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By Dylan Hernandez

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Sure, Billy Knight will remember lifting weights and running on campus with Jason Kapono, but none of his memories from the summer were as vivid as the one he had of walking into Ohio’s state prison.

Yes, Billy Knight went to jail.

But not to serve time. He went to play basketball.

As part of a Christian ministry basketball team called Athletes in Action, Knight went to Africa to play in a six-game tournament in late June. It was a quick vacation for Knight, who upon returning from Africa, would spend the rest of his summer working on his game, much the way the rest of his Bruin teammates would.

But before his team, which included Solomon Hughes of Cal, went to Africa, it made a quick stop in Ohio. There, Knight got more than a vacation; he got something he would carry into this season: courage.

Knight’s team was at the penitentiary to play a group of inmates and preach the gospel to them afterward.

“As soon as we walked in the prison, the inmates started cussing at us,” Knight said.

As Knight walked to the court to get ready for the game, he saw men braiding each other’s hair. He saw men doing push-ups at a rapid pace. He saw men caressing each other in a sexual manner.

He was scared.

“I’ve never been that scared in my life,” Knight said.

His opponents scared him too, even though they were the inmates that were on good behavior. Knight’s team eventually won by 20 and following the game, the inmates were surprisingly cordial to the Athletes in Action.

“I thought they would say we were pansies, but they respected us,” Knight said. “No one had ever talked to them about God like that.”

The experience, Knight said, toughened him. He doesn’t think he’ll ever play scared again. Duke or Maryland, after all, are nowhere nearly as scary as those Ohio prisoners. (“Some of them are coming out real soon,” Knight said. “I’m glad I don’t live there.”)

His courage tested, Knight returned to Westwood to work on his conditioning with Kapono. The two ran together every day and lifted plenty of weights, hoping to improve their quickness. After their workouts, Knight and Kapono would spend their time playing one-on-one.

At one point in the summer, Kapono left Knight to represent the United States at the FIBA World Championship for Young Men in Saitama, Japan. Kapono averaged seven points per game and helped the U.S. win the gold medal at the tournament.

In Sacramento, meanwhile, senior forward Matt Barnes was trying to shape himself into an NBA prospect. He worked on his shooting, off-hand ball-handling and balance. At the end of his summer, he worked out with the Sacramento Kings for a little more than two weeks. There, he learned he still has a ways to go.

“I have to able to get my shot off quicker,” Barnes said. “In the NBA, I’m going to be a wing, so I have to be able to do that better.”

Sophomore forward/center T.J. Cummings tried to diversify his game as well, shooting 400 jumpers a day.

Incoming freshmen Andre Patterson and Dijon Thompson, both L.A.-based players, trained together for their first collegiate season, running, shooting and finding pick-up games to play in. Patterson, upset that some critics had labeled him as being “raw,” shot three times a day; during each session, he continued to shoot until he was completely tired.

“A lot of people talked negative about me,” Patterson said. “That really motivated me.”

Now, the players are all in back in school, trying to put what they gained over the summer to use. They hardly think of their summer workouts, and 10 years from now, it’ll be the season and not those training sessions they’ll remember, except for those few special memories – like going to prison.