Could've been worse

What do you call a former prep star who is brutally beaten and threatened at gunpoint, only to be kicked off his big-time college team and exiled to a sleepy Juco in Arkansas? Lucky.

Tyrone Hanson rode the red-eye sporting two extremely noticeable black eyes. Less conspicuous were the deep bruise on his left thigh and the lumps scattered about his head. Sleep on this Reno-to-New York flight would not come easy. As the cabin lights dimmed and fellow passengers settled in for the night, Hanson gazed out the window.

Jamie Squire

Just two months earlier he had been on a flight like this headed the other way, excited about the prospect of finally being able to show off his sharpshooting skills as a possible sophomore starter for the University of Nevada's basketball team. On that day, right before Tyrone's boarding call, Reggie Hanson had looked into his son's eyes and said again how proud he was of him for pursuing a college degree. Hanson had chosen Reno in part because it offered a chance to escape the pitfalls that had already devoured friends who'd stayed home.

And now, although Nevada's basketball season was two weeks off, Hanson's ticket home was one-way. He'd been kicked off the team.

The plane landed in New York just past 6 a.m. on Oct. 31, 2007, and after collecting his luggage—two Adidas bags—Hanson walked (limped, actually) outside to his father's car. Reaching it, he let go of his bags, collapsed in his father's arms and began to cry. "When my dad dropped me off, he was so proud—his son was doing something with his life, playing games on ESPN," Hanson says. "Then there I was, at the same place, with the same two bags, looking at my dad and thinking I'd let him down."

But as difficult as it was to see his son battered and limping, Reggie Hanson, an ex-Marine who had raised Tyrone alone, was also ecstatic. "At that moment I felt blessed," he says. "The last time I put him on a plane, he was happy to get to school to play basketball. When I picked him up, I was the happy one. Because I could have easily been there to meet my son's dead body."

At the end of practice, Nevada coach Mark Fox gathered his players at center court. His words were so rote, some players mouthed along as he spoke: "Rest your body. Be safe. Don't go out."

Don't go out. His players nodded solemnly. But there was no official team curfew, and it was the Saturday before Halloween. All week, talk around school had been about an off-campus party that you'd have to be a fool to miss.

"HE UNDERSTANDS HE TOOK A STEP BACK," SAYS HANSON'S NEW COACH. "I TELL HIM, 'APPRECIATE THE THINGS YOU LEFT, AND IT WILL DRIVE YOU TO GET BACK.' "

Hanson, a 6'6" soph swingman, loved a good party. So on Saturday night, he arrived at the house on Heatheridge Lane, a cul-de-sac of half-a-million-dollar homes about six miles southwest of campus. His girlfriend, a fellow student named Monique Little, attracted attention as she sashayed across the crowded dance floor, dressed like a bumblebee. Hanson was in costume too: a blue "I Love New York" T-shirt to rep his hometown, a white bandanna around his neck and teardrops under his eyes to rep his favorite rapper, Lil Wayne.

As he and Little grooved to the music, Hanson had every reason to believe he was in the right place. Back home, on Long Island, he'd been the talented sidekick to Danny Green (preparing to get serious minutes for preseason No. 1 UNC) on a St. Mary's squad that during the 2004-05 season was the top-ranked high school team in the country, according to USA Today. So yes, the limited minutes he received as a freshman in Reno were a disappointment. But a year later, after the first month of practice, Hanson knew this season was going to be different.

He loved Reno and the serenity that allowed him to drop the swagger he'd acquired during a childhood spent on the rough streets of Brooklyn. "You're looking over your shoulder every minute in New York," Hanson says. "I went to Nevada to leave that behind. I've seen people get jumped, and I wanted to never be that guy."

But on that night, at that party, Hanson became exactly that guy. As he left the dance floor with Little to get some air, Hanson was bumped. The police report says he exchanged dirty looks and a few words with the man who jostled him. Then Hanson was knocked to the ground. "These guys were punching and stomping me while they were grabbing my chain and wallet," he says.

The beating ended only when friends dragged Hanson into the kitchen. Still dazed by the fury of the attack, he slowly picked himself off the floor. Just then, a different man rushed into the kitchen, knocked him back to the ground and put a .380 semiautomatic to his head. "I'm like, 'Man, don't shoot me, it's over,'" Hanson recalls, holding his hands high as shields, as he had at the time. "He's got the gun to my face, and all the time I'm sliding backward, moving my head side to side so he can't shoot me there."

Jamie Squire

Memories of the shootings in Reno still haunt Hanson. He thinks about the victims every day.

Little jumped on Hanson and pleaded with the gunman. "She saved my life," Hanson says. "If she wasn't there, that guy would have shot me." After the man left the kitchen, gunfire erupted in another room. When the shots stopped, Hanson and Little scrambled to leave. On the way out, they saw a guy laid out in the hallway, blood on his shirt, his eyes wide open. "I'd never seen a body, but you knew he was dead," Hanson says, clasping his hands tightly.

