LITTLE ROCK — NCAA rules forbid Scotty Thurman, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville men’s basketball team’s director of student-athlete development, from on-court instruction of players. That's left to the official coaches. But Thurman has discovered his new job, which focuses on helping players off the court, has led to improvement on it.
Take, for example, a 19-year-old Razorback — a role player on last season’s squad — who recently went to a community service event for senior citizens but wasn’t sure if he’d enjoy it. “He got there and those people fell in love with him,” Thurman said. “He had a big smile on his face and said ‘I had so much fun in there. Those old people, man, they were fun.’
“I said, ‘But you know, one day you’re gonna get old and you’re gonna wish you had a young spirit come in here and put some of that energy in you … those fans in the stands, they’ve got those smiles on their faces, too, because they’re happy to see you too, so keep it going.’”
“He came in this morning and we had pre-game and he was bouncing off the walls,” Thurman said before a November home game. “He said, ‘I’m ready to go,’ and I think a lot of his development is because he’s doing things like that. He sees it’s just not about [him], it’s about covering other people too.”
“You’ve just really seen him turn that corner as far as maturity for a young man.”
Making Arkansas basketball players more responsible is at the heart of Thurman’s role as a sort of off-court auxiliary coach, a position created in the UA staff after a 2009-10 season which started with five Arkansas basketball players suspended for violating unspecified team rules and included three athletes identified in a rape complaint that didn’t result in charges.
This, possibly the rockiest episode in a two-season span involving multiple transfers and suspensions.
During it all, Thurman was in Little Rock, where he landed after a globetrotting basketball career. He started a business which refurbishes homes in the Parkview High School area, and had his sights set on coaching high school ball. Indeed, last spring he coached the sixth- and eighth-grade teams at Episcopal Collegiate School while teaching introduction to broadcast journalism.
But that path detoured when the new director gig opened up this summer, giving Thurman an opportunity to rejoin the program he'd helped lead to consecutive national championship games in the mid-90s, but has since slid into mediocrity.
Thurman jumped at the opportunity. "If I'm gonna sit at home and have all these opinions and say this and say that and listen to people say this and say that, then I may as well get into the fight and try to do my part and make [the program] go where I think it should go."
Nowadays, his part includes confirming players make it to class on time (through texting), helping coordinate study time and community service events, making the team’s schedule for next season (he received a text from tournament organizer Eddie Fogler about the possibility of playing in the South Padre Island Invitational during the interview) and daily check-ins with each of the players to nip problems in the bud.
He also stresses career planning, and encourages his players to look at summer jobs as not merely an opportunity for extra cash, but to network and hone social skills.
“Basketball’s only gonna bounce for so long. You can make a living doing it, but at the end of the day when you shut it down you got to to be able to do something else.”
Which isn't to say Thurman, 36, has completely shut it down.
Before taking the job this summer, he scrimmaged with Razorbacks such as Courtney Fortson, Ronnie Brewer, Dontell Jefferson and Jemal Farmer, and won his first five or six games, he recalled. Marshawn Powell, Thurman’s teammate during those games, has a slightly different take: “He played a couple times, but those bones are too old. He's too old," he said, chuckling. "You can tell him I said that, too."
Thurman occasionally gives Razorback sharpshooter Rotnei Clarke advice on how to get his shot off better. Clarke, a junior who makes about 3.5 threes a game, should soon join Thurman and Pat Bradley as one of the most prolific three-point shooters in school history. So, who would win in a fundraiser shoot-out involving these three marksmen?
Thurman unleashes a smile as easily as the arcing trey that doomed Duke’s chances in the 1994 title game.
“I don’t think anybody could beat me,” he said. “It’s something about when the lights come on.”