Jersey guy: Wichita State’s Markis McDuffie heads home with a strong start to his freshman season

When Derek McDuffie went house hunting, he really went hunting for the perfect backyard.

With twins on the way, he found it in his hometown of Paterson, N.J. He needed a backyard big enough for a basketball court, big enough for family and neighborhood kids to gather for cookouts. Big enough to duplicate some of his experiences growing up with three brothers who enjoyed sports.

Big enough to start his son on the path to a promising basketball career.

“The backyard was our life,” said Mone McDuffie. “My father always wanted his kids to have a huge backyard. My brother would stay up until 2 a.m., playing basketball, non-stop dribbling.”

That smaller-than-regulation blacktop — lanes and boundary painted, permanent goal on one end, portable on the other — is where Wichita State freshman Markis McDuffie, Mone’s twin, fell in love with the sport. It is where the two forces that dominate his life — basketball and family — intersect.

“Every morning, I was waking up, saying, ‘Dad, is it done yet, is it done yet?’ ” he said. “It took a couple weeks. When it got done, I was out there immediately, working on my game.”

McDuffie is back in New Jersey with the Shockers (5-4), who play Seton Hall (8-2) at the Prudential Center, about 15 miles from Paterson. He expects around 80 family and friends to attend.

“My family’s there, so I’ve got to focus in, put on for my family, show them what I’ve been working on the last six, seven months,” he said.

McDuffie’s work in his time at WSU is taking shape over the past month with impressive results.

He did not play in a Nov. 17 loss at Tulsa and contributed 10 uneventful minutes against Emporia State four days later. Injuries to guards Fred VanVleet and Landry Shamet meant WSU needed McDuffie in the AdvoCare Invitational in Florida and he grabbed the opportunity, scoring 14 points in losses to Southern California and Alabama and nine against Iowa. Saturday, he scored 13 points, making 4 of 5 three-pointers in a 67-50 win over No. 25 Utah.

McDuffie, who turned 18 in September, needed time to learn WSU’s offensive and defensive systems. Blown assignments, especially on defense, limited his contributions early in the season. Senior Evan Wessel and sophomore Zach Brown took most of the minutes at small forward before injuries and a need for scoring punch altered the rotation.

“He's young,” WSU coach Gregg Marshall said. “His talent is obvious, but I'm just not sure he is in tune all the time; paying attention and locking in. He was a little bit behind at the beginning of the season because of that.”

In recent games, McDuffie is using his length and athleticism on defense for steals and deflections. He is in the right place within WSU’s scheme more often. Playing solid defense gives him more opportunities to show off his scoring skills. He averages 7.9 points and is 10 of 19 from three-point range. His nine steals rank second on the team behind Ron Baker’s 14.

“I still need to work on my focus more, stay focused for 40 minutes straight,” he said. “I know what I’ve got to get better at. I’m never satisfied. I know if I’m not playing, I’m doing something wrong and I’m going to figure it out.”

Derek McDuffie’s plans for Markis started with the court in the backyard and extended to camps and youth leagues and lots of coaching. He coached Markis until high school, always putting him at point guard to develop his skills. At 7, Markis McDuffie made seven three-pointers in a row in a youth league contest and his father knew he had a special basketball player. At 8, he won a H-O-R-S-E contest against Smush Parker, who played five seasons in the NBA.

In high school, he played for Bob Hurley at Saint Anthony in Jersey City, N.J., a coach who reminds the family of Marshall for his attention to defense and demanding style. After school practices, he worked with a personal trainer.

“He was always someone that could really shoot,” Derek McDuffie said. “He didn’t need a lot of attention. If it was something he liked, he would put a lot of effort into it. Many nights, I would go out in the backyard and the kids would be out there playing. He would be shooting; he took a real knack to shooting.”

A wooden deck, painted red with white lattice fence, is the McDuffie’s backyard other prominent feature. It is the site of family gathering, Super Bowl parties and cookouts with parents and grandparents making hot dogs, hamburgers and corn on the cob while cousins and friends played.

“Great cooking,” Markis McDuffie said. “Barbecued chicken. Collard greens. White rice. All that good soul food.”

The McDuffies loved everything about Wichita State, except the distance. Oldest sister Sierra McDuffie is a senior basketball player at Felician University in Rutherford, N.J. It was difficult for Markis and Mone to attend different high schools and neither looked forward to a bigger geographic separation.

“We do everything together,” said Sandra McDuffie, Markis’ mother.

In grammar school, Mone would remind Markis to remember all his basketball gear and he would tell her to remember her ponytail holders. They finish each other sentences and help each other with homework, Markis helping Mone prepare notecards for anatomy and physiology class; Mone helping Markis with English essays. When an exam loomed, she could count on a good luck text message.

“That was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with,” said Mone, who attends Rutgers University-New Brunswick. “Our thoughts, we were so synchronized in a way that was a little bit weird. We knew what was best for each other and I think that’s what helped our relationship work.”

Markis and his parents visited Wichita in the summer of 2014. Sandra McDuffie brought a 5-by-7 inch black spiral notebook, filled with her thoughts, questions and answers from her son’s recruiting visits. WSU coaches gave consistent, straightforward answers to questions about classes and basketball, which impressed the parents.

“I wrote a lot of notes down, asked a lot of questions, asked a lot of the same questions,” she said. “It wasn’t all about athletics for me. It was about academics. We would sit down and we would evaluate the answers, because this was something new for us. We couldn’t take it lightly.”

The visit started badly because of weather-related travel delays in Chicago, delaying their arrival by almost a day.

“After the first day of recruitment, I said to my husband, ‘This is the school,’ ” she said. “I didn’t like it, because it was too far. But Wichita had everything we wanted for Markis. We had a rule we weren’t going to talk about it until the day of decision, but Coach Marshall, from the day I met him, he stuck to whatever his desires were for Markis. The story didn’t change. We appreciated that.”

The McDuffies went to the Marshalls’ home and, when they were delayed leaving Wichita, went to lunch at Heroes in Old Town. The Marshall family was also preparing to send a son, Kellen, to college and wrestling with many of the same issues as the McDuffies. Family is important to the McDuffies and the time spent watching Gregg Marshall with his family convinced Derek and Sandra that Markis could thrive in Wichita.

McDuffie chose WSU over VCU and Boston College, and canceled a visit to SMU.

“I’m a visual person and I totally appreciated how his family and (Coach) Marshall interacted,” Sandra McDuffie said. “Markis is from a close-knit family. We spent time with him. We spent time with their children. My whole thing was, ‘If he can do that with his family, then he has the love of family.’ That meant more than him telling ‘Oh, you’re going to do this, you’re going to do that.’ because I know how I raised my son. I wanted him in that environment.”

This story was originally published December 18, 2015 at 12:38 PM with the headline "Jersey guy: Wichita State’s Markis McDuffie heads home with a strong start to his freshman season."