Posted on Wed, Nov. 14, 2007 10:15 PM
Markieff Morris
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Minutes before a basketball game his junior year, Markieff Morris got a call on his cell phone from a close friend and neighbor. He’ll never forget the words spoken on the other end of the line.
“Your house is on fire!” the friend said.
Markieff told his twin brother, Marcus, who then told their coach, Dan Brinkley, who could only repeat the phrase again in disbelief. Brinkley told the boys that they shouldn’t play that day, but the boys’ mother, Angel Morris, felt otherwise. A love for basketball was what Marcus and Markieff had always shared. All of a sudden, it was all they had.
Yes, there is little doubt how much basketball means to the Morris twins of Philadelphia, the jewel of Kansas coach Bill Self’s 2008 class thus far. They won their game on that tragic afternoon and went on to win two Pennsylvania state championships. They chose Kansas over hometown Villanova and joined junior college standout Mario Little of Chicago in signing their letters of intent on Wednesday.
Local product Travis Releford of Bishop Miege and New Jersey’s Quintrell Thomas are expected to sign their letters today.
Self began recruiting the Morris twins late in the summer after they asked out of the letters of intent they signed last November to Memphis. KU is getting two big, versatile forwards who have been through more strife than most could imagine.
After the game — Markieff scored 20 points and Marcus added 14 in an easy win — Angel Morris took her boys to their house, which had been taken by an electrical blaze. Nothing was left.
“It was heartbreaking for me and my brother to know that there was nothing for us to come home to,” Marcus Morris said. “Everything we’d worked for, all our trophies, every material thing caught on fire. It really hurt.”
Luckily, the twins’ grandparents lived five or six blocks away, so they moved in with them, along with their mother. Their high school, Prep Charter, also chipped in with a fund-raising drive for the family.
Still, it took awhile for things to go back to normal. Brinkley remembers one practice when Marcus wasn’t exactly prepared.
“I said, ‘Put your shorts on,’ ” Brinkley said. “He said, ‘I don’t have any shorts.’ ”
Shorts would have been nice to have, to be sure, but the twins learned that they could live without most of the things they used to covet.
“When it happened,” Markieff said, “we still had each other. All that other stuff is material. It taught me to always cherish family before anything.”
Angel Morris, a single mother, has worked for 21 years at the Temple University hospital and always did whatever she could to build a home for her boys. But they still live at their grandparents’ when they are not away at APEX Academies, a prep school in New Jersey they’re attending this school year to get ready for the SAT and elevate their games. Angel hopes she can make a new home for them in Lawrence.
“They have been by my side 100 percent,” said Angel, who has already started looking for work in the Lawrence area.
The twins will arrive at Kansas with an immediate chance for playing time. Marcus is a 6-foot-8, 220-pound power forward ranked as the No. 37 player nationally by Rivals.com. He will likely see time on the wing and inside. Markieff is a 6-foot-10, 230-pound power forward ranked as the No. 72 player. He’s more of a post player, but can also shoot the ball effectively.
“We feel Marcus and Markieff Morris are two of the most underrated players in the country,” Self said.
Added Brinkley, a father figure for the twins: “They only know winning.”
Sometimes, under the worst of conditions.