By Dana O'Neil of ESPN
Translator: @Lin Molei Editor: Burren
Hollywood has brought many exciting sports stories to the big screen and achieved great commercial success. "Dreaming of a Pure Heart", "Loki", "Brave Little Giant", "Crazy Golf", "Little Stick Breaks the World", "Kung Fu Dream", "The Rushing Age", "Baseball Angel"... Most of these titles are familiar to you and me.
At the end of these films, the protagonists always create miracles, and finally their dreams come true, indulging in their own shining moments.
In fact, the needs of real-life counter-attackers are not a miracle, they are waiting for only an opportunity, as long as God gives their dreams a little loose, they can turn into a butterfly and complete the drama of the diaosi counterattack.
And that's the story of Duncan Robinson. The University of Michigan's sub-scorer was once the team's leading scorer at Williams College, a tier 3 league institution based in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
The leap from a three-tier alliance that does not offer scholarships to a first-tier alliance is not simple at all. Aside from Robinson, only two people have been able to do it this season, one is Matt Hart of George Washington University, who used to be at Hamilton College, and the other is Vermont State University's Dylan Sinnicison, who is from Matilda College, but they can't match robinson, who has a good performance.
"I just told him, 'You have the ability to play here, you should be convinced, we all believe in you.'" Michigan coach John Behring said, "Slowly, he himself accepted the fact. ”
Accepting and fighting for it, and constantly improving his shooting accuracy, Robinson now averages 12.5 points per game, and is already the top four three-point shooter among college players in the United States (61 percent from three-point range).
How do dreams come true? This is simply the bridge of the movie. Robinson trained hard all the time, coupled with the right timing and a little bit of luck, and he was finally appreciated by Bó Lè. Behring was the bole who turned the nail on the head, and although he didn't have a wand and couldn't fly, some of them were just whistles and tactical boards.
Few major league coaches go to the third division to pick players, no matter how good those players are, the door of the first league team is difficult to open to them, and the coveted scholarship is basically insulated from them.
But Bellin has worked at lower-level institutions, starting with Nazareth College in New York and then Le Moni College. He was well aware that there were some jades that were trying to carve themselves, but most of these jades were not excavated or directly ignored.
"I don't think there's anything wrong with me, I just look at them from a different perspective," Belling said, "do you know how many good coaches those players have been coached?" 0 pcs. Only by bringing them to the right environment and giving them a fair chance can you know what they will grow into. All children are like this. No one believed Curry's ability to play at a first-tier league school, and no one foresaw Curry's current achievements. All we've done is give these sixteen-year-olds a chance and then witness their growth for the next five years. ”
In fact, Robinson's late success still has some precursors. When he was a rookie at Gavina Middle School in Massachusetts, he was just a 5-foot-6-foot-stickman who couldn't even play as a substitute. Gradually, he began to grow taller, about a few inches a year. But his height made him more clumsy, and he moved like a newborn foal. In his third season, his physical condition finally met the minimum standards of the last game, and after growing 11 inches taller, Robinson, who trained hard, finally became a real basketball player.
Robinson spent the summer honing his craft. He trained with the Middlesex Magic of the AUU Championship and spent his days in the gym to perfect his jump shot. Even so, no team was interested in giving him the chance to play in the collegiate league, so he had to spend a year of preparatory course at Phillips Exeter College.
Later that year, after Robinson scored 24 points and 10 boards, he was named the tournament's most valuable player, and under his leadership Phillips Exeter Academy, he played a 28-1 record, winning the first A-league title in the school's history.
Williams College coach Mike Meckell met Robinson that summer — Middlesex Magic coach Michael Corody Jr. is an alumnus of Williams College — and invited him to a trial that summer. Merkel was a disciple of Coach Behring, who spent two years as a teaching assistant for Behring at West Virginia University and built the same offensive system at his school, which was in need of shooters.
Williams College is the sports hegemon of the tertiary institutions. In all sports, it has won 28 national championships, and its men's basketball team has reached the final four of the tournament seven times.
So when Merkel sent him an invitation to study, Robinson was overjoyed.
