NCAA tournament berth would sweeten eight tough years for Winthrop’s Jimmy Gavin

N.C. State had won 87-79, but after Winthrop guard Jimmy Gavin torched the Wolfpack for 38 points in late November, coach Mark Gottfried had one question for reporters:

“Holy smack. Is that Jimmy Chitwood or Jimmy Gavin?” he wondered, referencing the fictional character from the basketball movie “Hoosiers.”

Fast forward several months and Gavin is a leading contributor trying to help the Eagles get back to the postseason with a Big South championship, a testament to a personality and set of beliefs forged in a life that’s challenged him the last eight years.

Anyone familiar with Gavin’s struggles that watched him bang in one 3-pointer after another at N.C. State’s RBC Center would have been giddy. A person who’d overcome such heartbreak was finally getting the sweet fruits of his labor and devotion to the game.

“It definitely warms my heart to see him happy,” said Gavin’s mother, Susan, this week. “That’s all I can wish for, is for the kid to be happy.”

Highlights from Gavin’s 38-point outburst against N.C. State:

Extraterrestrial

Gavin’s performance against State - a series of audacious transition 3-pointers were part of the third most points scored in RBC Center history - had reporters scrambling for information on the unknown assassin.

None of those people knew Gavin - a grad student using his fifth and final year of college basketball eligibility at Winthrop - had been in the hospital less than 24 hours earlier after a bout of stomach flu. Gavin has Crohn’s disease and his digestive tract is a fragile ecosystem that has to be carefully managed.

Winthrop assistant coach Brian Kloman picked up Gavin after a Thursday mid-afternoon phone call and hurried him to Piedmont Medical Center. Kloman reckons that Gavin vomited 11 or 12 times before he was finally seen by a doctor and administered an I.V., and medicine.

Later that night, Kloman floated the idea of Gavin sitting out the following night’s game against the Wolfpack. Gavin looked at his coach and said, “you know I’m not human?”

“He was done, like done. In crazy amounts of pain in his stomach,” Kloman said. “Then he goes out and just hangs 38 on N.C. State the next day. From that point on, I started calling him ‘The Alien.’”

Kloman and Gavin now greet each by touching an outstretched index finger. The connection is a nod to the movie E.T., and Gavin’s otherworldly ability to wrestle with the incurable illness.

Drained

Kloman was struck by how well Gavin seemed to handle his uncontrollable vomiting at the hospital. That’s because Gavin is a veteran of gastrointestinal wars.

He first felt Crohn’s symptoms as a seventh grader in Arlington Heights, Ill., northwest of Chicago, but it was another three or four years before the illness was firmly detected, oddly enough by a chiropractor after a litany of doctors were unable to make a diagnosis.

Crohn’s is an autoimmune disease, making it very difficult for medical testing to nail down. Crohn’s causes the overproduction of a protein that begins to kill good and bad cells alike in parts of the digestive tract, usually in the small intestine or colon. That causes painful inflammation, which produces vomiting, diarrhea, fever and any number of other symptoms.

Gavin struggled to digest food and his body suffered. He became anemic because of iron deficiency and his weight dropped under 100 pounds in high school.

An avid hooper, Gavin played ninth grade basketball for John Camardella at Prospect Heights High School. Camardella took the school’s varsity coaching job the following season, but never coached his prodigious freshman shooter again.

“As much as he wanted to make things happen, and it was his dream to play, his body wouldn’t let him,” said Camardella.

Crohn’s - with its vomiting and diarrhea and discomfort - is tough enough. It’s even more difficult for a teenager already grappling with the physical and mental tectonics of puberty.

“You’re getting sick, you don’t feel good, you’re drained,” said Gavin. “I was always the type that I didn’t talk about it either. I would tell my parents, but as little as I had to. I was trying to deal with it on my own.”

The thing that gave Gavin the most mental confidence - playing basketball - was unavailable because of his condition. He would attend Prospect Heights games to watch his friends play, but he kept his distance from the program. It was too painful to watch.

“I felt badly that his talent was being wasted while he was dealing with this disease,” said Camardella. “And before we knew it he’d graduated from high school.”

A bad movie?

Gavin - the oldest of three brothers - attended Mississippi State in the fall of 2011, a decision that he made in reaction to Crohn’s. He wanted to escape the Chicago area for a fresh start, but tragedy brought him back to Arlington Heights within a year.

