COLUMBUS – The sound of squeaking shoes and shouting voices reverberates off the walls inside Pohl Gymnasium, only broken up by the occasional thud of a basketball bouncing off the hardwood.
MUW head coach Dean Burrows lets loose on the whistle and shouts out orders for his men’s basketball team to switch gears and get ready for a rebounding drill.
The Owls are in the midst of an early season run though St. Louis Intercollegiate Conference games and winning the battle of the boards has been a top priority. Despite a 7-6 start to the season, which is a solid leap forward from last year’s 4-8 early slog, the effort and intensity Burrows requires has proven too much for some former Owls who have already walked away from the team.
Only nine remain, and all of them, physically exhausted and drenched in sweat, line up for the drill.
The routine is quite simple in nature; two forwards each battle a defender for possession of a missed shot off the rim and fire off an outlet pass up the court to the guards, and then rotate out to allow the next set to get ready. Among the second group was Joe Haze Austin. Standing at 6-foot-5 with long shaggy hair and dotted with tattoos, the 22-year-old sophomore Southwest Community College transfer rabidly attacked the ball as it hung in the balance of the thick sweltering air and then rifled a pass down court with a fiery aggression. Finding teammates for easy scores has become something he’s known for.
Austin leads the team in assists with 3.7 per game and piled up 12 against Greenville University for some school history. Those assists, paired with 22 points and 11 rebounds, netted him the program’s first-ever triple-double.
The long travel and the day-to-day tropes that come along with being a Division III hooper don’t bother him. He’s been down the road of giving up basketball too early before, and hated himself for it. The Owls gave him a chance at redeeming his dreams, and he isn’t giving them up.
“It’s hard to wrap my head around that,” he said. “A year ago I was working from 3 a.m. to 3 p.m. I was loving my life but at the same time I was depressed, just working the way I was and not getting anything out of it.”
For Austin, the past couple of years have been bumpy – full of highs and lows that many his age haven’t experienced. But, through it all, he persevered and eventually landed at MUW, where he’s played a key part in the team’s current competitive race through the SLIAC.
Austin hails from Algoma and got caught up in “a bunch of family and personal issues” and later moved to South Pontotoc when he was in the 10th grade. No matter what else was going on in his life, athletics became his refuge. He played wide receiver on the football team and was everything on the basketball team – guard, forward and center – helping lead the Cougars to a state semifinal appearance.
“I just have a love for sports,” he said. “I feel it’s not just basketball, if I was out there playing tennis or golf I would have a love for it regardless, and I would want to be the best at what I do.”
He also loves tattoos and the meanings he’s able to imprint on himself forever. He’s got an illustration of the “Highway 15” sign, a main thoroughfare that cuts through Algoma, tattooed on his right arm to commemorate where he came from. His love of basketball is inked on his leg in the fashion of an angel soaring in for a slam dunk. All of his many other tattoos have meaning to him, but one stands above the rest – the name of his daughter, Hazely Joe.
Growing up fast
Almost three years ago, she came into his life, and the ripple effect of such a seismic moment left him raising Hazely Joe with only his mother for support. Since then, it’s been a grind to get to the stability he’s found now at MUW. Coming out of high school he had the opportunity to play at Southwest Mississippi Community College and leapt on it, but his joy there soon turned sour. He averaged just nine minutes per game and mustered 1.8 points and 1.8 rebounds to boot. Not seeing the court much combined with the long drive home to see his daughter took its toll.
“For me, it was five or four-and-a-half hours away from home and I just had a daughter coming out of high school,” he said. “I still finished that one season, but it’s hard on you, man.”
So, he pushed aside his dreams to move closer to home. But he had to do something – he now had a mouth to feed. Austin took a job at Ashley Furniture just to make ends meet and he even started a little handyman company he called “Average Joe’s.” His motto was “I can do anything,” and his services included animal manure cleanup, pressure washing, car and boat detail work, tree cutting, land clearing and lawn care
“I’ll clean your house, man,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. I’m just a hard worker.”
It was tiring and boring work, a far cry from the joy he found on the hardwood, but it provided for his family. Still, the thought of giving up on the sport he loved never sat right with him.
“I’m just working my butt off and making a living, and I’m just mad at myself for not giving my full potential at all my opportunities to play basketball,” he said.
Austin’s father, a former Division I football player, pushed his son to take another shot at his athletic dreams.
“All I hear from him is, ‘When you get older you are going to regret it. You are going to regret all the mistakes of not trying to prove to yourself that you can do it,’” Austin recalled.
While intrigued with the thought of playing again, Austin didn’t immediately do anything about it – until he stumbled across MUW one night.
“I go on break and look at my phone to scroll and I just see ‘MUW basketball, apply and enroll now.’ I clicked on it and scrolled through and I applied,” Austin said. “Not even three days later I got a text from Coach Burrows.”
A new start
Beyond the basketball opportunity, the school is also much closer to home than Summit and Hazely Jo. When he was offered a spot, he had to accept.
“(Burrows) has just been a great man toward me, regardless of what I’ve had happen in the past or anything that I’ve ever done. He just came to me like a man and didn’t dehumanize me and spoke to me in the right way,” Austin said. “I’ve had a lot of coaches in the past that haven’t been that way and I appreciate Coach Dean for giving me really a third chance.”
That relationship, it seems, has been mutually beneficial. With the Owls sitting at 4-1 in conference play and in a tie for second place, Austin’s been a monumental piece of their success so far this season with an average of 14.2 points and 5.6 boards. He also leads the team in assists (52), steals (39) and blocks (23).
Needless to say, Austin is glad he listened to his heart.
“It’s not even about me choosing here, I think it was all God’s plan,” he said. “It happened for the best and I never would have been able to tell you that I would be playing here not even a year ago. I really appreciate Coach Burrows and the school for allowing me to do it.”
Of course he can’t take all the credit. If it wasn’t for Hazely Jo, he said he wouldn’t be the man he is today.
“It’s a different feeling. It’s motivation and it’s a getting-your-life-together type of thing,” Austin said. “She changed my life for the better and I love every minute of it. … We’re out there having fun and at the same time we’re out there competing.”
Austin and the Owls are making noise in the SLIAC, but to them, they’re just playing to the standard. Burrows demands all-out effort and that’s exactly what Austin said he and his teammates bring to the floor every night.
“Everybody wants to win the conference championship, but for us it’s personal,” Austin told The Dispatch. “We could lose every single game, but if we play our best on that court and give everything we’ve got, of course we are going to be mad we lost, but we’re happy with the way we played. If that’s the way it works then we are OK with it.”
After his basketball career is truly over, Austin has dreams of opening a recreational gym in his hometown. It’s something he believes would have kept him out of trouble when he was younger and could do the same for future generations.
“It’s 24/7, you can come in at 3 a.m,” he dreamed. … “I was a late-night type guy, so I know there are some more people like me. … I just want to give them somewhere to go and a reason to be safe in a basketball gym doing something they love. I’d love to be able to see kids do that, being in there at 3 a.m. in the morning playing basketball.”
After all, that’s all Austin ever wanted to do.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 34 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
