Former Bearcats star Gurley ready to shine at USC

By David Cloninger - Herald correspondent

COLUMBIA -- The telephone sat on the counter, dark and silent, constantly mocking him.

No matter how badly Tori Gurley wanted that phone to ring, needed it to ring, it quietly perched undisturbed as the minutes of Gurley's life ticked by.

How had it gotten like this? Gurley was a two-sport star, great enough to earn scholarship offers for football and basketball. He had a state championship ring from each sport. He had the genes, passed from his former basketball standout father. He had the mental makeup, built and coaxed from a childhood that had always directed him to this point.

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None of it helped as Gurley stared, unblinking, at the phone, desperately trying his hardest to force it to ring. Even a wrong number would be preferable to the interminable waiting.

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After graduating from Rock Hill High School in spring 2006, Gurley was on his way to the University of North Carolina on a football scholarship, where he'd been promised a chance to compete for the basketball team as well. There were bright days ahead.

“Tori was very athletic,” said his basketball coach, Bobby Stevens. “The one thing that we noticed right away, we called him, ‘MDR,' — Miniature Dennis Rodman. Because he always had a knack of getting the ball, and not when it hit the ground, when it was above the rim.”

Gurley, now a redshirt freshman at South Carolina, was packing for Chapel Hill, N.C., when he got the word there was a problem. He did not academically qualify.

Gurley packed and re-packed over the next two years. He traveled more than 1,800 miles from Birmingham, Ala., to New Hampton, N.H., to Charlotte, with stops in Rock Hill in between.

Gurley wanted to go to Hargrave (Va.) Military Academy, but the school didn't have a scholarship available. He instead moved to Birmingham to help care for his grandmother, Ann Glover, who had lost a leg to diabetes. He worked two jobs, saving money for Hargrave, and returned to Rock Hill in April 2007.

Playing pickup ball at Charlotte Country Day School, Gurley ran into the next phase of his life.

“The University of North Carolina happened to be there, running their basketball camp,” Gurley said. “Wes Miller, Tyler Hansbrough, they were out there playing.”

The Tar Heels needed an extra camp player and remembered Gurley from his recruiting visit. He didn't need to be asked twice.

“I played the game of my life that day,” he said, beaming. “Marcus Ginyard, he couldn't defend me. I just played exceptionally well.”

One of Miller's friends was in the audience and approached the 6-foot-5 kid who had run the Heels ragged. He told Gurley he coached at a prep school and could use a center/power forward. Gurley replied that he was flattered, but he wanted to play football in college.

“He said, ‘We've got a football team, too,'” Gurley said. “I woke up the next day in New Hampton, New Hampshire.”

“One, we were all very impressed with his physical stature and capabilities,” New Hampton assistant football coach Matthew LaMotte said. “I'm more of a football guy than a basketball guy, but from the get-go, he was a football guy. We were all pretty convinced of that.”

New Hampton allowed Gurley to resume his two-sport career, putting him on the field for 40 catches, around 700 yards and 12 touchdowns in the fall and 10 points and eight rebounds a game in the spring. North Carolina and several other schools noticed and his recruitment began again.

Gurley didn't think he'd get the same offer if he re-chose UNC, so he pledged South Carolina and again packed his bags.

The phone rang.

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Gurley's good mood collapsed. Incredibly, his transcript was again red-flagged. The NCAA Clearinghouse determined his SAT score was too high.

“They said the best thing I could do was to re-take the test,” Gurley said.

His mom, Tonja Childers, sent her son away from Rock Hill a second time, asking him to live with friends in Charlotte and study where there were no distractions. “I told him, ‘This is going to be a birthing stage for you,'” Childers said. “‘You just have to tune everybody out.'”