OGDEN -- This is a story that almost ends where most basketball dreams begin.
Weber State's Harold Arceneaux, one of the nation's most exciting college players, nearly left his game amid the bumping, grinding and trash-talking on the tough streets of New Orleans.No shocking first-round upset of North Carolina by the Arceneaux-led Wildcats in last year's NCAA Tournament. No talk of transferring to another school amid Weber State's subsequent head coaching limbo. No flirtation with this summer's NBA draft. And certainly none of the preseason accolades and attention being heaped upon him by Sports Illustrated and numerous other publications.
"Everybody is always working on their game," Arceneaux said of the pickup games and one-on-one challenges he grew up on. "Everybody plays hard. Even the ones who can't play. Nobody gets paid to play in this setting, but every street star dreams that someday he will."
Arceneaux had that dream, only to surrender it as a teen. He was well on the way to becoming another faceless basketball junkie whose dream was strangled by the harsh realities of life.
You see, where Arceneaux comes from, making the dream come true isn't just a matter of talent or hard work. The recipe for success also includes equal measures of good timing and opportunity.
He had three successful years as a high school star, but it wasn't a stellar senior season that launched him into college stardom. Rather, it was loss, turmoil and a stranger responsible for ultimately propelling him into the college basketball spotlight.
The magnificence of his story isn't in the end but in the middle. Where a boy on the verge of manhood stumbled onto the road that would take him far from home but closer to his orphaned dream.
Arceneaux's hoop dreams began unraveling right after his maternal grandmother died of breast cancer. The 17-year-old senior went to live with his sister in Detroit. She enrolled him in a prep school in hopes of improving his grades and his chances of getting into college. He lasted only a few months before dropping out and going back to New Orleans to live with his brother.
"I didn't know if I wanted to play anymore," he said. That meant playing for schools with the hope of someday playing for money (in the pros).
So he took his dream, buried it deep in his heart and took his game to the playground in the city's summer leagues.
There he met Dennis Behan, who would directly change the course of Arceneaux's life and indirectly alter the profile of Weber State basketball.
Behan's son had played basketball for the College of Eastern Utah in Price and persuaded Arceneaux to get his GED and enroll.
"When he first started talking about going, it when in one ear and out the other. I was like, 'No', at first," Arceneaux says with a smile. "I didn't really know anything about Utah . . .. But after a person keeps putting it on your mind, well . . . "
Encouragement soon turned into recruiting when Behan introduced Arceneaux to then-CEU coach Guy Beach. Arceneaux realized Beach was offering a second chance. "You get an opportunity; you throw it away," Arceneaux explained. "You get a second chance; you've got to take advantage of it.
"I grew up in the projects in New Orleans," he said. "So if I can make it there, I can make it anywhere. When you love basketball, you let basketball take you where you go."
At CEU, Arceneaux established himself as a student and player. He also forged a bond with Beach that would lead him from central Utah to Ogden, via the Lone Star State, in search of basketball glory.
After Arceneaux's freshman year, Beach left CEU to take an assistant coaching position at Weber. Arceneaux, a basketball vagabond again, picked up and moved with two other friends to play for Juco basketball powerhouse Midland College in Texas.
At Beach's invitation, he visited the Ogden campus during his sophomore year. "I met a lot of people that worked here, and I kind of made my decision right then to come here," he said.
His choice of cuisine may have also indirectly influenced his thought process. "In Price you have one McDonald's; Here (Ogden) you have a few to choose from," he said.
But multiple Golden Arches were a distant second to Arceneaux's real reason for choosing the Wildcats.
"Coach Beach," he said, explaining why he would turn down offers from larger schools like UNLV to play at Weber State. "He was there. He was on me the whole year about coming to Weber."
Beach and Arceneaux have forged a friendship that transcends their player-coach relationship. When he had trouble adjusting to college life, it was Beach who helped him get his mind right.
"I've just always felt comfortable around him. I'm a little spoiled, always used to getting my way."
But Arceneaux will be going it alone as a senior. In yet another twist to Arceneaux's basketball sojourn, Beach, his coach and mentor, will not be on the Weber State bench this season, having accepted an assistant's job with new UTEP head coach Jason Rabedeaux.
Beach and his wife, Helen, invited Arceneaux and teammate Eddie Gill to their home last Friday to give them the news in person. Beach said the UTEP job "came looking for him." He was offered the position without even having to interview.
"They didn't say anything," Beach said, describing the pair's response. "We talked about it the week before . . . They understood I needed to do this. But they said we don't have to be happy about it."
Beach confesses to pangs of guilt at leaving Arceneaux at the crest of his college career. It's tempered, however, by the fact that the Wildcats have all the ingredients for a terrific season and Arceneaux can solidify his chances at a pro career with a strong senior season.
"He's very, very talented," Beach said of Arceneaux. "He's just got to keep working at it."
Beach admits if his move had come earlier, perhaps in the spring, he could see Arceneaux and Gill following him to UTEP. But not now. "Weber State is the best place for them," he said.
Such honesty and loyalty have been the trademarks of the Beach-Arceneaux relationship. Maybe that's why Beach was so blunt describing the lack of media attention Arceneaux would get playing for the Wildcats and playing in the shadow of the University of Utah.
Before last year's NCAA Tournament, Arceneaux said he heard and read all the predictions about "Utah this and Utah that" compared with one-line mentions of little "Webber State" by many in the national hoop pundits.
"We just tuned all that out," he said. "That's just the way it is. I think winning is better this way. We was an underdog all the way."
The Wildcats won the Big Sky Conference championship and stunned powerhouse North Carolina 76-74 in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament. They just missed advancing to the Sweet 16 by taking Florida into overtime before losing 82-74 in the second round.
Arceneaux was spectacular and then some in the two games, scoring a combined 68 points and more than living up to the moniker, "The Show," given him by a radio announcer last season.
But he wasn't through surprising. Quiet and self-effacing, Arceneaux caused jaws to drop again when he included his name as an eligible underclassman for the NBA draft -- eventually removing it just before the deadline to maintain his NCAA eligibility for this season.
Now he insists that the decision to do so was his own and had nothing to do with Beach losing out to Joe Cravens to be the new Weber State coach, replacing Ron Abegglen. Beach eventually agreed to join Cravens' staff as an assistant -- a move many believe ended talk of Arceneaux (and Gill) leaving Weber.
"I was just testing the waters," Arceneaux said with a mischievous smile. "I wanted to see where I was at, if anyone would be interested in me . . . The whole time I wanted to come back to school."
He said there were inquiries but declined to name teams.
Realistically, he never thought he'd make it to the NBA. Not until last year.
"Once you start playing ball, it's (the NBA) always the dream," he said. "Now I think I have a better chance than the average person."
The hype has already started. Later this fall, he'll be featured as one of the most promising seniors in the college basketball preview issue of Sports Illustrated. He's done interviews with too many publications to name.
"I'm happy to be getting recognition for the school," he said. "I'm proving you can go to a small school and get recognized."
All this from a kid who once had a coach who told him he had a Lexus game with a Pinto engine. Or who was once kicked him off the team for a few days for not working hard enough.
"(The coach said) said just having talent wasn't always going to get me by. It was going to get to a point where I'd have to work as hard as the next guy."
Now that once forgotten playground dream serves as powerful incentive.