For years, Perry Dozier Sr. fibbed. OK, maybe downright lied is more accurate.
He'd sign his son, PJ Dozier, up for rec leagues and area tournaments and fudge his son's age.
But Perry wasn't trying to turn his son into a basketball Danny Almonte, hoping to buck the system so his son stood out among the competition. No, Perry would tell people PJ was two years older than he was, purposefully putting him at a disadvantage.
The way Perry figured it, PJ not only would be challenged by the older, bigger boys, but also would avoid being pigeonholed and stuffed in the post from the first day he touched a ball because he was so much taller than kids his own age.
The experiment worked -- well, except for the time PJ dribbled upcourt with tears streaming down his face because he was being pushed around too much by the older kids -- until father and son embarked on a little tour. They hit up all the big youth summer tournaments, and Perry finally had to come clean about PJ's age.
That summer, PJ finally played with kids his own age.
He came home ranked the best fifth-grader in the nation by one recruiting service.
"It was exciting, but I was 10,'' PJ said. "It didn't really mean anything. I knew I just had to stay the course.''
He did, following a pretty straight path from elementary school honors to top-20 prospect to McDonald's All American and now, especially since teammate Sindarius Thornwell is suspended, the most important piece of a South Carolina team that is off to an unexpected 8-1 start and No. 16 ranking.
How did PJ avoid the child prodigy to child nobody detour? Easily. He might have been the best fifth-grader in the nation, but he wasn't even the best baller in his own family.
The Twin Towers -- that's what they were called. Perry Dozier Sr. checked in at 6-foot-10, his twin brother Terry at 6-9. Together they led Baltimore's Dunbar High School to a national championship and then both enrolled at South Carolina. Terry would go on to score 1,445 collegiate points and play briefly in the NBA, while Perry's career was cut short by a knee injury. But the Dozier name took hold in the state, associated with basketball excellence.
Terry trained PJ for a time, and Perry coached his son for nearly the entirety of his career. They demanded a lot -- Terry maybe even a little more. Wary of keeping a separation between coach and father, Perry made sure he and his son had interests outside of basketball, taking PJ to the golf course or bowling alley regularly where the lone rule was that no one talked hoops.
But neither father nor uncle worked PJ the hardest. No, the real taskmaster was his big sister, Asia. A four-star prospect, she'd drag her kid brother onto the driveway of the family's home in Columbia, South Carolina, for relentless games of one-on-one, the end coming only when their mother, Theresa, had enough of the squabbling and forced a truce.
"She actually restricted us from playing one another for a while,'' Asia said. "The games would almost always end in tears, usually PJ's. He's accustomed to winning and he's always had that 'failure isn't an option' attitude, so I didn't have to say much. The end result would be enough for the tears.''
The two grew up in basketball together, Asia winning two state titles at South Carolina's Spring Valley High School and climbing her way up the recruiting rankings, PJ's career drawing so many eyeballs that a website, pjdozier.net, chronicled his progress. PJ doesn't know who started the site and hasn't visited it in years, but it's like walking into the pages of a scrapbook. Scroll to the bottom and you'll find articles from as far back as that groundbreaking fifth-grade year and pictures of a scrawny kid with a big smile kissing trophies bigger than he is.
As the scrawny kid gave way to a more seasoned player, things started to change -- most notably, on the driveway. Asia remembers her baby brother coming home after a month of summer hoops looking a whole lot less babyish.
"Where did all of those inches come from?" she remembered saying to her mother.
With PJ's preteen growth spurt officially kicking in, she wisely opted out of one-on-one dogfights, choosing instead more winnable games of H-O-R-S-E.
Those early sibling battles, though, paid their dividends for brother and sister. Asia earned her state's Gatorade Player of the Year and Miss Basketball honors before becoming the latest Dozier to earn a scholarship to South Carolina. Four years later, she would graduate as a two-time captain, a three-year starter, a Final Four participant and part of the winningest class in Gamecocks history.
Hot on her tail, along came PJ, bringing home more state Player of the Year honors for the family's trophy case, and attracting equally premiere programs: Louisville, Michigan and North Carolina all made the short list and, of course, South Carolina.
Continuing the Dozier family legacy seemed the obvious choice.
"I was truly concerned,'' Perry said. "I wanted what was going to be best for him and I thought the pressure of staying home might be too much.''
But Perry also recalled his own recruitment, when his mother mindfully toed the line between offering guidance without swaying her boys. Choosing a college, she told them, was both a deeply personal decision and their first adult decision and therefore not up to her to make. Perry took his mom's advice to heart and backed off, letting PJ find his own way.
He did his homework, carefully considering each of his choices, picking his sister's brain for the benefits and pratfalls of staying at home. Ultimately he opted for South Carolina, taking a flier on coach Frank Martin, who was still trying to resurrect the Gamecocks program, and taking on the extra pressure by staying home.
"To me, that showed a lot about his character,'' Martin said. "It was us and the blue bloods, and he not only could have gone to one of the blue bloods, he could have gotten away from the extra scrutiny. For him to say no to that, that told me who PJ really was.''
Who he is, his father and sister both say, is a kid who is naturally gifted. Sports come easily to him -- those golf and bowling outings turned PJ into a terrific golfer and an even better bowler -- but he does not choose the easy road.
There is, after all, only one place to go from being the nation's best fifth-grader.
"Bust,'' PJ said. "I never wanted that to come into play.''
So instead of showing off his ranking, he tucked it away. Even as a 10-year-old, he recognized that elementary school success doesn't equate to a guaranteed future. He worked with his uncle, listened to his father and tried to be better than his sister. When he walked into a gym, instead of trying to reward people who came to see him score some eye-popping number of points, he played his game.
Consequently, the top fifth-grader not only became a top prospect who became a McDonald's All American who became a star on a top-25 team, but he also flip-flopped the Dozier family pecking order.
"We were the Dozier boys," Perry said of himself and his brother Terry, "and now all of a sudden life has changed. Now I'm PJ's dad, and you know what? It's an awesome feeling. I like that title much more than the Dozier twins.''
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