ORLANDO, Fla. — In the opening moments of the Colonial Athletic Association championship game last week, College of Charleston guard Ryan Larson was chasing a loose ball and violently crashed into UNC Wilmington's Shykeim Phillips. Larson crumbled to the floor, holding his elbow.
"It was a major collision," Charleston coach Pat Kelsey said. "I know his elbow has given him problems the majority of the year. I could tell. I was like, 'Uh, oh.' But he's got so much grit and toughness and tenacity, like you'd have to saw his arm off to get him out.
"And then he'd probably still play."
Larson finished with 23 points, four 3s and four steals, ignited the Cougars' second-half comeback and was named tournament MVP.
"That's something we pride ourselves on," Kelsey said of his 31-3 team that faces No. 5 seed San Diego State in the NCAA Tournament on Thursday in Orlando. "There might be another team as tough as us, but there's not a tougher team in the country.
"You know, we're not the tallest. We're not the most talented. We sure as heck don't have the smartest head coach in the world. But we've got toughness in droves, man. That's one of our deals. We identify that in recruiting. If you're not tough, it's hard to play here."
This is the hornet's nest the Aztecs are flying across the country to poke a stick in.
"They're like an East Coast version of us," coach Brian Dutcher said. "They play hard. They compete at a high level. They're on the floor for every loose ball. They're tough-minded. The more I watch them, the more they remind me of us. What we emphasize in terms of (offensive) style is different, but we both play the same way, with grit and determination."
Dutcher has a roster full of shoulder chips. Guys like Darrion Trammell and Micah Parrish, who didn't have Division I scholarship offers out of high school. Guys like Matt Bradley, who transferred from the Pac-12 and sacrificed personal statistics so he could win. Guys like Jaedon LeDee, who transferred twice in search of fellow gym rats.
Larson, nicknamed "The Mayor," is the lone Charleston player with NCAA Tournament experience, going as a freshman with Wofford but not scoring in two games. He transferred to Charleston for his extra COVID season because Wofford doesn't offer post-graduate degrees, turning down overtures from power conference programs because he dug the Charleston "vibe."
He's one of six transfers on the roster. He's the only one from a Division I program.
Dalton Bolon and Pat Robinson III came from Division II West Liberty University in West Virginia. Ante Brzovic, a bruising 6-foot-10 post from Croatia, came from Division II Southeastern Oklahoma State. Jaylon Scott, a high school teammate in Texas of Colorado State star guard Isaiah Stevens, came from Bethel, an NAIA school in a rural Kansas town of 1,814. Charles Lampten, Brzovic's 6-11 backup, came from Dawson Community College in Glendive, Montana (enrollment: 400).
"Consummate hoop dudes," Kelsey calls them.
Huh?
"Skip Prosser, my mentor, the other way he put it was he wants 6-to-3 guys," Kelsey said of the respected Xavier and Wake Forest coach. "A 3-to-6 guy shows up at 3 (o'clock) and leaves at 6 and does the bare minimum. A 6-to-3 guy is the guy who leaves at 6 and does everything he can until the next day he gets to practice at 3 o'clock to be a great player.
"That's taking care of your business academically. That's taking care of your responsibilities. That's taking care of your body. It's extra repetitions. It's weight room. It's film. We have a roster not only full of hoop dudes from great dudes, guys who are about the right things."
The poster child is Bolon, their leading scorer. He had a bloody eye and knee in the CAA final.
Size: 6-4, 205 pounds. Age: 24. Nickname: "Psycho D."
He grew up in Gnadenhutten, Ohio, on the Tuscarawas River that celebrates Pioneer Days in August and an Apple Butter Festival in October, more of a wrestler and football player at Indian Valley High before trying basketball (and nearly getting cut). He had no offers and walked on at West Liberty, redshirting his freshman season and then becoming a three-time Div. II all-American after amassing 2,245 points and 351 3s.
But here's the thing: 84 of those 3s came while wearing a patch over his left eye.
"Like a pirate," Bolon said.
In high school, legend has it, he was hit by a car the night before a football game and suffered a cut in his leg that would require 30 stitches. Fearing he would miss the game if adults found out, he super-glued it closed and played.
During a pickup basketball game at West Liberty, he had his eyelid ripped open. They sewed the eyelid back together, but he sliced a cranial nerve and had severe double vision. So he had his mother buy at eye patch at a local Walmart and kept playing.
"When I found out he'd shot 41 percent (from 3) wearing an eye patch, I was like: 'We need to sign him,'" Kelsey told the Charleston Post and Courier newspaper. "The coaches at West Liberty told me he was the most tenacious kid they'd ever coached."
Bolon arrived at Charleston for his COVID year, only to break a foot three games into the season. He petitioned the NCAA for a medical waiver that somehow was granted, giving him a seventh collegiate season.
Robinson was one of his teammates at West Liberty and has a similar story. Division II Holy Family University in Philadelphia offered him a spot just days before school began but didn't get him housing or a meal plan for the first semester. He slept on a couch in a buddy's apartment.
"I came into that season with this huge chip on my shoulder," Robinson told the Post and Courier, "and that hunger has never left me."
Robinson transferred to West Liberty, scoring 1,677 points in three seasons with a left-handed shot that Kelsey describes as "funky looking," bringing the ball across his body and releasing a high-arcing rainbow from his right hip.
He's one of seven guys on the roster who has made at least 20 3s this season, but that's what happens when you launch 30.2 per game (1,027 on the season), second in Div. I behind Cornell's 30.4. They make 10.1, which ranks 11th nationally.
"They play with tremendous freedom on offense," Dutcher said, "but to do that, they're required to play really hard, which they do."
They're built in the image of their head coach, a 5-9, tatted-up son of a Marine with bulging eyes who can still knock out 75 pull-ups at age 47 and jumps into practice to run the point on the scout team. He wakes up at 4:30 a.m. and is peeved the local Starbucks changed its opening hours from 5 to 6 a.m.
With no other options at 5-9, Kelsey left Cincinnati to play a season at Wyoming in 1993-94 (pre-Mountain West) before transferring back home to Xavier under Prosser. He was on Prosser's staff at Wake Forest and Xavier, then spent nine years as head coach at Winthrop in Rock Hill, S.C.
Charleston hired him last season, and the Cougars went 17-15. Kelsey scoured the transfer portal for "hoop dudes," from West Liberty and Bethel and Southeastern Oklahoma State. They won 20 straight, rose as high as No. 18 in the Associated Press poll and won a CAA-record 31 games – one more than David Robinson's Navy team in 1985-86 en route to the Elite Eight.
The rotation goes 10 deep. Six guys average between 9.0 and 12.3 points.
Hoop dudes.
Consumate hoop dudes.
"They try to tear each other's face off each day in practice," Kelsey said recently. "It's not for the faint of heart. It's nasty. But I want dudes to go to practice every day trying to earn minutes. Don't like your playing time? Do something about it."
