Kyle Murray won’t fear he’s playing for the name on the back of his jersey more than the front next year.
They’ll be the same.
Amherst Regional’s senior point guard committed to play basketball at Murray State College last month. Not to be confused with Murray State University, the NCAA Division I school, Murray State College is a Division I junior college in Tishomingo, Oklahoma, 120 miles north of Dallas.
“I wanted to put myself in the best position to go as far as I can for basketball, and I think I made the right decision,” Murray said.
He made that call after narrowing down a range of possibilities from prep school to smaller colleges in New England. Keene State and Worcester State were options.
Murray heavily considered a postgraduate year at a prep school after talking to his older brother Meikkel, who just completed a season at Lee Academy in Maine.
“I was leaning more toward it because he did the same thing, and I look up to him a lot,” Kyle Murray said.
Murray State coach Kevin O’Connor presented another option. O’Connor is originally from Hadley and watched an Amherst practice when he was home for Christmas.
“He took an Amherst team that was expected to be middle of the road to a win away from going to the Western Mass. finals,” O’Connor said. “He was the scouting the report.”
He kept in contact with Murray and tried to bring him to Oklahoma.
“The coach is really high on him. He wants Kyle in the worst way,” Amherst coach Jim Matuszko said. “It’s always good when you’re wanted.”
Murray signed to play for the Aggies on his 18th birthday after visiting the campus in March. He was committing to O’Connor as much as Murray State. O’Connor is in his first year at the head of the Aggies program after he was an assistant coach at Arizona Western College. O’Connor worked at Kansas State as a graduate assistant and was a student manager at Illinois.
“I liked the background that he had. What I really want to do is go DII, DI so this was a good route for me to go,” Murray said.
Players typically play two years at a junior college. That counts for their NCAA eligibility, but they can sign with another school after one or two years. Murray could head to Oklahama as soon as June, where he said he’d have a job and be able to work out at the school’s facilities.
“I think this was a good opportunity,” Matuszko said. “They don’t come around like this very often.”