Gavin’s middle brother, Jack, was riding in a car with a friend after midnight when it skidded off an icy road into a tree. Sixteen-year old Jack - a budding artist and volleyball player - died in the single car accident.

“He is the child that woke up with a smile on his face and went to bed with a smile on his face,” said Susan Gavin. “He just was a bright light.”

Gavin calls Jack his angel and he gave the eulogy at his brother’s funeral. It was March and after about a week and half he went back to Mississippi State to finish the semester. He existed in a zombified fog for the next six months, present in physical form, but not mentally or emotionally. Looking back, his parents, Mike and Susan, and youngest brother, Grant, recognized the same feeling.

“It totally takes you out at the knees,” said Susan. “A fog is really what you’re in, which is hard because I’m the parent. You’re trying to show strength, but you barely have it.”

Gavin went back to school that fall but the trauma and grief he’d tried to bury hit him full-on. It manifested through insomnia and restlessness.

“I couldn’t really continue being in school because I couldn’t sleep,” he said.

Gavin withdrew from school and returned home. He had dreamed of playing professional sports. Instead, his dreams were dashed and his middle brother was gone. And Crohn’s had gone nowhere.

“I already was kind of cold and not doing things that I cared about,” because of the illness, Gavin said. “And then when that happened it just kind of put me over the top.

“Is this a bad movie? I felt like I was living in a movie about myself and it was horrible because it was so surreal.”

Throwing himself into it

When Gavin returned to Illinois he began seeing a family friend and therapist. The pair talked about basketball and how trauma can freeze people’s lives. In a way, Jack’s death spurred Gavin to confront two of his biggest sources of conflict: Crohn’s and his unrealized basketball dreams.

“When I got in the gym by myself, that’s when I said ‘I actually want to do this again.’”

Basketball served two purposes: it got Gavin moving again and gave him something else to focus his energies toward.

“I really wanted to put a smile on my family’s face,” he said. “Just wanted to give them something to be proud of, bring some joy back to them.”

In a hypothetical movie of Gavin’s life, 2011 was the nadir. In the same film, 2012 would be the comeback montage.

In a typical week that summer, he would play pick-up on different nights at Northwestern University, Joy of the Game gym, Triton College, The Warehouse and Roosevelt Park. Former college basketball player Jelani Floyd first crossed paths with Gavin in 2012 at an open gym and the two have remained friends since.

“When we were playing the only thing going through my mind is you hate him because he’s so good,” said Floyd. “He was making every single shot.”

Gavin began playing at Full Package, a local AAU program run by Steve Pratt, who has trained a number of college and pro players. There were stretches where Gavin would work out twice a day at Full Package, before returning in the evening for pick-up games against college and pro players.

“If I wasn’t there, I’d be doing push-ups at home or running hills,” he said. “I threw myself into it.”

Gavin’s basketball comeback reached another level when he traveled east with Pratt to tryouts at Hartford and Fairfield University. Neither were interested, but after impressing during a workout at Bradley University, Gavin finally had his chance.

“We were really pleasantly surprised at his athleticism and skill-set,” said former Bradley coach Geno Ford. “But when you factored in that he hadn’t played high school, it was a little bit shocking.”

Opportunities

Bradley was an eye-opening and necessary experience for Gavin. He played in just 10 games as a walk-on before his season ended in February following an emergency surgery caused by Crohn’s scarring. A foot of Gavin’s small intestine, permanently damaged by the illness, was removed through a four-inch incision in his abdomen.

The surgery, carefully managed diet and improved medicine regimen had Gavin in control of his Crohn’s for the first time. In practice, Gavin was threatening to crack Bradley’s rotation and Ford said he planned to offer him a scholarship ahead of his sophomore season. Instead, Gavin decided to move on in search of more consistent playing time.

“I knew he was gonna be a good player, I just thought it was gonna take some time and I thought he really needed game experience,” said Ford.

An assistant coach told Gavin to go to the school “where you can be the player you see yourself being.” He found just the place about an hour from home. Wisconsin-Parkside was a perfect fit.

Coach Luke Riegel had developed Parkside into an annual Division II power and Gavin was able to contribute immediately, averaging 16 points per game and making 40 percent of his 3’s in his first season.

Riegel said Gavin got by initially on natural ability. In the second year, he became a more complete player, reading and thinking through the game instead of just relying on shooting or dribbling skill. Improving on defense was also crucial, especially in one of the best Division II conferences in the country.

