SALT LAKE CITY — Freddie Gillespie sat at his locker on Wednesday, with “March Madness” signs adorning the walls of the NBA’s Utah Jazz’s arena. Three years ago, he hardly played minutes at a Division III school. He tried to imagine what he would’ve thought if someone told him that three years down the line, he’d be sitting in that chair, wearing a Baylor practice jersey, a day away from his NCAA Tournament debut.

“I probably would’ve thought they were either crazy or out of their mind,” Gillespie said. “I had no idea (this would happen).”

Gillespie has started Baylor’s (19-13, 10-8 Big 12) last two games heading into an NCAA Tournament opener against Syracuse on Thursday, in part because BU’s Tristan Clark suffered a season-ending injury in January. In the 2015-16 season, Gillespie played 16 minutes total as a freshman at Division III Carleton (Minnesota) College, then averaged 10 points as a sophomore. But he left his home state to become a preferred walk-on at Baylor, and now the 6-foot-8, 240 pound forward is preparing for the biggest game of his life.

“He deserves a lot of credit,” Baylor head coach Scott Drew said. “Sometimes bigs don’t like to spend a lot of time in the gym, and Freddie, in that year out, he spent more time in the gym than any other player we had.”

Gillespie didn’t pick up basketball until eighth grade. He broke his ankle as a high school freshman and tore his ACL late in his junior year. There was limited time for the big man to develop, and even less time for high-level coaches to scout him.

He was frustrated that he’d sat under two veterans in his freshman season, and so he relied on the Mikan drill to improve his finishing. Lefty layup, righty layup, lefty layup, righty layup. Over and over again.

“For me, I was so raw,” Gillespie said. “I feel like when you get really good, it becomes boring. Now it’s more boring. Back then, I just really couldn’t even finish that well. It was just more of a challenge.”

Midway through Gillespie’s sophomore season, he was watching a North Carolina game. As the announcers praised the strength and size of ACC players, Gillespie thought to himself, “OK, I have all those tools. I think I can play there. So it was kind of like a revelation.”

He called his mother and asked if he was crazy. She didn’t trust her basketball acumen, so she turned to a high school coach in Minnesota, Al Nuness. Nuness had starred at the University of Minnesota in the 1960s, and his son, Jared, was on the Baylor coaching staff. Nuness thought Gillespie had the requisite athleticism to play at the Division I level, and he let Jared know.

Later that season, as Drew visited Minnesota to recruit now-Duke point guard Tre Jones, he stopped in to see Gillespie and asked him to visit Baylor in Waco, Texas. Once there, Gillespie was offered a preferred walk-on spot.

“To me, it was just a no-brainer,” Gillespie said. “I was like, they’ve developed big men, and they have a history of developing big men, from dudes who were unranked into NBA Draft picks.”

Gillespie redshirted his first season with the Bears. During that time, Baylor’s director of basketball operations Bill Peterson advised Gillespie to focus on immediate improvements. So he worked on catching the ball, setting screens, contesting vertically.

Put on scholarship to start this season, Gillespie still wasn’t in position to play a huge role. But then Clark, the Bears’ second-leading scorer, suffered a season-ending knee injury in early January. Before then, Gillespie hadn’t scored or rebounded in double figures. Since then, he’s had four double-digit scoring outputs and two double-digit rebounding games.

Now Gillespie focuses on the things he feels he can excel at: rebounding and blocking shots. The coaches handed out a Charles Barkley quote, which Gillespie relayed as Barkley saying “you gotta just want the blank ball.”

“One thing that was told to me is to be elite in your role,” Gillespie added. “Take what you’re good at and go from being a seven out of 10 to a 9.5 out of 10. So that’s what I try to do.”

Less than a decade ago, Gillespie had never played basketball. Three years ago, he played less minutes in a full season at a Division III school than he did last week against Iowa State.

The lights will be brighter than they’ve ever been on Thursday night when Baylor tips against Syracuse. Gillespie will be lined up with players who were highly ranked on recruiting lists, have earned national accolades and will never know what a cramped Division III locker room might be like. But Thursday, he’ll be the same as one of them: A high-major Division I basketball player in the NCAA Tournament.

“I just put it that I was gonna stay D-III four years, go get an office job somewhere,” Gillespie said. “I had no clue this was gonna happen.”

Published on March 20, 2019 at 11:12 pm

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