player/_/id/111668/phillip-nolan

This link is Nolan recruiting line from ESPN.  He is the #23 pf in the country and the #3 WI recruit behind Sam Dekker and J.P. Tokoto

[tower912]

These things work themselves out.   

[Dawson Rental]

Seriously ...

If Durley is a legit high-major project that we want, and this article suggests he is, then we have no room for Philip Nolan.

It seems like Nolan wants to come to MU.  So how does MU make room for a top 100 6' 10" guy?  Which misfit toy gets voted off the island?

See, you're getting close to starting that thread that most of us would not want to see.

[GGGG]

"Nobody wants a Charlie in the Box!?"

Unless he's got ups than that Charlie does.

[Tugg Speedman]

See, you're getting close to starting that thread that most of us would not want to see.

I know, but either we stop all the the treads about "we need bigs" (another was just started this morning) as we have no spots for a year or we talk about this unpleasant subject.

[GGGG]

These things work themselves out.   

Yeah and as I said in another thread, this is why the late signing period is in April...after the season.  If Buzz wants Nolan, and has some sort of plan as how this is going to work out, he's going to tell him to keep it to himself until after the season ends.  If Nolan announces he is coming here now, all hell is going to break loose - and that most certainly would have an impact on a team that is putting together a pretty nice year.

[wadesworld]

I know, but either we stop all the the treads about "we need bigs" (another was just started this morning) as we have no spots for a year or we talk about this unpleasant subject.

That was about a middle schooler.  Unless he's jumping from grade school to the Big East, I'm pretty sure we don't have to worry about any of our current players needing to leave or recruits not showing up to make room for him at this point.

[96warrior]

Why is there any need to talk about anything that none of us has any real information about? What is the point of speculation? It can only lead to bad things if in fact the guys read this board. There's enough to talk about between winning games and how Ox is doing and how awesome Jamil is coming along. Little Murs, I vote for the option about stopping the threads about things we know nothing about.

[Dawson Rental]

Yeah and as I said in another thread, this is why the late signing period is in April...after the season.  If Buzz wants Nolan, and has some sort of plan as how this is going to work out, he's going to tell him to keep it to himself until after the season ends.  If Nolan announces he is coming here now, all hell is going to break loose - and that most certainly would have an impact on a team that is putting together a pretty nice year.

+1.  I say we play along, and not speculate on what none of us will have an answer to anyway.

[Tugg Speedman]

This is a message board.  Uninformed speculation based purely on emotion is what we do, and do well!

[WarriorHal]

Durley absolutely needs to redshirt his first year. With Gardner & Otule back, Durley would get virtually no playing time next season.