Holbrook hoping fourth time is the charm
ASTON » Gemil Holbrook settles into a conference-room chair at the Mirenda Center and surveys his new surroundings. It’s a process that has become habit.
Neumann University, for which the 6-foot-5 junior is a reserve guard, is Holbrook’s fourth college in three years, on the heels of three different high schools. If not preferred, the Darby native has at least grown accustomed to the itinerant lifestyle.
“It’s a little hard but I was just told not to give up and just to keep going at it,” Holbrook said last week. “When I found Neumann, I just found it was a good place. I’d heard a few good things about Neumann and their basketball team.”
Holbrook’s college journey began at Rider, where he signed to great fanfare in his senior season at Roman Catholic. But he left the school before the season began, apparently not in the plans of coach Kevin Baggett.
He spent the spring semester at Philadelphia University, where in 14 games off the bench he averaged 6.9 points in 16.9 minutes. He didn’t last there, and surfaced as a sophomore at Delaware County Community College, a rejuvenating season in which he was named a second-team All-Region performer.
Yet when last fall rolled around, Holbrook was working a day job without any intention of pursuing his final two years of eligibility, until dots connected within the Philadelphia coaching community to link Holbrook’s past with his future.
Jim Rullo, Neumann’s head coach, and former Roman Catholic head man Chris McNesby once coached together at Drexel. Rullo’s program has made a name as a landing pad for the plethora of local talent that slips through the cracks in higher levels, and when Holbrook’s name came up, Rullo turned to McNesby to vet the possibility of adding him.
“We thought it was a good fit, being in Delaware County, being close to home, having a support structure in place that would benefit him,” Rullo said. “And obviously things worked out from an academic piece and a financial piece where it’s a good fit for him.”
Talent has never been the question for Holbrook, which breeds more quandaries — like how does a player of his caliber fail to stick anywhere? How does someone regarded as a surefire Division I talent in high school end up with a grand tour of four levels of the college universe with three semesters to spare?
The most likely answer, which Holbrook doesn’t plumb the full depths of, is multi-faceted. Those closest to him see the opposing pressures — the must-win imperative of Division I coaches for job security, the prestige of being a Division I signee whether or not it’s conducive to sustained success — as conspiring against him. That left little room for error for Holbrook once he arrived in Trenton, and his delayed adaptation to Rider’s rhythms made it an untenable situation.
“What I took away from Rider is I’ve got to be ready and fight through some things, like adversity and stuff like that,” Holbrook said.
“He has not had the smoothest path in his college career so far,” McNesby said. “But now I think he’s put so much behind him and I think he’s ready to realize what college really is all about, which is for him to enjoy basketball but more important to get a college degree. I think early on, he lost trust in some people at schools he went to. … At Rider, I think they were asking him to move on after a month and a half, which is kind of unheard of.”
Stability has long eluded Holbrook. He spent half of his freshman year at Archbishop Carroll before transferring to his home district of Penn Wood, where he averaged 11.5 points as a sophomore. But he couldn’t resist the siren call of the Catholic League, leaping to Roman, where he won a state title as a senior, the leading scorer with 20 points in a 62-45 win over Martin Luther King in the Class 4A final. While that move increased visibility to college recruiters, being surrounded by talents like Penn State’s Tony Carr and Nazeer Bostick papered over cracks in Holbrook’s game, allowing him to excel as a one-dimensional scorer and resist diversifying his skillset.
Rullo understands the pressures exerted on players. When high schoolers bite off more than they can chew or underclassmen are unwilling to wait for minutes, Neumann presents an alternative with competitive basketball and a chance at an education. In that respect, though Holbrook’s case may reside at an extreme of the turbulence spectrum, it’s hardly foreign to Rullo.
“I don’t think he’s any different from a lot of the players we get,” Rullo said. “Everyone, we know, has their own journey, and what we try to do is implement a selfless approach where, this program’s not for everybody. If you’re looking to come and just put numbers up and not be part of a successful program, then this is not the spot for you. But we like to try to do our due diligence and do our homework and figure out if what he brings to the table from the talent standpoint fits what we’re trying to do as a team. He’s been nothing short of the epitome of that sort of player.”
Improbably, Holbrook could be on track to graduate next spring, Rullo said, with a degree in criminal justice. What Holbrook hopes will differentiate Neumann from his other stops is the emphasis on non-basketball elements— on the support structure, the academic plan, the off-court aspects that may have been lacking elsewhere. And hopefully with the wisdom of his travels, Holbrook will be better positioned to capitalize on those opportunities.
“When I came in, I knew a couple of the players and Coach Rullo, I heard he was a good guy,” Holbrook said. “He said he would take care of me. And when I got here, everything they said was kind a true. So I just fit with the team and how they played, and I just tried to not do too much on my end and work my way in.”