Duncan Powell stays on course to write narrative about himself

What makes Powell truly different, though, is his perseverance in creating his own narrative.

As a 22-year-old on the Georgia Tech basketball team, Powell has been through a lot already. The outward appearance, and the self-given nickname of “Shag Man” creates a unique persona, but the history he has overcome, the present he is thriving in and the future he hopes to flourish with are all his own.

And the basketball? Well, that’s all gravy at this point.

“I’m literally playing with house money,” Powell said. “This is all God. Before the game, the only thing I pray for is, ‘Just keep me injury-free, God. Allow me to do your will.’ I put the work in, put a lot of work in for a lot of years, it just wasn’t showing. It was preparing me for moments like this. Even if I play terrible every game, I get to be here. I’m in the ACC.”

A Conover kid

On Nov. 9, 2021, the North Carolina A&T basketball team made the crosstown trip to face North Carolina-Greensboro. Powell, although inactive because of injury, was a freshman for A&T and vividly remembers being in a dormitory before the game.

It was the same dormitory his mom, as an 18-year-old, had lived in as a North Carolina-Greensboro student and that Powell had been in as an infant.

Powell was born in Conover, North Carolina, a descendant of slaves who were brought to Wake County in North Carolina (Powell has done extensive research on his family tree). A few years after Powell’s birth, his maternal grandfather took a job in Texas and urged his daughter and new grandson to relocate there as well.

DeSoto, Texas, is where the family settled and where Powell is proud to call his home. He grew to be a basketball standout, but also excelled in football as a wide receiver and defensive back, so much so that Deion Sanders, then the offensive coordinator at Trinity Christian in Texas, tried to convince Powell to stick with the oblong ball instead of the round one, Powell said.

“My passion wasn’t with it,” he added. “I didn’t like getting hit, I didn’t like hitting.”

So basketball it was, a sport that Powell became dominant in despite being “terrible” until “something clicked” in middle school. His physical prowess and athletic gifts allowed him to be recognized in basketball circles as a future star.

But when he enrolled at DeSoto High School to play for legendary coach Chris Dyer, he was served a large slice of humble pie.

“We just held him accountable for everything. If he didn’t hustle, if he didn’t play hard, if he didn’t make his running, he had a price to pay,” Dyer said. “He was no different than anyone else. If he was late to class or he was late to school, he didn’t start. He didn’t possibly play if he was late enough. We made sure he was held accountable just like all of our kids.”

Powell knows now that Dyer’s tough-love approach paid off in the long run.

“It just taught me toughness, it taught me not to give up. As a freshman I was the No. 1 player in Texas, but I was like with the third team (at DeSoto). I had to work my way up,” he said. “By the end of the year I was a key part of the offense. It just taught me a lot of grit, a lot of determination. There’s no (recruiting) stars. You’re gonna have the same responsibilities and discipline as other people on the team.”

After two seasons at DeSoto, a bright basketball future seemed almost certain for Powell. The summer of 2020 changed all that.

The perils of recruiting

In September 2019, as a 17-year-old, Powell announced he was committed to playing basketball for the University of Arkansas starting in the 2021 season. He was considered a four-star prospect, by the 247Sports Composite, and picked Arkansas over SMU, TCU and Ole Miss.

Never one to lack confidence, Powell soon backed off that commitment. He had a dream to play for Kentucky.

“I didn’t even have an offer from Kentucky,” Powell laughed. “Things like that I didn’t think through, I didn’t have any guidance about, didn’t want to listen to anybody about.”

Interest in Powell slowed somewhat from there. It didn’t help that the COVID-19 pandemic settled in months later, or that Powell had briefly transferred to Huntington Prep in West Virginia in the summer of 2020 — a move predicated by Powell’s involvement in an altercation on DeSoto High grounds that forced Powell and his family to consider an alternative direction for his schooling.

Powell despised Huntington Prep so much he said he did everything he could think of to force the school to dismiss him after about a month from when he enrolled.

But what really changed everything? That was July 2, 2020. That was the day Powell, in an AAU game, went up for a dunk, realized he had no shot at finishing the shot, tried to lay the ball in instead and he came down awkwardly on his right knee.

The knee buckled. Cartilage tore. In an instant, Powell’s basketball journey had come to a screeching halt.

“I learned anything can be taken from you at any point in time,” Powell said. “I used to think a lot of times, ‘Why would I be thankful to God if I worked for this?’ He humbled me. ‘I can make you never walk again if I want to.’”

Powell’s dreams of winning a state championship for DeSoto were over. His dreams of playing college basketball weren’t quite as dire, as he continued to hear from Texas-San Antonio, DePaul, Old Dominion, Tulsa and Dayton, but the injury certainly made programs pause when scouting Powell. There also was something that intrigued Powell about returning to North Carolina when he heard from a familiar school.

His cousin had played college ball in the state. He still had family in the area. He had a chance to turn heads at a historically Black college and university.

So Powell committed to, and signed with, North Carolina A&T.

