Scrambling to find a new home for his final year of college basketball, Tucson native Talbott Denny was on the phone with Cal State Bakersfield earlier this month, with a scheduled visit to Ball State in his back pocket.
Then Sean Miller called.
“I said, ‘I’m taking that,’” Denny said.
For Denny, it wasn’t just the Arizona basketball coach on the phone. It was Denny’s home on the phone. It was his life calling.
The Arizona Wildcats? Offering Denny a scholarship? Are you kidding?
This was a toddler who was carried into McKale Center on his father’s shoulders during the height of the Lute Olson era until he was no longer free as a 2-year-old, forcing his parents to buy him his own season ticket.
This was a player at Lipscomb who sometimes used his parents’ password so he could log on to the Pac-12 Networks in his dorm and even on the team bus just to watch Arizona games, earning constant needles from teammates and coaches over his split loyalty.
In between, this was a youth who rarely missed a UA home game in person until his senior year at Salpointe Catholic High School, on hand even for a game the Wildcats nearly lost in 2009-10 to … Lipscomb. Officials ruled that a game-winning three-pointer left Nic Wise’s hands just before the buzzer, saving Miller’s first Arizona team from certain embarrassment.
“To this day, everybody at Lipscomb feels they won that game,” Denny said. “I remember it. Me and my friends were sitting up there saying, ‘How can we be losing to Lipscomb? What is Lipscomb?’”
Both head coaches on the floor, Miller and then-Lipscomb coach Scott Sanderson, might have had questions about Denny then, too. Still a sophomore at Salpointe that season, Denny was on exactly no major college recruiting radars at that time.
Sitting in the McKale seats, he looked likely to stay there.
“I didn’t even know if he’d make high school basketball,” said Denny’s father, Steve. “He did pretty well at Salpointe but I had no idea he’d make it into college. He’s always overachieved.”
To get on the floor next season, Denny — a graduate transfer with one year of eligibility remaining — will have to overachieve again. The Wildcats are loaded with five-star talent, especially on the perimeter, though they are young and not terribly deep.
That’s where Denny may have a niche to fill.
“With Talbott, you get an experienced kid to come in and help mentor your younger guys,” said Pima College coach Brian Peabody, a former club coach for Denny who helped in his recruitments out of high school and also this spring.
Once the UA offered Denny a scholarship last month, Denny just had to weigh taking a limited role with the Wildcats against playing significant minutes or starring elsewhere.
“I was kind of in-between on it but I talked to one of my former teammates (Carter Sanderson), who walked on to Syracuse two years ago,” Denny said. “He was like, ‘If I had to choose again, I would have gone to Syracuse every time.’ He said it was just an unreal experience moving up to that level.
“And coming back home, it’s ridiculous the amount of support I’ve already gotten. It’s been my team since I was born.”
Denny, 22, is the Wildcats’ kind of player. It wasn’t always that way.
Young Denny was big and active, “a bowling ball,” Steve called him, with Steve and Tracy Denny noticing some unmistakable hard-wiring in their child early.
“As a child, Talbott was quite a load,” Denny’s parents wrote in a “get to know you” letter to St. Cyril School before his fifth-grade year. “He was always off the charts for his age in height and weight. He was quite an eater as a baby. He would often wake up in the middle of the night and stay up for 2-3 hours wanting to eat more and more. (Hard on Mom and Dad). Even as a baby, you could tell that he was passionate about his activity, whatever that was.”
Steve Denny was a wrestler who grew up in Indiana — meaning he also loved basketball. He noticed the same traits in his son: A gritty, tough, if not overly gifted, athlete who gave everything he had.
Father and son tested each other not just on the basketball court, where Steve coached Talbott on JCC youth leagues, but also on a wrestling mat, a floor, grass, whatever.
“He wasn’t a huge freshman but he kept growing and he’d always been real proportional,” Steve said. “Being a wrestler, even if he was bigger than me, I could wrap him into a ball. But then I retired.”
The two last wrestled on a grassy field in San Diego when Talbott was a high school junior, when Steve said he suddenly decided to “retire as champ!”
He had to, really.
By then, Talbott had grown fully into his body, turning himself into a Division I prospect through natural talent, size and work.
Others began to notice.
“My junior year I started getting some muscle mass and had more of a college-ready body,” Denny said. “When I got to be bigger and more athletic, that’s when people started paying attention.”
Denny kept growing from other influences, too. While Steve coached him in his elementary-school years, former UA football and basketball player Kelvin Eafon guided his teams in middle school.
Then Denny signed up at Salpointe, and joined Peabody with the Tucson Heat program. It was a fitting pairing: Steve Denny and Peabody had played together for years in a pickup basketball group, often while little Talbott worked nearby on his game.
“He’d be on the sidelines and I’d say, ‘Just dribble the whole time while I’m playing,’” Steve said. “I made him go left and right. I never went left. Still can’t. So that helped.”
By the time Peabody began working with Denny in high school, the kid could do a whole lot more. Plus, he was bigger, much bigger, and willing to throw around every ounce he had.
Peabody noticed right away how Denny loved contact and didn’t mind playing through injuries. His toughness became public when Denny set a Las Vegas club tournament record after his junior year by going to the free-throw line 104 times over four games.
“He’s a tough kid who can put it on the floor,” Peabody said. “He was killing people. He wasn’t afraid. (The record) opened everybody’s eyes about how tough and aggressive he is.”
As a senior, Denny even caught Arizona’s attention. Then-UA staffer Danny Peters offered Denny a chance to walk on in 2012 but the lure of financial aid and playing time overcame his boyhood allegiance. Idaho State, San Diego, Houston Baptist and even Washington State all showed interest, and Denny suddenly had choices to make.
