Las Vegas Sun

March 19, 2024

UNLV basketball:

Some new Rebels bonding over similar hardscrabble backgrounds

Scarlet and Gray Showcase

L.E. Baskow

UNLV basketball players gather for the scarlet and gray exhibition, which is the Rebels’ version of midnight madness, at the Thomas & Mack Center on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2014.

The Rebel Room

Out on the Dancefloor

Las Vegas Sun sports reporters Case Keefer, Ray Brewer and Taylor Bern debate UNLV football's remaining number of victories and reflect on the basketball showcase while preparing for this weekend's Life is Beautiful music festival.

It was a basketball coach in Baton Rouge, La., who first asked Jordan Cornish to give the game a shot.

Chased out of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, a 9-year-old Cornish went from the relative calm of home life with his two parents to a new city where he lived for a year in his aunt’s house with more than a dozen relatives. Not everyone in the family survived the storm to get to that house.

Cornish said two of his family members died in 2005 because they didn’t leave New Orleans, something that would play out repeatedly as Cornish moved back and grew up in the city that 12 times since 1985 has had the nation’s highest annual murder rate, according to FBI figures.

“Constant violence, it just never stops,” Cornish said. “Retaliation after retaliation.”

The blueprint is familiar: Cornish survived, in part, because of the game. Though he played mostly football before living in Baton Rouge, Cornish said he fell in love with basketball right away.

When others were tempted toward darker paths, Cornish put himself in the gym, working for the long gain. It’s led him to Las Vegas, where Cornish has found players such as fellow freshmen Dwayne Morgan and Patrick McCaw, who have similar backgrounds and are similarly focused on not looking back.

“We’re all hard-nosed guys that just want to come out here, get better and get away from that,” Cornish said. “We want to better ourselves and better our families.”

McCaw is from St. Louis; Morgan is the second Baltimore native on the roster and the third in the past two years. Morgan previously played with injured sophomore guard Daquan Cook, and former Rebel Roscoe Smith is also from the area.

It was Morgan’s mother, former Clemson forward Tabitha Chambers, who got her son started in basketball.

“Something told me early on to get him involved in something because I knew how the streets are around here,” Chambers told the Baltimore Sun.

Former assistant coach Heath Schroyer’s ties to the area led him to Morgan, and when Chambers accompanied her son to a UNLV game nearly two years ago for a visit, it helped that Cook and Smith were there to give them a "Baltimore Hon" welcome.

“They told me it was family-oriented, and that’s what I saw. Everybody seemed together,” Morgan said. “That’s all I’m looking for, a home away from home. That’s what we have here.”

Morgan was the first Rebel in this class to commit. Then he started helping to recruit other players who matched not only his skill level but also his background.

Next to commit was Boston native Goodluck Okonoboh, then Minneapolis’ Rashad Vaughn, who played his senior season for Henderson’s Findlay Prep, and then McCaw.

The last to commit was Cornish because he had already signed to play at Tennessee. That changed in April when Volunteers coach Cuonzo Martin left for California, allowing serendipity to step in.

Cornish originally wanted to get out of New Orleans but stay close enough for his family to make some trips to his games. When he started talking to UNLV’s coaches and his friend Vaughn, Cornish realized in Las Vegas he could find a different kind of family that still understands him.

Tragedy first led Cornish to basketball, and it’s with this game he and other Rebels are fighting back.

Taylor Bern can be reached at 948-7844 or [email protected]. Follow Taylor on Twitter at twitter.com/taylorbern.

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