If you didn’t know where to look, you’d never see it. But Brock Cunningham sees it all the time because he wants to be reminded. On the inside of his wrist, Cunningham has a small tattoo of a number, decimal point, and another number.
All freshmen, no matter how good, encounter a heavy dose of reality early in the collegiate careers. Usually, reality rudely arrives when games begin, and freshmen soon realize playing hard and effectively at the high-major division-one level is night-and-day different from high school basketball.
Like all freshmen, Brock Cunningham arrived at college with an expectation he would play significant minutes immediately. If a freshman doesn’t arrive with this type of mindset to a place like Texas, he probably shouldn’t have been recruited in the first place. Some, like Mohamed Bamba, know they’re a one-and-done and even they encounter a cruel adjustment period. But all freshmen think they’re going to play, play a lot, and play well.
As the season approaches, Shaka Smart does an exercise with his team to get a feel for the room, what players think of their teammates, and what players think of themselves and their roles.
“So, every summer coach Smart does an exercise where he gives each player a sheet and says you're the coach for this game. Divvy up the minutes how you think they should be divvied up,” said Cunningham.
A couple weeks before the 2018-19 season began, Texas, like normal, met to discuss the results. Cunningham, heading into his first year at Texas, didn’t just meet reality. He was punched in the face by it.
“My minutes averaged out to 1.8. So, we get into the team meeting. Coach Smart talks to me. He asked me why I gave myself 20 minutes and the average came out to 1.8. And, obviously, that really threw me off,” Cunningham stated.
Yeah, Cunningham, already a very competitive, tough player by nature, was irate. Angry at the world, he then had to go practice.
“My immediate reaction, to be completely honest, it was upsetting because you come in as a freshman with certain aspirations. And this exercise was the first real dose of reality that I got,” said the redshirt freshman from Austin Westlake. “And at that time, I had no clue that redshirting would ever be in my… I just never thought I would redshirt. But that exercise stuck with me for a while and it was just a lot for a freshman."
It’s probably a safe bet Cunningham and other players left with some bruises from his physicality and effort at the practice immediately following the minutes exercise. Mad at the world, Cunningham exclaimed he'd get a tattoo of the minutes projection as if to challenge the rest of the team he'll prove them wrong.
“And we're going up to practice that same day and I'm upset. And I go, ‘I'm going to get it tattooed on my wrist,’ joking. And everyone gets on me like, ‘You won't do it. You won't do it!’ So that night I went and got the 1.8 on my wrist and from there on, it's just been a little motivation. Just a little inspiration for that. I know I'm a good player. And of course, I redshirted last year, but it was supposed to be a… just inspiration.”
Yes, Cunningham has a tattoo of “1.8” on the inside of his wrist, the amount of minutes, on average, his teammates projected him to play before his true freshman season. Who knows if Cunningham will ever be completely over that exercise? But once he began to move forward, he credits a redshirt season for helping him grow as a person and player.
“That redshirt season, I learned more about myself than I ever could have playing significant minutes, just with the level of adversity that I had to face,” he said. “Playing would have never even come close to that from being on scout squad the entire year to just not getting to live out your dreams on the court like you had coming in as a senior in high school. And for that I've grown as a person. And I'm really grateful that I redshirted.
"As a player, you get to watch a full season and we went to the NIT, which extended it to longer than anybody. And to learn from your fellow freshmen and how they had struggles during the season or situations during games to be able to acknowledge that and learn from it was also huge moving into the season when I was playing a little bit more.”
Fast forward to this season, and Cunningham entered the year in a different situation, but soon found him in a familiar one.
Prior to the 2019-20 season, Cunningham started both closed scrimmages and the first game of the season. He was labeled by his head coach as the team’s best offensive rebounder, strong defender, and rotation player. Matt Coleman and Courtney Ramey, two of the teams leaders, glowingly discussed picking him first for preseason practice scrimmages when they were captains.
Then, Cunningham’s role vanished. Instead of complaining, he did as much as he could in a basketball setting to show why he belonged.
“It was a tough process for sure because you work all offseason, you put yourself in good position, you start those two scrimmages… and then the next game until really Iowa State or West Virginia a couple weeks ago, my role was diminished. But talking to the coaches… I actually didn't talk to them about it too much because I didn't want to be the kid on the bench bitching about playing time all the time,” Cunningham said. “I didn't want to be a burden to them or complain day in and day out.”
“So, at a certain point, I embraced the practice squad player, and I was thrilled, every day to go practice with them and give the guys are playing good looks. But I didn't really approach the coaches about it just because I didn't want to be the kid on the bench bitching about playing time.”
By now you should know Cunningham doesn’t step onto the hardwood and deliver anything less than a very tough, physical 100%. Popular national hoops voice Jon Rothstein recently said there is no such thing as a 50-50 ball when Cunningham is on the floor; it’s more like a 90-10 ball in favor of the Texas forward. In practice, Cunningham approached every day trying to prove he belonged on the floor.
“Oh, absolutely, yeah,” responded Cunningham if he was trying to show the coaches in practice what they were missing by him not playing. “Practice squad I was doing everything I could from guarding the best players on scout team defense to impersonating the best players on scout team offense and running the other team’s offense. So, I was definitely trying to show them that I was ready to play. And through doing that I became a better player and helped myself be ready for the chances that I've been given so far.”
With those chances, Cunningham has become a recent fan favorite, and has proven he belongs. Heck, he’s proven he should have been playing more because Cunningham is a winner. He does all the little things that go into winning basketball games. And each time he steps onto the court, he’s reminded when he first arrived no one expected him to play.
1.8.
