LOGAN — It’s probably safe to say that more than a few Utah State basketball fans have looked at Deyton Albury’s extraordinary speed and muscular physique this season and wondered if his skill set might transfer to football.
And it turns out it does.
Before USU’s senior point guard ever laced his shoes up to play in a high school basketball game in the United States, he helped lead a small school in Kansas to a regional championship in football.
Not that the Bahamian had much experience with football before relocating to the Midwest prior to his senior year.
A native of Nassau, Albury was spotted at a basketball tournament in the Bahamas by the football coach from Sunrise Christian Academy in Bel Aire, Kansas, a small city about 10 miles northeast of Wichita. Impressed by Albury’s athleticism, the Buffaloes’ coach asked if he’d like to come to the U.S. to give football a shot, and perhaps also play basketball once the season was over.
“All of my life it was a dream to come to the United States and play basketball — high school, college, it didn’t matter. All I wanted to do was just get out. Get off the island, so I can get an opportunity for myself. And I was blessed enough to get an opportunity.”
— USU guard Deyton Albury
“We did have a football,” Albury notes. “My brother and I played pretty much every sport in our yard — baseball, football, basketball, soccer — so I did know how to throw a football. And my dad is a Dallas Cowboys fan, and there are a lot of Miami Dolphins fans in the Bahamas because we’re so close.
“But I didn’t have any experience playing at all, and I didn’t know anything about positions. All I knew is that you had to run and catch the ball to get a touchdown.”
Sunrise Christian’s basketball program is known throughout the country for its high level of talent, so much so that it boasts an Elite squad full of future Division I players (former Weber State star and first-round 2024 NBA draft pick Dillon Jones was also there in 2019-20), as well as a very strong Select squad of athletes primarily headed for smaller programs or junior colleges. So, making the Buffaloes basketball team was far from a given, but both Albury and his father, Michael Albury Sr., felt it was still worth a shot.
“I’ve been playing basketball my whole life; I can’t remember my life without basketball,” Albury proclaims. “All of my life it was a dream to come to the United States and play basketball — high school, college, it didn’t matter. All I wanted to do was just get out. Get off the island, so I can get an opportunity for myself. And I was blessed enough to get an opportunity.”
Football baptism by fire
It probably helps that Sunrise Christian plays eight-man football, which makes the sport a little less complicated for a newcomer to learn, and it also provides more space for a speedster like Albury to operate. While he played defensive end in the fall of 2019, Albury was primarily a running back on offense, while also stepping in at wide receiver and returning kicks for the Buffaloes. Despite his unfamiliarity with the sport, Albury ended up rushing for more than 1,000 yards in 10 games and compiled 20 touchdowns, including four on punt returns.
“It wasn’t anything too complex,” Albury says. “It was kind of hard learning the names of the plays, but other than that, it was just me using my legs, to be honest.”
Although Albury had to leave the Heartland Christian Athletic Association championship game against Destiny Christian (Oklahoma) due to an injury to his left hand, the Buffaloes rallied back from a 24-point deficit to win 52-50 in double-overtime.
That was on a Friday. Albury and his teammates bused back to Bel Aire that night, and he was able to briefly celebrate the football title before getting on another bus Saturday morning headed for Colorado for his first game with Sunrise Christian’s Select basketball team. Despite still be hampered by his hand injury, Albury started at the point and scored 22 points to help lift the Buffaloes to a 56-51 victory in his debut.
Now 23 years old, Albury looks back at his time as a football/basketball player in south-central Kansas as just one small part of what he calls “my journey.”
Hoop dreams
While starring at Temple Christian School in Nassau, the oldest son of Michael and Geniece Albury realized early on that he’d need to leave the Caribbean if he was ever to live out his basketball dreams like NBA guard Buddy Hield, who also played for Sunrise Christian after growing up in the Bahamas.
Fortunately for Albury, a solid year for the Buffaloes led to securing a scholarship to attend and play basketball at Believe Prep Academy in Rock Hill, South Carolina, in 2020-21. And from there, the 6-foot-2, 190-pound guard ended up signing with Chipola College in Marianna, Florida. One of the strongest junior college basketball programs in the country, Chipola was also the feeder school for several former Aggie standouts like Marcus Saxon and Troy Rolle, and Albury fared well in his two years with the Indians.
“I was offered a full scholarship to go to Chipola College by Donnie Tyndall, who completely changed my life,” Albury says of the former Tennessee head coach. “He completely changed my perspective on basketball, and I got stronger mentally and physically.”
Albury started 28 out of 34 games as a sophomore at Chipola, averaging 10.8 points, 5.1 rebounds and 3.3 assists playing for a team that won 29 games before losing in the second round of the NJCAA Division I tournament. And his all-conference first-team performance in 2022-23 led to a scholarship offer from Queens University of Charlotte in North Carolina.
