When men’s basketball Coach Michael Giorlando signed Nick Tuszynski from Jesuit Dallas last year to solidify his team’s inside presence, he secured a pretty popular guy.
One with 240 friends, by Tuszynski’s count.
“I didn’t only hang out with jocks at my school,” the general business freshman said. “I hung out with everybody, really.”
Aside from his balanced on-court performances – he averaged 10 points and eight rebounds as a senior – his tendency to combust into “the ratchet” or the “Harlem shake” whenever any hip-hop beats within an earshot made him a likeable guy.
His classmates and fans admired his rebounding and scoring on the basketball floor while Jesuit’s sister schools gawked at his quirkiness on the homecoming dance floor.
“As Mario (Faranda) is the singer on the team and sings at all sorts of inappropriate times, I decided to be the guy who would dance at all times. It’s not unusual to walk into the locker room and see me dancing and Mario singing.
“I’d say it happens at least once, twice a day,” Tuszynski said, chuckling.
And though the 2005 McDonald’s All-American nominee’s mid-range shooting and inside rebounding presence was sought doggedly by mid-major NCAA suitors like Colgate and West Point, he never doubted that a post-Katrina Loyola University New Orleans was the only place for him.
NOT TO BE DENIED
“I had decided to go to Loyola the week before Katrina,” he said, sighing and shaking his head as he glanced at his shoelaces. “I remember just staring at that famous picture of all the houses flooded afterward and you could only see the rooftops. It was on the cover of The Dallas Morning News, and I was like, ‘Where am I gonna go?’
“I can honestly say I was devastated.”
That picture and the state of affairs in The Big Easy didn’t slow him down for long, however.
He forged on with his plan to conduct a campus visit during October 2005 so that he could sign with the Wolfpack in November.
“That’s how bad he wanted to be down here, to see and be in New Orleans despite the hurricane,” Giorlando said. “I told him that a campus visit at that time wasn’t such a good idea.”
That isn’t to say that Tuszynski wasn’t a top priority in terms of recruiting.
“Watching him at AAU before seeing him play in high school, I liked his demeanor on the floor. A lot of those players at that level play just to shoot and up their numbers. He did all the little things without the ball, and that’s what I look for,” Giorlando said.
Giorlando stayed after his coveted recruit, something Tuszynzki wholly appreciated.
“I hadn’t even seen (the) campus, but I cut off my recruiting in November,” he said.
During his senior year, Tuszynski merited a Top 100 player ranking in Texas, a recruiting hotbed for collegiate sports. That got the attention of mid-major schools Tuszynski defected from in favor of Loyola and its battered host city.
“Coach (Giorlando) kept faith in me, he stayed after me. And despite all that adversity (because of the storm), I could see had big plans for the program.
“I told him, ‘I’m on board with you.’ I believed he’d give the same dedication to the development of his players that he put into the program and the school, even after the storm.”
JUST DOING HIS PART
Tuszynski modeled his playing style after Boston Celtics legends Larry Bird and Kevin McHale and Dallas Maverick franchise man Dirk Nowitzki.
“I wanted to shoot like Larry and Dirk with the post moves of McHale,” he said.
In a 73-62 Wolfpack loss against Texas College on Nov. 4, Tuszynski scored 11 points on five-of-six shooting, scoring a pair of tricky mid-range shots with a stroke faintly reminiscent of Nowitzki’s.
“(Giorlando) emphasized that I’d have to get comfortable hitting 10- to 15-footers, so I practiced all summer to hit that shot,” he said.
He followed that up with a fearsome post performance that afforded him nine points and nine rebounds in a 65-56 win over Wiley College on Nov. 9.
In that game, Tuszynski just missed his goal of a nightly double-double.
“We have enough offensive machines (in the starting five). If I get a few offensive tip-ins and breakaway lay-ins and I control the glass,” he said, before pausing.
“You know, Luke (Zumo) can’t make every shot. No one shoots 100 percent. But if I’m hitting open jump shots and getting offensive rebounds, I’m doing my part.”
Ramon Vargas can be reached at [email protected].
