City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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For the second time in his three years at the University of Delaware, Curtis McRoy heard his name announced with the other starters for the Blue Hens’ men’s basketball team.

The junior walk-on guard was in the lineup for Delaware’s CAA opener against Hofstra on New Years’ Eve thanks to one of his teammates’ showing up late for a walkthrough, and he played 13 minutes in the 90-80 loss to the Pride, hitting a 3-pointer.

Either way, just the fact that McRoy has been playing at all for the Blue Hens is a rather unlikely story.

Because before he played for his school’s basketball team, McRoy first was a manager for the Blue Hens. And he was a terrible manager.

As a freshman at Delaware during the 2013-14 school year, the Annapolis, Md. native joined the Blue Hens’ men’s basketball program in that role, though only as a means to an end.

For the Archbishop Spalding (Md.) graduate didn’t want to stand behind the bench at games in a suit; he wanted to be on it, in a uniform.

And it showed.

“He was awful as a manager,” head coach Monté Ross said. “We’d need him to go get a towel and go wipe up the floor, and he’s shooting the ball.”

McRoy doesn’t take it personally, he’s well aware of his shortcomings. When he's got his mind set on something, he goes after it--the criminal justice/sociology double major also is doing a minor in legal studies, with hopes of working for the FBI or CIA after college.

First, he wanted to be a Division I athlete.

“We had a summer workout last year and I didn’t even know how to work the shot clock,” he admitted after Delaware's game against Villanova on Dec. 22. “I literally would just watch practice with a ball in my hand.”

So the entire coaching staff was relieved when, as a sophomore, McRoy didn’t have to manage anymore after he earned his spot as a walk-on.

As it turns out, that’s a job that he’s much more well-suited for.

When he’s on the Blue Hens’ bench, the 6-foot-2, 170-pound guard is almost always the first one up to cheer on his teammates and greet them after timeouts, pumping up the squad during a trying year that’s seen two of its top eight players go down to season-ending injuries.

“He’s a great, great teammate, he’s a tremendous teammate, and that’s the first thing you look for in a walk-on,” Ross said. “He’s always talking, whether he’s in the game, out of the game, on the bench, on the baseline in practice, or whatever. So I think from that standpoint he’s been exactly what you want your walk-ons to be, he’s terrific.”

When McRoy found out he had earned a spot on the team before the 2014-15 season, he called his father, and the two shared an emotional moment as McRoy became the second Delaware athlete in his family--joining older brother Connor, a four-year lacrosse player for the Blue Hens from 2011-14.

“I think my dad cried,” he said. “I thought I could make it, I thought I had the talent, but to finally have my own jersey was very, very humbling.”

Neither of them thought a year later that he’d be doing much more than just cheering his teammates on from the bench and contributing in practice.

Three games into this season, junior wing Devonne Pinkard went down with a foot injury against Fairleigh Dickinson that’s cost him the last nine games the Blue Hens have played. Five days after that, on Nov. 29, sophomore wing Chivarsky Corbett went down in a heap against Temple, and the diagnosis of a torn ACL followed quickly afterwards.

That left McRoy as the team’s only real backcourt option off the bench, with sophomore Anthony Mosley joining classmate Kory Holden and junior Cazmon Hayes in the starting lineup from that point onwards.

And before the next game, at Columbia on Dec. 6, McRoy found out that Holden was suffering from migraines, and wasn’t sure if he’d be able to play at all.

“I told Curt ‘look, you’re starting,’ and he hit two 3s in that game,” Ross said; McRoy finished with six points, four rebounds and two assists in 23 minutes. “There was never a conversation with him, and from that point on, he’s been our only guard sub off the bench. So he’s been ready.”

Including the Hofstra game, McRoy has played a total of 86 minutes over 10 games, scoring nine points on three 3-pointers and playing double-digit minutes four times.

With Pinkard set to return perhaps as soon as Delaware’s next game, against James Madison on Saturday, McRoy knows that his time making a serious on-court contribution for the Blue Hens might be coming to an end.

Next year, they’ll return the entire backcourt and add George Washington transfer Darian Bryant to the rotation. Like the vast majority of Division I walk-ons, McRoy’s role will shift back to making his impact felt in practices and from the bench.

“It’s not going to last forever,” McRoy said, “but I’m going to savor the experience.”