Rebounding from adversity

This is part 1 of a two-part series on junior forward Patrick Hazel.

In college basketball, much like life itself, things don’t always follow a designated path or go entirely according to plan.

If things always worked out like they were supposed to, Ohio State University and the University of Kansas would have squared off for the national title while Butler University and Virginia Commonwealth University would have been afterthoughts by the end of the NCAA Tournament’s first weekend.

But aside from all the upsets that generally define March Madness, the reality of things not working out applies strongly to individual players.

It is the exception and not the rule for a player’s collegiate career to pan out just how he envisioned it coming out of high school. For every Kemba Walker, there are hundreds of other players who didn’t fully realize their dreams or were unable to properly rewrite their stories when preconceptions got derailed.

Inevitably, storybook endings are in short supply in college basketball.

This is a script and a lesson that Patrick Hazel knows well. The Boston University junior forward has experienced the setbacks and disappointments that plague many careers on the college hardwood, but he has also been able to redefine both his game and himself amidst such adversity.

Hazel’s path that led him to BU is undoubtedly a unique one that can be traced back several years ago to New Jersey’s Blair Academy, where Hazel played one post-graduate season.

Though he didn’t possess the flashy, eye-popping statistics associated with the game’s top prospects, Hazel drew praise and attracted attention from college coaches for what doesn’t find its way to a box score – that is, a work ethic and tenacity on the court that allowed him to do many of the tasks most players shy away from.

Hazel’s image as a blue-collar player, one who was a force on defense and the backboard, gained him considerable attention from a number of mid-major programs including University of Rhode Island, University of Massachusetts and Lehigh University.

But from the moment he got to Blair, the Jamaica, N.Y. native didn’t have to look further than across the East River come early March to see where it was he wanted to end up – under the bright lights of Madison Square Garden in the nation’s premier basketball conference, the Big East.

Soon enough for Hazel, it went from a dream to a goal realized as he was given and accepted an offer to play for coach Tom Crean at Marquette University.

“That was my goal when I first got to Blair Academy. I told my coach I wanted to play in the Big East,” Hazel said. “It was amazing when I finally got the offer and Tom Crean came up to see me play. It was a treat and going there, it changed my life.”

While the chance to be able to play in the Big East at a revered program like Marquette was certainly a major accomplishment for Hazel, some remained skeptical and uncertain of the decision to bring in the scrappy big man.

“I’d say Crean reached on taking him – it was something he did seemingly every year at Marquette because he had such a hard time landing bigs,” said Todd Rosiak, the Marquette beat writer for The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “It was pretty clear early on that it would be a while – if at all – before Hazel would be in the rotation.”

Outside skepticism aside, Hazel faced something of an uphill battle upon arriving in Milwaukee. Playing for the Golden Eagles represented another sharp transition in Hazel’s career, having gone from high school in Queens to his year at Blair and then to one of the biggest stages in college basketball.

The move was a considerable one, and Hazel acknowledged that it made him feel overmatched at times early in his freshman year. Nonetheless, he remained focused on sticking to his game and paying his dues, and he emerged from his first season with modest numbers in limited minutes, showing signs of potential as a prospect that many felt needed time to develop before emerging as a critical player.

But mere weeks after Marquette’s season ended, everything changed.

Crean accepted the task of rebuilding the storied Indiana University program and Marquette promoted assistant coach Buzz Williams to take the reins of the team. Gone was the man who had sat in Hazel’s living room and convinced Hazel to move halfway across the country to play for him.

The plan had gone awry, and while there were initially hard feelings, Hazel grew to understand the decision.

“I did feel a little abandoned and betrayed, but as I grew and after the initial shock was over, I understood he’s a coach and he’s going to try to get to where he wants. Everybody has goals,” Hazel said. “I just looked at it like he made a business decision for himself, nothing personal.”

While there was a sense of continuity with Williams being promoted, a fundamental change in the program had occurred.

In a sharp break from Crean’s detailed and calculated approach to the game, Williams simplified everything around the Marquette program. Compounding this was what came to be a rocky start to the relationship between Hazel and his new coach. Hazel admitted he was ready to leave as soon as Williams got the job, but he ultimately decided to stay with the Golden Eagles.

Despite the early friction between Hazel and Williams, Hazel progressed during his sophomore season, almost cracking the starting lineup while averaging 2.3 points and 2.1 rebounds in 12 minutes per game. There was a sense that perhaps he was turning the corner – that while he wasn’t likely to develop into a star, there was a chance that with continued improvement he could become a key contributor to the program down the road.

However, there was an inherent reality that lingered and simply couldn’t be ignored – Hazel was brought into the Marquette program by Crean, who had a specific vision for Hazel’s role within the team. Hazel, above all, was his guy, and with Crean miles away in Bloomington, Ind., Hazel was left with a coach in Williams with whom he had no real connection.

“The biggest thing was Pat needed time to develop, but he got thrown into the fire early under Buzz because there was simply no one else to play aside from the starting big guy at the time, Dwight Burke,” Rosiak said. “I always got the sense Pat was fighting an uphill battle with Buzz, in part because he wasn’t a kid Buzz recruited, but also because he wasn’t good at following game plans or directions on the court.”

Even though Hazel acknowledged that he and Williams grew on each other as the season progressed, he could not escape a particular feeling of being an outsider playing for a coach who didn’t recruit him, a coach that had his own plans for the program that would be executed by his own players.

Increasingly, Hazel felt that he was no longer part of Williams’ vision for Marquette’s future, and after his sophomore season came to a close, Hazel talked things out with his family and decided the time had come to move on and transfer.

“We had some good times, but it’s a lot different when you’re not playing for the guy who actually recruited you,” Hazel said. “He had a long-term plan in his mind, I just wasn’t a part of it.

“He had his own recruits, his guys, and I wasn’t one of them. I just wanted to give it a chance and see what happened and it didn’t work out, but no love lost between him and me.”