Big prospect again

Future is bright now for Jurick

What happens when "can't miss" misses?

Philip Jurick knows.

Three years ago, he was considered one of the top college basketball prospects in the nation. He picked the University of Tennessee and lasted a little more than a year in Knoxville.

Jurick's return has been traveled on a secluded path, filled with a lot of soul-searching and hard work, hoping to finally realize the potential so many others have seen in him.

At 6-foot-11, 266 pounds, Jurick hardly can go unnoticed, especially on a junior college basketball court. He's supremely athletic for his size, so anonymity becomes even more difficult for the former East Ridge High School star. But for the last two years, Jurick managed to disappear as best he could, admitting he needed a break from the notoriety that he was never quite comfortable with as a player or as a person.

After a redshirt season with the Volunteers, Jurick returned home and enrolled at Chattanooga State, hoping more individual attention in both the classroom and on the basketball court would help him mature academically, athletically and personally. The step back also seems to have prepared him to re-enter the college basketball spotlight.

"College was a tough adjustment for me," Jurick said. "To be honest, I wasn't prepared for being on my own like that -- being responsible for studying the way you're supposed to or knowing that you have to be smart about who to be friends with and staying away from certain people. I was just immature.

"I didn't like all the attention, and it was really good for me to come back home and get more comfortable with myself and just basically grow up a little."

SHORT SEC STAY

Once rated the 35th-best high school prospect in the nation, Jurick had a tumultuous year at Tennessee. According to one former Vols assistant coach and several others close to Jurick, the combination of not playing while taking a redshirt, adjusting to college academics and surrounding himself with the wrong friends -- including what two of his mentors described as a "toxic" relationship with an ex-girlfriend -- all led to Jurick leaving UT after just two semesters.

It also left him wondering if the only thing he had accomplished was to prove his critics right when he returned home and found he was short on options and second chances.

"Being at Chattanooga State isn't a glamorous thing or something people talk about wanting to do," Tigers coach Jay Price said. "The light had gone dim when he got here. He had a lot of the wrong type influences around him, a lot of people hanging onto him, and he felt like everybody was trying to use him for something. That faded after he got here, and that light is back as bright as ever now.

"What he lacked when he came to us was experience and self-confidence. We gave him the opportunity to play and play a lot. It was up to him to get better -- to succeed or fail. I think he wants to prove people wrong. He really worries about what people say and think about him. It's a weight on him. He wants people to like him, accept him and think he's a good person and a good player."

College coaches certainly agree on his talent. Jurick is averaging right at a triple-double -- with 10.6 points, 12 rebounds and an astounding 9.4 blocks per game as the season wound down -- has Price taking around 30 calls per day from recruiters. Among junior college players, Jurick's rebounding average ranks in the nation's top 10, and his blocked-shots average is nearly twice that of the second-closest player.

Oklahoma, Georgia, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Auburn, West Virginia and Oklahoma State have made scholarship offers. Several others -- including most of the rest of the Southeastern Conference, as well as Cincinnati, Southern Miss, Cal State Fullerton and UTEP -- have told Price they will make offers soon.

Tennessee coaches began re-recruiting Jurick last season and made calls to Price earlier this year, but Jurick has informed them he is not interested in returning to play for the Vols.

"Defensively he's at the top tier of anybody I saw or played against in the SEC," said Price, who was a prep All-American before graduating from Brainerd in 1988 and eventually became the starting point guard at Tennessee. "He has great timing and a knack for blocking the shot and keeping it in play to rebound and outlet-pass it.

"He's got two years of eligibility left, and every coach I've spoken to said they believe he can come in and make an immediate impact."

MOVE FROM FLORIDA

When his parents divorced, Jurick's mother moved to the Chattanooga area from Florida. A short time later, as a 6-foot-7 14-year-old, Philip moved out of his dad's house in Florida and joined her in East Ridge. Because of his size, he immediately became a focal point in the local basketball community.

