For La Salle star, Glen Mills was godsend

No way, Aaric Murray would tell himself. No way.

Despite the prodding he would get from well-meaning people, there was no way he was going to step onto a basketball court, the tallest kid in the group, and have everybody gawk at him and laugh because he didn't know what he was doing.

"I was too embarrassed," Murray said recently as he stretched out the long legs that prop him up to 6 feet, 10 inches. "I didn't want to be the tall kid out there not knowing how to play ball, so I wouldn't do it. That was when I was 13.

"Then three years went by, and God just snatched me off the streets and sent me to Glen Mills. That was when my life changed."

Look at Murray now, a freshman at La Salle, running up and down the court with the grace of a gazelle, rising up and swishing three-point jump shots with a delicate touch, leaping to block a shot or snare a rebound, and it's difficult to fathom that it wasn't until he was 16 that he finally gave in and stepped onto a basketball court.

Now 20 years old, Murray is one of the more intriguing freshmen in college basketball because the skill and athleticism he possesses are rare for someone his size. He is intriguing also because this is only his fourth season of organized basketball, his first on the college level, yet he appears to be on a trajectory that could make him dominant.

"For La Salle to get a player of his caliber is a real credit to their [coaching] staff," George Washington coach Karl Hobbs said last week after Murray scored 21 points on 9-for-11 shooting in a 65-64 La Salle win. "I see him as the best player in the league [Atlantic Ten] within two years."

Murray's career at La Salle began in fits and starts, but his recent play suggests he's gotten past the adjustment phase. He seems to have a handle on what the college game is about and on his role with a senior-dominated team. Murray, who will play at the Palestra tonight for the first time, in a Big Five game against Penn, was named A-10 rookie of the week Monday after averaging 19.3 points, 9.0 rebounds and 3.3 blocks the last three games.

It's been a meteoric rise for Murray, who was raised in North Philadelphia before moving to Frankford six years ago with his mother, Latoya Murray; sister, Aaricka, 15; and brother, Darrick, 8. Unlike most coveted recruits, Murray wasn't discovered on the AAU circuit. He first caught the attention of college recruiters in the summer of 2008 at an NBA Players Association camp, competing against elite prospects.

Until he heeded the advice of the coaching staff at Glen Mills, Murray couldn't see any of this coming. For good reason. Back when he was refusing to play basketball, he was also conning his mother into thinking he was attending school. More often than not, he wasn't, which is why he ended up at Glen Mills, a boarding school in Concordville, Delaware County, for court-adjudicated male delinquents of high school age.

"My mom always thought I was going to school," he said. "But I'd find some girls who weren't going to school. Their moms would be working, so I'd hang out at their houses. Or we'd hang out at the Gallery. Some guys I was hanging around were selling drugs. They had nice cars and all the girls."

Said Latoya Murray: "I was flabbergasted when I found out he wasn't going to school. At the time, I was getting up at 4:30 a.m., working at the Navy Yard. I'd have him take his sister to school. He'd come home with his books as if he was going to school. He was a slickster."

The day a judge ordered Aaric to attend Glen Mills for 15 months because of truancy was difficult for Latoya Murray. She would miss her firstborn, of course, but she said education is a priority in her world, so off he went, subject to the disciplinary demands of a place 20 miles from home.

"My kids are everything to me," Latoya said. "What I do, I do for them. The city streets weren't safe for Aaric. I knew I'd miss him. He's a good person, and he's smart. School comes easily to him when he puts his mind to it. I knew it was tough love, and tough love hurts everybody."

Aaric Murray said Glen Mills was a life-changing experience, even though he hated it at first. He said he learned to appreciate the value of an education. He learned how to dress properly, to respect others, to play basketball. It turned out he liked Glen Mills so much he stayed after the mandatory 15 months had passed.

"If I hadn't gone to Glen Mills, I'd either be dead or in jail," he said. "Mom looked out for me, but she couldn't give me everything I wanted, so I probably would have started selling drugs and got locked up or playing with guns and gotten killed. Glen Mills was a wonderful turning point for me. It was a blessing from God. I wasn't going to do it on my own in the streets."

"I saw him change after he took up basketball," Latoya said. "It made a kid who felt like he was a nobody feel like he was something. They gave me my son back."

Murray said his college decision came down to La Salle or Villanova. As so many schools from the more visible Big East beckoned, he stunned basketball aficionados when he chose a university from a mid-major conference that had long been down on its basketball luck. Typically, the mid-major schools lose recruiting battles against schools from the so-called power conferences.

"I wanted to stay in Philly, and I wanted to blaze my own trail," he explained. "I wanted to go somewhere where I'd be needed. So I decided to come here."