LOGAN — Coming off of back-to-back road losses in which his highly-touted combo guard totaled 19 points and fouled out of one game after playing just 20 minutes, Utah State head coach Tim Duryea admits he had to take a minute and remind himself of Koby McEwen's youth.
"I met with him the other day, and I admitted to him that sometimes I do forget that he's a freshman," Duryea recalls. "I said, 'Every place we go on the road is new to you. Every team we play, every style we play against is brand new to you. But you play so well sometimes that I forget you're a freshman.'"
That's easy to do when it comes to McEwen, who currently leads all Mountain West freshmen in scoring (15.0 ppg), rebounds (4.8 rpg), assists (2.8 apg) and minutes per game (30.8 mpg).
Physically, the 6-foot-4, 195-pound guard from Canada could certainly pass for more than his 19 years, while mentally and emotionally, the son of Keith McEwen and Kathy-Ann Cooper has already faced a lot of challenges in his young life.
McEwen grew up in inner-city Toronto, in the Parkdale area, where "the only thing you can do to stay out of trouble is play sports."
"So, that's what I did," McEwen says. "I played soccer and ran track, but I played basketball every single day. And I used to play with guys who were four, five or six years older than me, and that helped make me tough because they wouldn't take it easy on me. There was no mercy once you were out on the court, so I had to step my game up and I think that helped make me the player I am today."
Although he grew up playing soccer rather than basketball in his native Grenada, Keith McEwen, who moved to Canada when he was 17, recognized his son's basketball abilities early on and encouraged him to pursue his hoops dreams. And it was Keith's father — a fan of the Lakers and Kobe Bryant — who steered him toward taking a visit to Utah after Geno Morgan, the former head coach at Wasatch Academy, paid a visit to an AAU tournament in Canada McEwen was playing in with CIA Bounce.
"(Morgan) talked to my dad, and my dad said, 'I think we should go check it out. I think it's a good idea,'" McEwen says of the private school in Mt. Pleasant. "And I ended up staying when I visited. I had just turned 15.'"
Although he admits that rural, central Utah was "different" than southern Ontario, McEwen says it helped that Wasatch Academy is "very international, very multi-cultural, just like Toronto."
"That made it easier to adjust," he says. "It was kind of like home, but in the middle of nowhere. It was a really good experience. If I had the chance to do it again, I would."
Through ninth, 10th and 11th grades, McEwen also benefitted from an extremely close relationship with Morgan, who grew up in Chicago in a situation similar to McEwen's in Toronto. McEwen says Morgan was a "father figure on campus for me," and that while he wanted to win championships on the court, "off the court, he was about helping you become a man and take care of your responsibilities."
After averaging 19.2 points per game as a junior, McEwen was on the radar of dozens of top basketball programs around the country. But those future plans suddenly took a backseat on July 2, 2015, when the 49-year-old Morgan died in his sleep while visiting family in Chicago.
McEwen was in Toronto when he received the shocking news of Morgan's passing from Wasatch teammate Geno Luzcando, who now plays at Idaho State.
"It was one of those things where you think people are joking around, that it can't be real," McEwen says. "The news was heartbreaking. I kind of felt lost, and I didn't know if I should go back to Wasatch. It was a really confusing part of my life."
That summer, McEwen was named one of the Top 100 prep basketball recruits in the country and the 19th best point guard in the nation by ESPN. Baylor, Ole Miss and Georgia Tech were among the schools that offered him a scholarship, while the likes of Miami, Xavier and Texas Tech wanted him to visit.
But Utah State, which had never managed to land a top 100 recruit, had been after McEwen throughout his career at Wasatch, and new Aggie coach Tim Duryea had recently added former Adams State head coach Louis Wilson to his staff. It just so happened that Wilson was teammates with Morgan at Trenton Junior College in Missouri, and the two had been close friends for more than three decades.
In addition, Tarvish Felton, another coach on Duryea's staff, was a longtime friend of Wilson and had also become a good friend of Morgan through that association.
"It was a tough couple of days around here when we heard the news about Geno," Duryea says. "That was really hard."
Duryea says he felt the Aggies were "in good shape" to get McEwen anyway, but that the Morgan-Wilson-Felton connection certainly had a lot to do with his successful recruitment of the Wasatch superstar. Keith McEwen also came along on his son's visit to USU, and Duryea says, "We had a great time with him, probably as good of a time as we've ever had with a parent on a visit."
"So, when they left, we looked at each other and said, 'We've done all we can do and feel pretty good about things,'" Duryea continues. "But that kid was being so heavily recruited that you didn't know."
But in early September, Duryea got the call he had hoped for from McEwen, who said he was "getting tired of the recruiting process" and canceled a planned visit to Texas Tech to commit to the Aggies.
"I'll always remember that day," Duryea declares. "I was sitting in my office when the phone rang. It was Koby, and he told me his decision. I'll never forget that day because he was the first top 100 recruit in school history.
"... Those guys are really hard to get, but obviously things fell into place so we could get him. But you've got to get one to get another, and hopefully he can show other recruits of that caliber that you can take that path to professional basketball through Utah State.
"He's got a long ways to go, but hopefully that is where his path will go. He's kind of a trailblazer here."
McEwen, who averaged 18.7 points per game during his senior year while playing for new Wasatch coach Curtis Condie, certainly seems to be heading in the right direction. Deemed the "Maple Mamba" by USU fans, the true freshman averaged 15 points in his first three games as an Aggie and has topped 20 points on five occasions this season.
Utah State's leading scorer in conference play (17.0 ppg), McEwen has served as an excellent compliment to senior forward Jalen Moore while starting all 23 games for the 10-13 Aggies. The starting shooting guard early in the year, he switched to the starting point guard position in early January when Duryea decided to move fellow freshman Sam Merrill into a starting position at the two spot.
"I like playing the one, and I like playing the two," McEwen says. "But I am kind of a control freak, so I like everything going how I want it to go. And I like going my tempo and my speed, and I feel like my speed is effective, so I really like playing the point."
McEwen set a USU true freshman scoring record by putting up 28 points in a win over UNLV on Jan. 7, and helped lead the Aggies to big wins over Fresno State and Nevada with 22 and 26 points, respectively. He is shooting 50 percent from the field and 42 percent from 3-point range, but the hard-nosed McEwen's biggest contribution to the Aggie offense may be his ability to drive to the basket late in games and finish plays while also getting fouled.
"I love that kid as a kid, and as a player," Duryea says. "He's the last one to leave practice every day. He just works. Works on his shooting and his ballhandling. I always tell him, 'You handle making all those tough shots, and I'll teach you the finer points of being an all-around guard.' That's kind of our deal.
"But since he's come here, Koby's been everything as advertised."