Troy Rolle -- the only senior on a Utah State team that has the nation's longest winning streak at 12 in a row -- sits on an airplane carrying him to his next game wearing oversized headphones, lost in his music.
But rather than rap or hip-hop, most likely Rolle is listening to gospel music, or maybe what he calls "positive" R&B by someone such as Will Smith or TLC.And often while he rides those airplanes, Rolle is utterly absorbed in reading his Bible. He has a highlighter in one hand and a ball-point pen in the other and takes turns underlining and highlighting passages. Rarely does he look up. He is engrossed. Driven.
The young man born in Nassau, the Bahamas, who grew up on the South Side of Chicago and in Orlando, Fla., who yearned to fly like Michael Jordan and ultimately was blessed with those strong hops, the ability to make swift slam-dunks, graceful 3-pointers and play fierce defense on the other team's best players, feels he is called to something far higher than the mere orange rim of a basket.
He is consumed in his passion to serve God.
His mission in life is to become a minister.
"God chose me," says Rolle. "He called me even before I was born. He has just continued to be real in my life."
Rolle says he does not represent a particular church or religion, and he does not know where he will go once he leaves his Utah State studies in philosophy and psychology or if he will make a living preaching. That is all in God's hands, he says.
"My desire is not to be the wealthiest man in the world," says Rolle. "It is to know Christ."
Troy's mother, Melanie Rolle, raised her three boys to be church-goers and athletes. He thinks some of his hoop abilities come from an uncle in the Bahamas. A brother who is one year older and played at Georgia Southern expects to have a shot at the NBA this summer. Troy says he often talks about God on the phone with his brothers, but they do not feel quite the need he does to serve as a minister.
It's a desire he has always felt, although he admits he wanted to be a fireman and a basketball player as a youngster, and he says he tried for a while to follow his mother's wishes that he become a lawyer.
But inside, there burns a fire to work for the Lord. "I cannot even control it," Rolle says.
His passion became even stronger once he came to Logan, where he was alone, without family.
A product of Chipola Junior College in Florida, one of former USU coach Larry Eustachy's favorite recruiting spots (Corwin Woodard, Marcus Saxon, Pharoah Davis), Rolle says he actually signed a letter of intent to attend Long Beach State, but he never sent it in, taking a visit to USU instead. Eustachy and his assistants were persistent recruiters, "and I knew I was in for something when I saw this place," Rolle says.
Oddly, it wasn't so much that he liked the campus setting or the mountains. It was that he "had a feeling there was a burden upon this place," he says, and felt he might help. He cites the fact that Utah has one of the highest suicide rates among the 50 states by way of explanation of his initial reaction to Utah, which he actually does like. "I love the summers here," he says.
Rolle paid his way with financial aid for a redshirt season and then played for coach Stew Morrill last year and this.
Sometime in his three years on campus, his faith grew even stronger. "Each five years of my life is a higher step," he says.
"I was sitting in my room one time," he remembers, "and I just wanted to hear Jesus's voice and understand who he is. I had to take time out to have a relationship with Him and forget about myself and my desire."
He realized, "I wanted to devote everything to God."
Rolle is quiet and friendly, sometimes a solitary figure. He says he does not know if his teammates accept his devotion. "They never tell me anything about that. They just stick with basketball," he says. He'll go bowling with some of them, and on road trips, they go out to eat together. On the court, the whole team plays as one, with no egos and no differences.
Rolle has been the 21-5 Aggies' leading scorer in 10 games and the leading rebounder in three. He scored a career-high 24 in USU's first Big West Conference game, a win over Cal Fullerton in the Spectrum that kicked off the 12-game win streak. He averages 11.4 points a game, down about two points from last season's average because USU has five players scoring at or near double figures this season.
Rolle is fifth on the Aggie career lists for 3-pointers made (102) and taken (279), right behind fourth-place teammate Tony Brown (107-for-280).
The Aggies can win the Eastern Division title and No. 1 seed outright if they can win a 13th straight game when they play at New Mexico State Thursday night at 6 MST. They hold a four-game lead over NMSU with four to play. USU is at North Texas Saturday and is at home to Idaho and Boise State March 2 and 4 to conclude the regular season. Those will be the final home regular-season games of Rolle's career.