“I was poor. I was broke. I lived by myself. I got evicted twice in one year,” he said. “At the time it felt like the worst time of my life, especially that first year I couldn’t play. I couldn’t do nothing.”

Powell’s situation at A&T soon would go from bad to worse.

A&T fired coach Will Jones, who recruited Powell, in August 2022 before Powell had ever taken the court for the Aggies. Weeks later, on Oct. 2, 2022, another ominous sign for Powell struck in a tragic way when Powell’s cousin Isaiah Knight was shot and killed in Conover.

“It just felt like a terrible, terrible time in my life,” Powell said.

Basketball provided some solace for the now 6-foot-8 forward. Powell started four of the 30 games he played in during the 2022-23 season, averaging a modest 8 points and 5.2 rebounds per game. He showed flashes of his old self with 20 points against the College of Charleston and double-doubles against Hofstra and Towson and Hampton.

Powell’s confidence also was starting to resurface, not only for himself, but for a team he felt had the chance to make an NCAA Tournament run going into the 2023-24 season. Instead, A&T fired coach Phillip Shumpert, who had replaced Jones.

It was time for another change.

A new state of mind

Powell landed at Sacramento State in 2023, signing to play for former Arkansas assistant coach David Patrick (Powell said it was only coincidental that Patrick had been at Arkansas and that the two had no previous connection).

But as one of only six Americans on the Sacramento State roster, Powell said he felt like he never fit in with the locker room, even though he led the Hornets in scoring (12.1 ppg) and rebounding (7 rpg) and recorded five more double-doubles.

After the season Powell opted to transfer once again. He returned to Texas, where his phone was mostly silent until Louisiana-Lafayette, which now had Shumpert on its staff as an assistant coach, came calling. The Sun Belt program actually officially announced Powell as a signee in April, but Powell began to second-guess the decision he had made.

He thought he still had what it took to play for a major conference program, so he backed off his agreement and reopened his recruitment.

West Virginia entered the picture, and Powell found himself on a recruiting visit in Morgantown. He posted a picture on social media of himself decked out in a West Virginia uniform, a mistake, or a blessing in disguise depending on perspective, on his part.

Remember Powell’s brief stint at Huntington Prep? Those in the state of West Virginia didn’t forget. Word traveled fast to those associated with the Mountaineers that perhaps Powell wasn’t the right fit given his past behavior.

“At the end of the visit I’m in the car with the head coach — he didn’t tell me he didn’t want me, he basically just sent me back home and never hit me up again,” Powell recalled.

This should be where the story ends.

Powell was out of options, and he had even come to terms with that. Back home in Texas he continued to work out with trainer Jonathan Walker as his basketball dreams, while still faint, were fading.

“It’s June, and I don’t have anywhere to go,” Powell said. “I was like, ‘Man I had a good run, I’m thankful I made it this far.’ God showed me it’s possible to overcome the injury. It’s what it is. I guess I’m just gonna figure out what I’m gonna do.”

Then, a lifeline.

Basketball connections

Powell was still on the college basketball radar, even if he showed up as a small blip.

Walker, a longtime AAU coach, reached out to Tech coach Damon Stoudamire and explained Powell’s availability. Stoudamire was intrigued. He did his homework, made a few calls, checked in with colleagues around the country.

“One of the reasons I took him is because he had another (season of eligibility),” Stoudamire said. “That was big for me because I knew that early on it was gonna be a little rough for him to get him acclimated and bought in, but he’s bought in.

“What can you say about him? I think he’s getting better every game. He’s become a mismatch problem in a lot of ways for a lot of teams. He’s a guy that’s capable of doing big things. His approach has been great. He helps us out a lot.”

Powell is averaging 10.6 points and 5.5 rebounds over 30 games, mostly off the bench for the Yellow Jackets. Those are not eye-popping numbers, but Powell has become invaluable in the way he has settled into his role as a Swiss Army knife on both ends of the floor.

He also has played nearly 640 minutes and doesn’t take any second of those minutes for granted. The absence from basketball for two seasons because of that 2020 knee injury are fresh.

It was an injury that required surgery and necessitated cadaver tissue.

“I’m a big believer in Jesus is king and God’s plan. I really am grateful. Someone had to die for me to be able to play,” Powell said, rubbing the scar on his right knee.

Ball in his court

Being thankful, and paying it forward, are as much a part of Powell’s focus as basketball is these days.

“His development has come along just perfectly. He’s doing what he needs to do. It’s gradually growing every game,” Walker said. “When he gets comfortable, that’s when he’s a dangerous type of player. That’s been showing over the last few games.”

Powell is on track to graduate with a Tech degree in May. He has one season of college eligibility remaining as well, a season he could use to continue to improve his game, and to prove to so many who wouldn’t give him the time of day that they made a mistake based solely on reputation and appearance.

“It’s easy to judge me,” Powell said. “I feel like a lot of ACC teams and teams around the country feel stupid for not picking me up.”