"It was kind of crazy at first," Jurick said. "I guess because of my size and the fact that I was a pretty good player, I got asked about coming to play at a couple of the private schools in town and a bunch of the public schools. But I already had friends in East Ridge, so after moving I just wanted to stay where I was comfortable.

"I would always have it in the back of my mind that anybody I met just wanted to use me because I was good at basketball. Maybe they thought if I made it I would help them, and that was the only reason they wanted to be around me. It was tough for me to be able to trust anybody."

After averaging a triple-double as a junior, Jurick quickly grew tired of the ceaseless calls and visits from college scouts. He decided one night, after stepping out of the shower and seeing 11 missed calls and several more text messages, to stop the process by committing to Tennessee. Without taking an official visit, Jurick and his mother drove to Knoxville before his senior season to commit to UT coach Bruce Pearl in person.

With his college future now settled, Jurick's averages dipped a little during his senior season, frustrating Pioneers coach Jon Goddard to the point that he sat him out for long stretches of games in hopes of stoking the player's competitive fire.

"I've never known Philip to have a bad attitude," Goddard said. "But to know his potential and then see him just give you a little bit of effort instead of all he had, it was tough to get his attention and make him want to work to realize how much better he could become. He was a really good high school player, but he could have dominated every game.

"His mom worked real hard and did all she could in raising him, but I think what was really tough on Philip was not having a father figure around all the time to push him. It took a while, but he's had a lot of positive male role models who have come into his life and tried to make a difference."

POSITIVE INFLUENCES

One of those men is Ron Bishop, a former national champion coach at Tennessee Temple University and the founder of SCORE International ministries. Bishop began mentoring Jurick during high school and still talks to him at least once a week, meeting him for lunch or just calling to check in and allow Jurick the chance to talk openly about problems or ask for advice.

"When I first started working with Philip, he seemed like a young man who was going to get totally lost in the shuffle if he didn't have a positive male role model in his life," Bishop said. "He has the talent to play professional basketball, but the influences around him could have caused him to lose all of that potential. He was a kid wandering in the wilderness, looking for a way out."

Proximity to home was the deciding factor in Jurick's first college choice. After returning home and beginning the process of re-establishing himself as a viable Division I prospect, he planned to play one season at Chattanooga State to get his grades in order so he could enroll at UT-Chattanooga. He needed a total of 60 hours to get into UTC but came up one class short -- a failed speech class from the summer semester -- and opted to return to Chattanooga State for a second season rather than sit out the first half of this season at UTC while trying to earn the credit he would need.

"I wasn't surprised when things didn't work out at UT," Bishop said. "There were a lot of things going haywire in his life at that time. And when he didn't make it into UTC it was another case of people saying, 'Philip screwed up again.' But he went right back to work, and now nobody else can take credit for what he's done. Philip finally made up his mind that he was going to make it."

Bishop, Goddard and several others close to Jurick said the aborted attempt to play at UTC may have been better for both parties because it not only allowed him another year to mature, but now he has the chance to get away from some of the negative influences that still lurk in Chattanooga.

"Philip has had his eye on being a major college basketball player and playing professionally beyond that for a while," Goddard said. "If he's going to follow through on that plan, he has to get away from some of his old buddies around here."

Similar to the way his sometimes laid-back approach to the game frustrated his high school coaches, Jurick's apathy toward schoolwork left teachers wondering how to inspire him. East Ridge guidance counselor Shelia Smith said the distractions on and off the court made a noticeable change in a young man she felt always was more comfortable away from being the center of attention.

Smith said she believes the change in Jurick is real and he now appears capable of handling the next big step in his life.

"It's hard, when you look at him, not to see the basketball potential first because of his size and demeanor," Smith said. "Not many people get beyond that. But if you do, there's this really shy young man looking for direction, and that's what he needed more than anything. I think that's what he found at Chattanooga State, because he seems more confident in what he wants for himself now.

"The thing that has always stood out about Philip to me is no matter how many times he messes up, he always picks himself up and tries again."

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