Starting most of the season at point guard for the Royals, Albury took his game to another level, averaging 17.0 points, 5.8 rebounds and 3.6 assists over 32 games. He was named the Atlantic Sun Conference’s Newcomer of the Year, scored a team-high 23 points in a 106-69 loss to No. 16 Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium and had three notable battles with the 6-foot-11 Belgian center from Stetson.
Now a teammate of Albury’s at USU, Aubin Gateretse ended up getting the better of those clashes, with he and Stetson taking two out of three games, including an 83-71 victory in the ASUN postseason tournament that helped propel the Hatters to its first-ever NCAA Tournament berth.
“We always talk about how I was just fearless going to the rim against him, and he would wall up and I would just get into his body and just drop out,” Albury says of Gateretse, who had 79 blocks in three seasons at Stetson. “We always joke about that.”
Utah State bound
Ironically, a month after Queens’ loss to Stetson, Albury and Gateretse would be announced by Jerrod Calhoun as the first transfers of his tenure as the new head coach at Utah State. Albury, who put his name in the transfer portal almost immediately following the end of the Royals’ season, was being sought after by numerous programs from around the country, but Calhoun and his staff were able to secure his services by mid-April 2024.
“He’s just a great kid,” Calhoun says of Albury. “I obviously watched the film at Queens, and I was really impressed with his speed, his quickness and his ability to get to the rim. And then we did the intel on him as a person, we talked to his junior college coach, Donnie Tyndall. … He had a really good relationship with (Albury), and he gave me good, honest feedback about his character.
“And I think he just can get better and better. You know, he’s got another year now with the new rule, and he is still just getting better and better.”
Albury, whose younger brother, Michael Jr., is currently playing at Ranger College in Texas, has been part of Calhoun’s three-prong point guard attack, splitting time there and/or at shooting guard with graduate Drake Allen and true freshman Jordy Barnes. Allen, a transfer from Utah Valley, started at the point in USU’s first 11 games of the season before suffering a separated shoulder early in the Aggies’ home setback to UC San Diego on Dec. 17.
Albury has started all 11 games since, even though Allen was rather miraculously sidelined for just two games. Albury, who didn’t score in double figures prior to the UCSD game, put up 15 points in the loss, and he’s averaged 9.5 points per game since being pressed into service just a few minutes into that contest.
His speed getting up and down the court is Albury’s greatest asset, and as Gateretse can attest, he’s also pretty fearless taking the ball to the basket against big men. And while he’s 56.3% from the field this season, Albury has also hit some big shots from the perimeter, including a critical 3-pointer from the corner late in USU’s home victory against UNLV on Jan. 29, and is 7 for 16 (43.8%) from beyond the arc.
“He really makes them in the Spectrum; he likes these baskets for whatever reason. I think his percentages are much higher at home,” Calhoun says with a smile. “But Deyton’s got a lot of things that he’ll add to his game, I believe, in the offseason. Not just his ability to not only take catch-and-shoot threes, but off-the-bounce threes. That’s the next evolution of his game.
“... He was just instrumental the other night (in the UNLV game), but he’s had some great games for us. His speed gives us something we just don’t have. … Our system fits him really well. We like to play fast, give our guys a lot of space, a lot of five-out concepts, so it’s just allowing him to operate in space. I think that’s critical.
“He’s a great transition player, and he’s a great defender,” Calhoun adds.
Albury, who scored a season-high 16 points in USU’s loss to New Mexico last Saturday, came to Utah State with the hope and expectation of making his first trip to the NCAA Tournament. The 2024-25 Aggies, who won 19 of their first 22 games, certainly seem poised to make a third-straight trip to the Big Dance this season, but there’s still a lot of work left to be done.
And some winter left to survive.
Cache Valley is a long way from Nassau, and while it’s been a relatively mild winter in Utah, it’s still by far the coldest one Albury has endured during his “journey.” Fortunately, teammate and Cache Valley native Mason Falslev helped Albury secure the use of an electric scooter to help get him from his off-campus apartment up the hill to Utah State a little bit quicker and easier.
That camaraderie is yet another reason that Albury knows he made the right decision last spring to join a new program with a brand-new head coach.
“I was just waiting for that feeling, you know, that gut feeling you have that yeah … OK. This is the spot,” Albury says of coming to Utah State. “This is where I deserve to be, and this is where I want to be. And that’s what I felt coming on my visit. The coaches were nice to me, it’s all the love in the community and I had heard a lot about the Spectrum.
“So, I knew this was the place I wanted to be. … And we have a bunch of very talented guys that love each other off the court, and we all want to see each other be successful. I feel like that’s part of why we’ve been so good.”
