Sure sounds like a kid who thought Prep School was an option all along...
http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archives/article_ec389e2c-4e8f-5861-91fa-1c06c71b82f7.htmlThe going-away party that never wasHeading into his senior year of high school, Newbill received minimal scholarship offers, all from mid-major schools.
So when he was watching Marquette, a consistent tournament team from the Big East, display its gritty style of play on TV with his friend, he decided to set a goal for himself.
“I was like, ‘Man, I’ll go there,’ ” Newbill said. “And my friend was just looking at me like, ‘Man, you got to be real to be on that level. That’s high-level basketball.’ ”
Yet, the Strawberry Mansion standout’s impressive final season seemingly helped him prove his friend wrong.
Toward the end of the season, the Golden Eagles’ staff, led by coach Buzz Williams, offered him a scholarship and Newbill said he did not hesitate to accept it from his top school.
Newbill’s excitement gradually rose as the months turned to weeks before he planned to arrive on Marquette’s campus.
“My mom was planning a big trunk party for me. She had a sign saying ‘D.J. Newbill, Marquette’ and everything,” Newbill said.
“It was probably a couple days before my going-away party that they took the scholarship away.”
Suddenly, Newbill’s excitement was replaced with frustration, his anticipation superseded by devastation.
There would no longer be a going-away party.
Newbill learned the crushing news in late June from his high school coach, Stan Laws, who told him the Eagles’ staff called to say the program wanted to “go in another direction.”
The exact reasons for Marquette’s decision to rescind Newbill’s scholarship were never publicized by the university.
Laws said at first the staff told him the reason for the release had to do with a problem with the application. But after reading between the lines, the high school coach said he felt the Eagles’ assistant coach, Scott Monarch, was not being completely up front with him.
“He kind of danced around the subject of why this and that,” Laws said. “I basically asked him, ‘What is it that you’re trying to say?’ And he just said, ‘I think Buzz feels like it would be best if we just part ways and D.J. find another situation.’ ”
Laws said the excuse of an application not being on file was invalid because the staff told Newbill to take his time with its completion just a week earlier.
Instead, he saw the release as a loophole to make room for Oregon transfer player Jamil Wilson, who the Eagles welcomed in his place.
“When that opportunity came for the Oregon kid to come in, they did it at any cost and at the expense of hurting a kid’s feelings,” Laws said.
Marquette Associate Athletic Director Scott Kuykendall declined to comment on Laws’ recollection of the release of Newbill’s scholarship.
“We wouldn’t have any comment on anything that [Laws is] saying like that,” Kuykendall said. “…There wouldn’t be anything from our end on it.”
Meanwhile, Newbill acknowledged that there were a lot of stories floating around, but said he ultimately tried to use the controversy surrounding Marquette — whose staff he said never spoke to him directly — as motivation moving forward.
“I was frustrated. I was devastated,” Newbill said. “I was a little confused. I was hurt. [My mom] was hurt. But, I guess things happen for a reason. The next day, I was getting calls from a lot of schools.”
Although most Division I programs had all of their scholarship slots filled at this point, Newbill ultimately received a late offer from Southern Mississippi three weeks later and he accepted it with open arms.