“At times he struggled with that, particularly against teams that moved a lot,” said Riegel. “In open gym, you guard your guy and that’s it.”

Gavin led the team in scoring the second year, averaging 17 points while guiding the Rangers back to the NCAA tourney. He also got comfortable with life as a college basketball player, fitting into the team dynamic and also taking charge of his diet and illness.

“We leaned on him. He basically told us what he could eat and couldn’t eat,” said Riegel.

Parkside’s budget didn’t allow for many special orders so the team ate a lot of the burrito restaurant Chipotle, one of Gavin’s go-to meals.

“By the end of the season,” said Riegel, “I didn’t want to see another Chipotle sign for another six months.”

Last stop

Gavin and Winthrop coach Pat Kelsey’s shared affinity for Chipotle was the first good sign for the Eagles once Gavin decided to transfer to Division I. He spoke with around 50 schools in just a few weeks, narrowing the decision down to Drake, Pepperdine and Winthrop. Gavin visited Pepperdine.

“I was really worried. It’s Malibu,” said Kelsey. “It’s only the most beautiful place in the United States of America. But that’s Jimmy; he’s not into who has the prettiest scenery.”

Gavin chose Winthrop for two reasons; he saw a hole in the roster he could fill and he felt the Eagles were poised to win a championship. He’s done his part in advancing those aims, averaging 18 points per game, leading the team in assists and making first team All-Big South, while scoring 20 or more points 12 times.

Kelsey is just as proud of Gavin for talking to a handful of young Crohn’s sufferers after various Winthrop home games or visiting sick children in the hospital on different occasions. Affable and bright, Gavin is aware of the pedestal college athletics affords him.

“I think with everything I’ve been set up against and given the strength to overcome, I feel like purpose has really been placed on my shoulders,” he said. “I could obviously be in the moment and play basketball but I do think I have a responsibility to share my story. Even if it just inspires one person out there, that person might be able to start their own journey.”

Basketball-wise, Geno Ford thinks that the game repetitions Gavin got at Parkside are the biggest reason for the player’s instant success at Winthrop. Confidence was never the issue for Gavin; he just needed the right shop window to display it. Luke Riegel, who gave Gavin the opportunity “that changed my life,” was hardly surprised by his former player’s outing against N.C. State, or his seamless and immediate impact on Division I basketball.

“When we played Wisconsin in exhibition games, he believed he was as good as anybody on the floor,” said Riegel.

At the next crucial step of his college basketball odyssey, Gavin found a coach in Kelsey with whom he’s entirely simpatico. A details-nut, Kelsey said Gavin remembers every tiny nuance from practices. Kelsey text messages Gavin some nights just to check in and the player will respond with a lengthy, terminology-filled essay about a specific play from that day’s practice.

“I was just saying what’s up?” Kelsey said.

What better finish?

Gavin’s college experience - as unusual as it’s been - has set him up for a likely pro career. What level and where is uncertain, but it dawned on Jelani Floyd as he watched his friend cook N.C. State last November that to count Gavin out of the NBA would be a mistake.

“I believe in Jimmy being able to surprise people,” said Floyd, who played overseas and plans to help his friend land on a pro roster somewhere. “This won’t be the last people hear of him.”

Gavin’s basketball career is really just getting started; Friday’s second round Big South tournament game will be just his 100th official game since ninth grade. But his days in Rock Hill are winding down.

“People will remember him, not just because he was a prolific scorer the year he was here, but he did a lot of things off the court,” said Kelsey. “His imprint is gonna be left on this program for a really long time. Hopefully it’s a really indelible one based on what we do these next four or five days.

“It’s sad in a way that I don’t get to coach him very much longer, because it was fun.”

Given the parity in the Big South, it’s possible Gavin’s Winthrop career won’t have a fairy tale ending. But wouldn’t it be neat?

“Just the whole concept of my college career has been different,” Gavin said. “It wasn’t like there was a role model - ‘oh, I want to follow his career.’ Every step of the way was kind of new territory. For us to win a conference championship and go to the NCAA tournament, I mean, what’s a better finish to the story? You couldn’t write it any better.”

This story was originally published March 3, 2016 at 5:27 PM with the headline "NCAA tournament berth would sweeten eight tough years for Winthrop’s Jimmy Gavin."