The other he kept to himself, out of sight, and except for one moment of vulnerability, out of the conversation.
T.J. Burch, accompanied by teammate Kellen Pickett, represented Wright State at the postgame press conference in the Nutter Center Thursday night after the Raiders had fended off Youngstown State, 93-83.
The victory evened the score with the Penguins who had beaten the visiting Raiders six weeks earlier in the Horizon League opener.
After starting the season 5-7 overall, WSU is now on a roll, having won seven straight.
A big reason is Pickett, a skillful 6-foot-9 freshman from Fort Wayne, Ind., and especially Burch, a 6-foot-1 sophomore guard who transferred from Ball State and was inserted into the starting line-up seven games ago.
He’s been the team’s leading scorer — 16.7 ppg over that seven-game span — and a catalyst of the turn-around.
Thursday night he had the best game of his college career: 24 points, 7 assists, 4 steals, 5 rebounds and no turnovers.
And that last stat brings us to that basketball in front of him.
It’s a Wright State prop meant to foster perfection, a reminder to hold onto something you cherish and not lose it.
It’s meant to cut turnovers.
Pickett explained: “We had a problem in the summer with turnovers. We turned it over a lot in practice and for turnovers, we used to just run. We’d get on the line and run.
“Then coach came up with an idea for ball security. We’d put our family names on (a basketball.)
“Everybody’s family names are on the basketball and then someone takes it home and brings it back the next day and gives it to someone else. It’s about ball security.”
Head coach Clint Sargent later explained how he came up with the idea.
“I don’t know if I was at church or just had some quiet time, but it was like, ‘Man, the greatest motivator is not fear, it’s love,” he said.
“’How about we get a ball and everyone is going to write on it who they’re playing for? And then we’re going to keep that ball and it’ll go everywhere with us.’”
As he and Pickett talked about it, Burch looked at that ball filled with all those magic marker names and explained the players’ commitment to the concept:
“It’s my week (for the ball), so I brought it with my everywhere. I slept with it. Ate with it. Practiced with it.
“This is really like our family here. It’s everybody on the team’s relatives. It’s who they love and care about.”
Asked whose names he’d added, Burch smiled and spilled:
“I’ve got Madison and Paisley, my little sisters. I’ve got my mom (Nakia) and my dad (Todd)…and I’ve got my girlfriend Marie.”
Asked more about his girlfriend, Burch, for the first time all night, seemed caught off guard and stumbled into a verbal turnover.
“Well honestly...I don’t even have a girlfriend.”
What?
He managed a small laugh and so did Puckett, who said, “Next question.”
Later, in private, Burch explained.
His girlfriend had been Jade Marie Walton. They were athletes at different high schools back in Mansfield, Texas outside Dallas. She’s now a freshman soccer player at Morehead State.
“We just recently broke up,” he said quietly. “Well, she broke up.”
He said she knows her name is on the ball.
Hopefully, that’s prophetic. After all, it is a no turnover ball.
Along with hoops, it might also work for the heart.
“Yeah, maybe we’ll get back together,” he said with a smile which soon melted.
As an outsider looking in, you wished she would have been courtside Thursday to seen what she’s missing.
Burch — with a white headband holding the top thatch of his hair in place, his gametime chatter sometimes matching his quick feet — was a fan favorite again because he plays with such joy and fearless passion.
Even though he came off the bench for the first 11 games this season, he leads the Raiders in steals and assists and is third on the team in scoring (10.6 ppg)
Against Youngstown State, he often drove straight down the lane at the Penguins’ 7-foot freshman center Imanuel Zorgvol from Suriname.
Credit: Bryant Billing
Credit: Bryant Billing
A couple of times he got his shot stuffed, but more often he found a way to snake the ball in, once doing so after a whirlwind spin in the lane that got him knocked sideways to the court. As he was falling, he flipped the ball up...and in.
There was one 2 ½ minute span in the first half when he took over the game and scored eight of the Raiders’ 11 points.
And in the final minute of the game, when the Penguins were pressing full court, Burch took the ball and zigzagged through three defenders like a Harlem Globetrotter juking his way through the befuddled Washington Generals.
Pickett mentioned that afterward: “It’s nice at the end of the game when they’re pressing us, you can throw it to TJ and know it’s gonna cross half court. It’s a good feeling.”
His final summation of Burch was perfect: “Hey man, I see a ball player!”
Finding family
Such praise has roots in Burch’s family.
“Let me give you the rundown,” he said proudly. “My genes run deep.
“My dad (Todd) was at the University of Toledo. He played cornerback.
“My Uncle Alfie Burch played at Michigan and then went to the NFL. (He was in camp with the Dallas Cowboys before going to the Canadian Football League.”
“My cousin Boom Herron played at Ohio State in the NFL and his brother Dave played for Michigan, too.
“I have an uncle from my mom’s side who was the leading scorer at Kent State and my first cousin — Faith Burch — she’s No. 22 for the Youngstown State women’s team."
The Burch family comes from Warren and that’s where TJ lived until the sixth grade when his family moved to Dallas, where his dad is a teacher and coach.
He starred at Mansfield High and then a Texas prep school and was committed to McNeese State for seven months when head coach Will Wade left for North Carolina State.
Left scrambling, Burch decommitted and looked for another school late in the recruiting process.
He finally found Ball State, where he came off the bench in 21 games last year and averaged 9.5 minutes and 4.9 points per contest.
“After high school, it was humbling,” he admitted. “But I was a freshman and figured I’d just work hard and learn how to play college basketball.”
But the position coach he liked, Ben Botts, left for the Miami RedHawks and soon other coaches and several players left the program, too.
He entered the portal and NJIT (New Jersey Institute of Technology) flew him out for a visit.
Before he got on his return flight he said Sargent contacted him and WSU flew him straight from New York City to Dayton.
Sargent and assistant coach Dan Bere picked him up.
“I got in the front seat and started talking to the coaches and within 10 minutes, without even getting to the campus yet, I knew I was at home,” Burch said. “They cared about me as a player and as a person and I felt good.”
Sargent said Bott had told him about what an uncovered gem Burch was, but after a while he said he also saw, “a lot of pain. He was wounded.”
It had to do with his unfulfilled college career so far.
“I was looking for guys who wanted to be coached, guys who believed, ‘I have a lot of potential, but I’m nowhere near it. Will you help me?’” Sargent said.
“And I felt the same way as a coach. I felt I can do it, but I hadn’t yet. I probably needed him as much as he needed me.
“I was like, ‘Let’s figure this out together.’”
‘The ball works’
Burch said this Wright State team is the most connected — on the court and off — that he’s ever been on.
“We’ve been building the foundation for this since the first day I got here,” he said
That’s why they were able to withstand the loss of super freshman guard Michael Cooper, the team’s leading scorer who missed four games with an injury before returning for 15 minutes of play Thursday night.
“We’re all playing for each other,” Burch said.
That’s why the idea of that no-turnover ball works.
Guys take it seriously, Sargent said, and he has the stories and photos to prove it.
He said he’s gotten pictures of players strapping a seat belt around the ball in their car. Someone took it along when he ate at Chipotle. He saw a shot of guard Solomon Callaghan tucking it into bed one night.
“It’s gone to California with us; really it’s gone everywhere,” Sargent said.
He said it’s only been lost once, when a freshman left it on the upper rack of a bus the team had traveled on.
He said they got it back just before a big game with IU Indy and have played well since.
Thursday night the Raiders played one of their best games. They had only seven turnovers.
“The ball works,” Burch said.
He was talking about hoops and hoping it did for heart, as well.
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