They weren’t all about basketball, either. Denny wanted to play hard but also study hard.
Not everyone was OK with that.
“He’s a serious student, good kid and hard worker,” Lipscomb coach Casey Alexander said, but “some of the schools wouldn’t allow him to take engineering.”
Lipscomb did. Denny will graduate next week with a degree in mechanical engineering, all while having worked a nearly full-time “job” on the court: He played in 77 games and started 21 over three seasons, filling in wherever the Bison needed him to.
Often, that was in the post. After Denny’s freshman season at Lipscomb in 2012-13, Sanderson resigned under pressure, leaving Alexander to deal with the usual roster instability that comes with a coaching change.
One of Alexander’s biggest problems was that he had no big men. So, at 6-foot-6, Denny was asked to deal with 6-10, 350-pound Josh Smith of Georgetown and a host of other post mismatches as a sophomore the following season.
“He was literally our tallest available player at the time,” Alexander said.
Denny did what he could. He survived in part by leading the nation in fouls with 116 over 29 games, an average of exactly four per game.
Toughness “is his greatest asset and his versatility defensively made him a really valuable player for us,” Alexander said. “He’s athletic enough that he can guard multiple positions and even being undersized he can guard big men.
“The offensive end is where he has a tougher time making a contribution, but he’s skilled enough that he can never hurt you. If you’re looking for somebody who will do his job and not complain, then he’s an ideal candidate.”
In Lipscomb’s perfect world, Denny wouldn’t have been a candidate for anybody else next season. He would have played power forward again for the Bison, a valuable fifth-year senior who was playing his best basketball at the end of his junior season in 2014-15, when he was named to the Atlantic Sun Conference all-tournament team.
But the torn labrum changed all that. Denny hurt himself before practices began last season, limping along until finally deciding in October to have the shoulder surgery.
By then, Alexander had received a commitment from a player who would take Denny’s scholarship spot for 2016-17.
That meant, like it or not, Denny was a free agent.
“I’m happy for Talbott,” Alexander said. “Whether it was Arizona or somewhere else, he was going to get an opportunity to play his fifth season and get it paid for. It’s not the ideal situation for Lipscomb, though.”
Denny said he knew after he had the surgery he would be somewhere else next season, but it was months before he knew exactly where. Arizona didn’t really start narrowing down its 2016 recruiting efforts until this spring, unsure whether Allonzo Trier would return to claim a scholarship and how many high school seniors would sign.
Knowing Arizona was a longshot, Peabody went to work again for Denny to see what he could come up with.
“I thought he’d be a good fit for the WCC or Big Sky, so I contacted coaches in those leagues I’ve known and he was getting a lot of interest in both of those leagues,” Peabody said. “Then I mentioned to (UA associate head coach Joe) Pasternack in passing and he said they had some interest.”
Before long, Peabody and Miller were talking. The UA coach asked where Denny was in the process of transferring. Peabody told him Cal Poly needed an experienced four-man and was chasing hard.
Ball State, where Peters is now an assistant coach under former UA associate head coach James Whitford, had also offered him a scholarship and a fast-track graduate opportunity.
“Well, give me a little bit of time,” Miller responded, according to Peabody. “We’re trying to figure our roster out.”
Things moved quickly from there. By the time five-star high school senior Josh Jackson chose Kansas over the UA last month, the Wildcats appeared to have room. Even after securing a commitment from Terrance Ferguson on April 13, Arizona still had two or three scholarships available for next season.
Miller and Peabody spoke again. The UA coach was ready to offer but had one doubt.
“He wanted to know my opinion on Talbott, if he could come in and assume that (reserve) role and not be bitter if he’s not starting or playing in every game,” Peabody said. “I had that conversation with Talbott and he was all for it.
“It’s a win for everybody to have a local kid come back. He’s a tough kid who’s always been high character and will do whatever Coach Miller needs him to do.”
While the UA has not announced Denny’s arrival, keeping Miller from talking publicly about him, it’s likely that the UA coach will need Denny mostly to set an example in practice and possibly in spot situations during games.
The Wildcats will have six five-star talents on next season’s roster, but five of them are freshmen (counting redshirting freshman Ray Smith) and the other is Trier, a sophomore. Assuming Elliott Pitts does not return after leaving the team for unspecified reasons in February, Arizona will have only one senior, guard Kadeem Allen, and two juniors — Parker Jackson-Cartwright and Dusan Ristic.
None of the returning veterans are overly vocal, either. While Alexander says Denny isn’t a vocal leader as much of a lead-by-example kind of guy, Denny said he gained some leadership experience while sitting out last season. He would have been the only senior in the Bison’s playing rotation.
“I was the senior the guys looked up to,” Denny said. “I got my two cents in every once in a while.”
This time will be a little different. Denny will be trying to catch the ear of guys likely to make a lot of money in professional basketball. They’ll still have a common bond — trying to win games and develop themselves for professional life – but while most Wildcats will be aiming for the NBA, Denny is headed for an MBA.
That was the final selling point for Denny. A chance to enroll at Eller College of Management, and have it paid for, at least during his first year.
With an MBA on top of that engineering degree, Denny says he’s hoping to find a career as an engineer, account manager or project manager.
Just as long as he can stay on the move, that is. After interning with Southwest Gas last summer in roles that both kept him in and out of the office, Denny said “I knew I didn’t want to sit at a desk all day,” he said.
Of course.
Just like that infant waking for hours in the middle of the night. Just like that teenager rolling around with dad on some makeshift wrestling mat. Just like that McKale Center fan anxiously wondering why Lipscomb was giving the Wildcats a game six years ago.
Talbott Denny won’t stand still.
Some things never change.
