Auburn’s Desean Murray: From Grade School Tee-Ball to the New York Yankees
How Desean Murray — one of the best players on the nation’s eighth-ranked team — climbed out of basketball purgatory into the thick of a national-title race.
Desean Murray sits on the bench in Auburn Arena, coaching up a teammate who was just subbed out. He cheers, consoles and cries with his brothers for a full year — always on the bench. Such is the life of a transfer in the NCAA, but Murray was not going to let that stop him from impacting his team. Along with the countless hours he put in in the gym last year, he was also growing into a resilient, motivating force in the locker room.
Who can blame him? After all, just being inside an SEC gym, with those giant crowds and TV cameras, was a far cry from the experience he dealt with as a freshman and sophomore. Murray was, by all means, happy to be there.
From 2014–16, Desean Murray played for Presbyterian — the worst team in one of the smallest Division-1 conferences in the nation. While he did put up video-game stats for the downtrodden Blue Hoes (20.2 PPG, 8.2 RPG), it was clear that he belonged on a bigger stage.
On May 16th, 2016, Murray officially moved into the next phase of his career, signing with Auburn to play his junior and senior seasons with the Tigers. The difference is huge just in terms of name recognition, but when looking at the two programs basketball budgets, Walter White (Breaking Bad) put it best: “it’s grade school tee-ball vs. The New York Yankees”.
Per a report from the US Department of Higher Education, Presbyterian ranks No.296 ($1,362,675) while Auburn is all the way at No.25 ($9,632,816).
Now almost two years later, Murray is one of four players to average double-figures in scoring (11.2 PPG) on a first-place Auburn Tigers’ team that’s completely shocking the world. Their 21 wins this season have already exceeded their 2016–17 total (18) and from the looks of things, Murray is the part that’s made the Tigers’ engine run smoothly.
Just ask Coach Bruce Pearl.
“Desean is all about winning, and to win you have to be able to rebound and have a good locker room,” Pearl said in a recent article by Tom Green on AL.com. “Desean, in a lot of ways, by putting himself on this team, really improved our locker room.”
At a generous 6-foot-3, you’d expect a stat-line full of assists, threes, and steals. Not this man, though. Murray plays like a bulldog on PCP, pursuing every rebound like he’s fighting for the keys to a Maybach and doing the dirty, thankless jobs that big-time Division-1 programs appreciate.
Presbyterian finished the 2014–15 and 2015–16 basketball season ranked 326th and 328th, respectively. Desean stood out, being named Big South Freshman of the Year and leading the conference in scoring his sophomore year. Coach Pearl, who had one of the worst rebounding teams in the country in 2015–16, eagerly pursued Murray in hopes of fixing the problem. Fast forward to present day: Auburn, with Murray setting the tone, ranks №20 in Offensive Rebound Percentage and №25 in Defensive Efficiency, per KenPom.
All of this has brought him the most flattering praise possible for a Tigers’ basketball player: comparisons to Charles Barkley.
“He’s a huge difference,” sophomore Mustapha Heron told Green. “It’s not even a question, huge difference. He does things that nobody else wants to do. We call him ‘little Charles Barkley’ — he rebounds, he plays hard, he hits guys, he gets hit, and he doesn’t fall. He just does the things that nobody else wants to do.”
When you’ve established yourself as a dog-faced gremlin on the court, determined to make your team look better, acknowledgment is that first drink of cold water after a long practice.
“That’s a great honor because Barkley, he was great here,” Murray said in a Greg Ostendorf piece on AuburnTigers.com. “He went on and played at the next level and did great things. He got a statue. So it’s a great honor, of course. It just makes me want to play harder for my team.”
Auburn has high expectations moving forward. SEC regular season and tournament champions are obvious possibilities, but a deep run in March against unfamiliar opponents require special character. It takes tenacity, grit, and heart. Lucky for Auburn, they found it all in a big fish from the littlest of ponds.