'I'm totally ready to play there for four years and I'm thinking about winning everything I can for my team and I want to win the national championship.' Robinson said, "I am fascinated by the school's basketball atmosphere and glorious traditions. ”
Like all tertiary institutions that don't offer scholarships, Williams College is at the bottom of the U.S. college sports food chain. Chandler Stadium can only accommodate a maximum of 1600 spectators. According to data released by education fairness in the United States, the annual salaries of all 16 sports coaches at the academy add up to nearly two million dollars less than That of Behring.
Merkel is a successful head coach. In 2014, when Robinson joined the team, Williams College reached the league final four again, for the third time in six seasons in charge of Meckel, and the team eventually won a second runner-up trophy.
In June of that year, he was hired by Marest College, so he left Williams.
On the occasion of parting, Meckle encouraged Robinson to be brave enough to fly high and not to let his dreams stop at Williams College.
Robinson hoped he could let him go and sent transfer applications to other colleges. But he was not hopeful.
"Then unexpectedly, all the coaches responded and offered us travel tickets." Robinson's mom, Elizabeth, said, "It's unbelievable! ”
But most of these teams only regard Robinson as a walk-on player who runs the dragon suit, and cannot give him any guarantee of playing time. For Robinson and his family, these conditions make no sense at all. When he was just a high school kid dreaming of basketball, Robinson had no interest in sitting on the cold bench in his sweatshirt, even though the gym would be bigger. He wanted to play the game.
"You can play anywhere." Elizabeth added.
In the beginning, Behring gave the same conditions as other coaches: a walk-on position. But because he knew Merkel well and knew that his disciples not only evaluated players in terms of talent, but also considered fit with the Michigan system, Belling was somewhat curious about Robinson. In July 2014, he contacted Robinson and asked for some footage of his game.
"I finished watching the tapes and saying to my teaching assistants, 'Maybe it sounds crazy, but this kid seems to be really qualified.'" "My teaching assistants agree with me. ”
On August 4 of that year, he sent Robinson a text message saying he would give him a call in twenty minutes. Robinson, who was at home, immediately gathered a large group of relatives and friends, and when Belling's phone rang, everyone was by his side.
According to Robinson's recollection, Behring was a bit wordy, expressing a fondness for the way he played, and believing that Robinson was a good fit for the Michigan system, and to prove his interest in Robinson, Belling also promised a scholarship to the University of Michigan.
So I put down the phone and told everyone I had a scholarship. The house exploded with flowers. Robinson said.
Three weeks later, Robinson was in Ann Arbor. It seems that his new teammates are a little suspicious of this new player, wondering if this guy from a third-tier league academy can get a foothold at this level, but it is not too obvious. They welcomed Robinson, and then everyone began to get to know each other.
Robinson had some illusions as if nothing was real, as if everything were just illusions in the mind. In his first amateur game, he threw some goals, as he was used to.
"I kept thinking back in my head, 'Wow, I'm really standing here.'" Robinson recalled.
According to the rules of the NCAA, he had to watch for a while as a transfer student, so Robinson began training in his own way. He was still very thin, 6 feet 8 inches tall, but only weighed 185 pounds. But now he's gained 210 pounds.
Following the Hollywood storyline, Robinson would have scored a double-double in his first game. But in the real world, he didn't.
The truth is that in a showdown with Northern Michigan University, he screwed up his only shot, and he only got 4 rebounds on the technical statistics table.
Behring fed him chicken soup after the game reminded him of his grueling high school career, and it was those days in the gym that made Duncan Robinson, who plays in the first division today.
In the next game against Ellen University, Robinson scored 19 points off the bench and gave a perfect answer of 6-of-6 in just 18 minutes. Fifteen of those points came from three-pointers, and he also made 2 of 2 free throws on the free throw line.
Robinson, who has now scored in double figures in seven consecutive games, has set a new team record held by Spike Aribukert, and Robinson's superb shooting skills are indispensable on the Way forward for the Wolverines.
At the end of the season, he has two more years to strengthen his physical condition and full of self-confidence. Of course, his basketball dream will never stop there.
"I think every college player's dream is to play professional basketball." Robinson said, "I'm certainly no exception. ”
What reason is there not to fight for it?
His path to counterattack will only be more exciting than the movie.