Moss Article

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Great read....

MSU men's basketball: Moss took the long road to MSU

By JEFF WELSCH, Chronicle Sports Editor

If Marvin Moss thought wind sprints were drudgery, and if he thought studying for exams was sheer torture, he had his rude awakening in the summer of 2003.

Sprints and studying were nothing like waking at dawn every day to carry a lunch pail to work, hammering nails at a construction site, and laboring until dusk before collapsing wearily at your dad's home.

Such a life is fine for some, but for a 19-year-old still harboring basketball dreams - and realizing he was flushing them down the proverbial drain - it was misery.

The menacing scowl etched on his face on the court became permanent off it, banishing the wide smiles and hearty laughs for which he's known.

"I hated it," he said. "It just wasn't for me."

Fear has a way of lighting a flame that no amount of lecturing from a parent, coach or teacher can ignite.

For Moss, now a starting junior forward for the Montana State men's basketball team and a key to its surging fortunes, this was the nadir of his young life.

The solution was purely academic.

He had slid under the report-card radar at Wheaton High School in Silver Spring, Md., partly because he didn't play basketball until his junior year.

He did just enough to stay eligible, then struggled so mightily at Moberly (Mo.) Junior College two seasons ago that he was flunking out.

"I just wasn't good at school," Moss said Wednesday, "and I wasn't good at asking for help."

So that summer he moved to his father's home in Washington, D.C., took the construction job, pondered a future without hoops and, as he puts it, did "nothing positive."

Enter Mark Arce.

Re-enter Walter Ray and Abigail Salazar.

Arce is the coach at West Hills Junior College in Coalinga, Calif., and an acquaintance of Ray, an Amateur Athletic Union coach in D.C.

Ray didn't want Moss' athletic gifts wasted. Arce had known about the muscular 6-foot-6 forward from Ray the previous year, so he needed no sales pitch.

"I loved his size the first time I saw him," Arce said, "but when I watched him play I couldn't believe how skilled he was."

Basketball was easy. Academics were not.

Moss first had to spend the summer catching up on his grades at a junior college in Bakersfield, Calif.

Once at West Hills, Arce had Moss and grade-savvy teammate Danny Lainhart, now at Utah State, sit at his kitchen table and scarf mini-pizzas while burning midnight oil.

"He's not a dumb guy; he's really smart," Arce said of Moss. "Once he had a really good semester, it kind of shocked him into being a good student."

Moss was everything advertised on the court: He led West Hills in scoring, rebounding, blocked shots and steals while finishing second in assists.

Arce calls him the most complete player he's coached. He also calls him one of his "all-time favorite players, and probably the easiest to coach."

Arce laughs as he remembers the fear Moss' scowl and burly physique initially put into people at West Hills.

"Once people got to know him, they fell in love with him," he said.

By that time, the challenge wasn't selling Moss as a person or student, it was finding a basketball home.

Because of Moss' vagabond ways, he was, ironically, now flying under the basketball radar. But Arce and MSU coaches Mick Durham and Scott Carson have known each other for years, and the West Hills coach knew the Bobcats were reloading with transfers.

MSU won over Nevada-Las Vegas and smaller schools near Moss' home in D.C.

"To be honest, they also did the best job of recruiting him," Arce said. "They did as good a job as anybody I've ever been involved with."

Here is where Salazar re-enters the picture.

Salazar and Moss had known each other since third grade. She became his girlfriend in eighth grade.

They've been together ever since, and he credits her with his earning grades just good enough to maintain high school eligibility. He also said not having her guidance at Moberly contributed to his woes there.

"My girlfriend told me I had to buckle down," Moss said. "She helped me get my act together."

Moss wasn't certain how he'd fare at MSU on his own, but when Salazar agreed to join him, he was sold.

In their short time here, he says with a familiar laugh, she's put so much time into helping him that he's actually ahead of her graduation pace.

Moss figures he'll need an extra year after his eligibility expires, but says he'll probably put off playing overseas until he has his degree in sociology.

In the meantime, he is grateful to the people who helped him get where he is today, and he couldn't imagine a better place to play.

After that one month of work in D.C., neither wind sprints nor exams nor the biting chill of 20-below zero are too arduous by comparison.

"I just put on 30 pairs of pants," he says, laughing again. "I love it here."