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Yogi Ferrell's strange road to stardom

Zak Keefer, USA TODAY Sports
Indiana's Yogi Ferrell looks on during the second half of a Jan. 23 Big 10 contest with Penn State.  The Hoosiers defeated Penn State, 72-49.
  • In 2004%2C Ferrell was ranked as the top fourth-grade player in the country by The Hoop Scoop
  • Ferrell%27s father pulled him out of AAU basketball for Yogi%27s seventh and eighth grade season
  • Over his junior and senior year%2C Ferrell%27s Park Tudor team went 51-4%2C including two state titles
  • IU coach Tom Crean promised Ferrell the starting point guard position from the outset of his career

BLOOMINGTON, IND. — What does a father do when his son's head begins to swell, a mushrooming ego overwhelming his youthful ambition?

I want to be the best, Yogi used to tell his dad. I want to be No. 1.

And then, not yet a teenager, he became what he sought: The best.

In 2004 The Hoop Scoop, a college basketball scouting service, ranked him as the top fourth-grade player in the country. That prompted a front-page story in The Indianapolis Star. First, his family laminated it. Then they framed it.

Then he became a target.

He knows that now, as the freshman point guard piloting No. 1-ranked Indiana through the Big Ten gauntlet. He knows because he learned it back then, when opposing players entered the gym determined to outshine The Kid Ranked No. 1, when middle school defenses were designed to stop him, when an absurd ranking did far more harm than good.

It was the worst of the AAU grassroots machine, all its premature pressure thrust onto a 10-year-old kid who still watched cartoons.

That's when Kevin Ferrell, Sr., began to see it in his son. The things Yogi used to say – Come on dad, let's go to the gym. Let's go play – he didn't hear as often. The drive was declining.

"You're not nobody," Yogi's younger brother, Kaleb, told him during an argument one day.

"Google me," Yogi replied flatly.

His dad laughed. That's when he knew. Knew it was all too much too soon.

"He was walking around with an air, with a different persona," Kevin Sr. remembers. "He wasn't as focused as he once was."

His son needed a break. Yogi needed to be a kid again.

The hype machine

It's happened before. The Hoop Scoop tagged Demetrius Walker, age 14, as the nation's best eighth grader. His talent was raw, the hype real, the pressure immense.

Walker wore a target from an all-too early age, and he could never live up to it.

Those trials, which Sports Illustrated's George Dohrmann spent eight years documenting for his best selling book "Play Their Hearts Out," could have been Ferrell's trials.

Walker had a self-interested coach who ignored fundamentals, sidestepping player development for tournament titles and apparel contracts. Walker, his star, never improved. By his senior year of high school, the kid once dubbed "The Next LeBron James" by Sports Illustrated was the 115th-ranked player in his class. Walker is now a reserve for New Mexico, averaging five points a game.

"He never learned how to shoot a jump shot," Dohrmann says. "Never learned how to handle a loss. Or a win. Never learned how to handle adversity. The great things that athletics are supposed to teach can get lost so easily with AAU basketball."

Dohrmann hears the story of Yogi Ferrell, hears how his dad pulled him out of AAU in seventh grade to let him be a kid and work on his game.

"At a young age, there is zero harm in doing something like that," Dohrmann said. "It keeps him away from the vultures. It lets him bypass the hype machine.

"Because every time Yogi walked into the gym, just like Demetrius, he was the top target that needed to go down."

So the father decided they would step away. No AAU ball for seventh or eighth grade.

"I wanted to pull him out of the limelight," remembers Kevin, Sr., a stay-at-home dad until his divorce. "Basketball was our life. We were traveling every weekend. One day I just said, 'Lets get away from this.'"

They did. Yogi hung out with his brother and his two younger sisters. He played video games. He disappeared from the rankings.

"That pause allowed him to be a kid again," his mom, Libby, says. "I saw him get closer to his siblings during that time. He had fun. His summers weren't taken up by basketball."

They still played, Yogi and his dad, but without the No. 1 ranking hovering over every jump shot and turnover. They'd head to the YMCA or Lifetime Fitness for a pick-up game. They'd play at what they called The Saturday Gym, a cramped court at a church in Downtown Indianapolis.

"A really small gym," remembers Kevin Jr., who earned the nickname "Yogi" from his mom as a toddler because he had an affinity for picnic baskets like the cartoon character Yogi Bear. "We're talking tiny. The wall was pretty much the out-of-bounds line. Those were some tough battles, guys fighting.