The dead man was Charles Coogan Kelly, a 21-year-old from California. Outside, two other men had been shot and killed as well: Derek Kyle Jensen, a student at Nevada, and Nathan Viljoen, a former student there. Later, a man who police say crashed the party, 19-year-old Samisoni Taukitoku, was indicted on three counts of murder and four counts of assault with a deadly weapon. He pleaded not guilty and will stand trial in November. Another 19-year-old, Saili Manu, pleaded guilty to two counts of assault with a deadly weapon; he'll be sentenced in December.

There were 20 murders in Reno in 2007; 15% of them happened at that Halloween party. So when Hanson, after being treated at the hospital and questioned at length by the police, hobbled into Coach Fox's office two days later, he'd become the kind of major news the school didn't appreciate. "Coach asked if I was okay," Hanson says, "but I could see he was disappointed."

The somber looks on the faces of Fox and associate head coach David Carter told Hanson all he needed to know. Tears streamed down the player's face as Fox told him he was being dismissed from the team. "I was wrong to go out, but I was a victim," Hanson says he told Fox. "Making me run until I threw up would have been fair punishment. I never thought I'd be dismissed."

That night, Fox (who refused to be interviewed for this story) held an emotional press conference to announce Hanson's dismissal, citing a prior violation of team rules. "I failed a drug test," says Hanson, who admits to having smoked pot a week earlier.

As Fox was speaking to the media, Hanson was already packing. Beaten, battered and feeling as if he'd been singled out—there were other basketball players at the party—Hanson headed to the airport. "Basketball was my life, and here I had this great chance and I blew it," he says. "I asked myself on the flight, Do you want to be a thug or a basketball player? I knew I wanted to play ball. I just had to figure out how I was going to get back."

After that final meeting with Fox, Hanson never expected the coach to be part of any solution. But the same day that Fox booted Hanson from the Wolf Pack, he called a former assistant, Josh Newman, who was the head coach of the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, a juco power. Newman had recruited Hanson at Nevada three years earlier and knew what kind of player he could be. He was on the phone to Hanson immediately. By December, the kid had his second chance.

Four months later, minutes into a game, Hanson looks as if he'll be able to drop 30 easy. His game is all New York playground—everything to the rim—and it has him on his way to another bucket when a steady pitter-patter against the exterior wall brings the action to a halt. Hanson, who is playing himself as a Nevada player on a video game, looks up from the controller. "What was that?"

Jamie Squire

At Nevada, Hanson's off-court indiscretions never gave his game a chance to shine. In Fort Smith, it's all business, all the time.

That is hail, so steady it's as if someone had set down Hanson's room in the middle of a busy driving range. These storms are common. Hanson will have to get used to them. "It's pretty scary," he says during a lull in the barrage, as he and his fellow students are evacuated from the apartment building to the safety of the nearby cafeteria for fear of a tornado.

When Hanson was dismissed from Nevada, he got calls from other junior colleges, as well as a few
D1 schools, such as Cincinnati and St. John's. "I had a talk with my dad, and I told him I wanted to be someplace where I would be happy," Hanson says. "I told him I was going to Fort Smith to play for Coach Newman and that I was going to make it work and clear this tough-guy image I had."

But he learned quickly, traveling with the team as a redshirt last winter, that the spot he'd chosen was a long way from the big time. What once were flights are now four-hour bus rides, two to each pair of seats, women's and men's teams on the same bus. Nationally televised games in packed WAC arenas have become sparsely attended Bi-State Conference affairs in tiny gyms. (In fact, Fort Smith is the only school in the league that plays in an arena.) "The size of the gyms we play in," says Hanson, "makes it feel like high school." And team meals at nice restaurants have given way to quick snacks at places where supersizing qualifies as a special treat.

In other words, conditions aren't exactly right to foster a swelled head. And that's just fine with Hanson's new coach. "He understands he took a step back," says Newman, going into his third season as headman. "I tell him, 'Appreciate the things you left, and it will drive you to get back.'"

There's not much for a New York City boy to do on the small campus of 6,500 students in western Arkansas, and that, too, suits Hanson's new mind-set. "It's quiet, and that's cool with me," he says. "With what I've been through, I'm not really into a party scene." The routine here is simple. Classes. Study hall. Workouts. Pickup ball. Anyone who watches Hanson in the weight room or sees him smile as he drains jumpers in a pickup game will say it all seems amazingly … normal.

Then again, who knows what still lurks behind the 21-year-old's brown eyes? Hanson didn't get counseling after his brush with death because he didn't think it would help. But he still shakes when he talks about that scary night. "Each day I wonder, if I hadn't gone to that party, would those people still be alive?" he says, eyes falling toward the floor. "I wonder, why did those people die and not me?"

Hanson feels he has landed somewhere that will give him space to figure things out. "I have a brand-new slate, a brand-new start," he says. "A lot of people, when they heard my story, probably got the impression that I'm a bad kid. I want to clean my image up."

After each Friday's off-season workouts this summer, Newman gathered his players at center court before releasing them for the weekend. "Be safe," he'd say, and the young men always nodded. But before they headed off to whatever awaited them, Hanson would add his own hard-learned addendum.

"Hey, guys, listen to Coach," he'd say. "Because you never know."

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