"It taught me to be tough."

Away from the spotlight that once dogged him, he worked. Yogi spent hours in the gym with Shon Bolden, a local trainer who has guided the likes of George Hill, Jeff Teague and Tamika Catchings.

He learned, and improved, miles from the madness. Basketball was fun again.

"He wanted to go through the same workouts the older players were doing," Bolden recalls. "He'd go toe-to-toe with those guys in shooting contests. He was so determined to win. If he'd lose, Yogi would just say 'Let's do it again.'"

The drive surfaced again.

Dad, let's go to the gym. Let's go play.

The No. 1 ranking was long gone, passed off to another player navigating the AAU scene. Challenged anew, Ferrell returned to AAU as a ninth-grader. There was plenty to prove.

"I didn't know my dad was right back then, but I know now," says Yogi. "It was a great decision by him."

'Pulled everybody with him'

Darnell Archey had heard of Kevin Ferrell, Jr. – the kid they called Yogi, the kid that was once ranked No. 1 – but had never seen him play. Archey, a former player at Butler, was entering his first year as head coach at Park Tudor.

"I can remember our first open gym, just being mesmerized by his speed," Archey recalls. "When he had the ball, no one could stay in front of him. I knew he was going to be our starter from Day 1."

But the Panthers were young. They went 7-14 that year, losing eight of their last ten.

After the season, Archey returned to Butler as coordinator of basketball operations. Ed Schilling, a former college coach and NBA assistant, was brought in to lead Park Tudor.

Schilling's team would spend an hour a day on skill development – the very fundamentals ignored by Walker's coach during his AAU days. Slowly, Yogi's teammates improved. Slowly, he began to trust them.

The Panthers hit their stride late in the season, winning six straight in the state tournament before falling in the Class 2A title game by three points.

Over Yogi's junior and senior seasons, the Panthers won 51 games and lost just four, claiming back-to-back state titles.

"When you have someone with his talent set the bar that high for attention to detail, it was hard for our other guys not to see that," Schilling says. "He doesn't know a sloppy way of doing stuff. Every timeout, he would stare a hole in you. He was focused on every word, and that focus was infectious.

"He pulled everybody with him."

Yogi was back on the AAU scene, too, dazzling college coaches with his complete game. He was the point guard that could create for his teammates or step back and hit the deep 3, the one no full-court press could rattle.

All the while, Yogi held quiet faith in the rebuilding project Tom Crean was constructing in Bloomington. At one point during his recruitment, Yogi – once again a Top-25 player in his class – made things clear to the IU coach.

If you get Cody to commit, then I'm in, too.

On Nov. 11, 2010, Cody Zeller, an AAU teammate of Yogi's, announced he'd play for IU.

Twenty-nine days later, Yogi Ferrell did the same.

No. 1 again

Tom Crean kept his word. Throughout the recruiting process, Yogi says, his future coach promised him the starting point guard spot from the outset of his college career.

So there was Yogi in early November, guiding the No. 1 team in the nation from the opening tip. Nothing has changed since.

"I came here to turn the basketball program around," he says. "Bring it back to its greater glory days. And I feel like myself and my teammates, we've done that."

His speed has meshed well in the Hoosiers' high-powered offense. He talks of the joys of playing with a versatile big man like Zeller, a dynamic wing like Victor Oladipo.

He admits to the growing pains that often accompany a freshman season, notably his 5-for-20 shooting from beyond the 3-point arc and 27 turnovers in non-conference play.

"I'm gonna make mistakes, it's part of the game," he says. "But I have a very good short memory."

Ask which part of his game he wants to improve the most, and he does not hesitate.

"My shooting," he says. "I want to get it to where it's definitely a knock-down, pretty much like a Jordan Hulls shot."

Hulls, the senior often tasked with guarding Ferrell in practice, has welcomed an additional ball handler in the backcourt.

"He's explosive," Hulls says. "One of the quickest guys I've ever had to guard."

Said Crean: "I wouldn't trade him for any other point guard in the country, yet any other freshman. The guy brings it on both ends every night."

He's the kid that walked away from the AAU hype to hone his game away from the spotlight.

The kid that worked his way back, became a high school All-American and a two-time state champ.

A kid whose teams over the last three seasons have won 75 games and lost seven.

Yogi Ferrell, the can't-miss prospect that lived up to all the hype.

Zak Keefer also writes for the Indianapolis Star.

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