Daily News-Record

The dream is his, not anyone else's.

That's why Jason Conley doesn't mind if some people think his basketball career was a bust after he left Virginia Military Institute for Missouri.

"There's a lot of people who say, 'He didn't do as well, didn't play as well,'" Conley said Wednesday from his mother's Silver Spring, Md., home. "My whole goal was just to play at the best level I could. I look back on my career and I don't have any regrets."

And Conley is far from done pursuing that goal. He said he has heard from six NBA teams interested in working him out. He'll fly to one workout next week, but he wouldn't say where or for whom.

"I can't really say the names, 'cause I'd be very embarrassed if those teams don't pick me," Conley said.

To avoid that outcome, Conley has been working out three to four hours a day, practicing basketball with Montrose Christian High School associate head coach David Adkins and weight-lifting. Conley got to know Adkins, who joined the Montrose staff the year after Conley graduated, through legendary coach Stu Vetter.

Adkins is optimistic about Conley's chances.

"You just need one team to like him," said Adkins, who said Conley has workouts scheduled with Atlanta, Charlotte and the Los Angeles Lakers. "He just has to have one good workout and the word gets around."

But if the NBA passes on the 6-foot-5, 210-pound guard, which is likely, Conley said he's interested in playing overseas, possibly in Europe.

Conley played at the VCU SportsCenter Invitational showcase at the beginning of the month, averaging 18.3 points in front of international scouts.

In college, he led the nation in scoring his rookie year at VMI, becoming the first freshman to do so by pouring in 29.3 points per game.

Then he left VMI 10 games into his sophomore year, transferring to the big-time -- Missouri of the Big 12 -- and sitting out the rest of the season.

When he bolted from Lexington, Conley was averaging 22 points per game. He became eligible to play for Mizzou in the second semester and averaged 7.6 points his junior year and 10.2 as a senior. But his transfer caused ripples both in Lexington at VMI and in Columbia at Missouri.

In November 2004, the NCAA placed coach Quinn Snyder's Missouri program on three years' probation for numerous recruiting violations, including phone calls to Conley's mother's cell phone.

The media coverage of Conley's transfer put extra pressure on a young man working to overcome a learning disability and play major-college basketball, but Adkins said Conley did a strong job of blocking out the negative.

"He's a better person than he's ever going to be a player," Adkins said. "It was very tough on him, but you can't control the papers, you can't control what people say and write."

After this season, VMI reassigned Bellairs, effectively firing him as basketball coach. Bellairs is now working in the school's athletic marketing department, planning to be a college basketball television analyst and hoping to become an athletic director at a mid-major conference school.

Conley said he spoke to Bellairs "about a month ago" and that the two still have a good relationship despite the star player's untimely departure.

"I don't ever forget where I came from because those people helped me get where I was," Conley said.

He said Bellairs was a "positive coach" who allowed Conley "to play my game."

And while Bellairs said Conley's departure ultimately led to his losing his coaching job - "It changed my life," he said this week - Conley defended his transferring.

"I don't have control over that," he said of Bellairs' reassignment. "Everybody does things that's going to help their situation. It's not being selfish. It had always been a dream of mine to play on TV, it had always been a goal of mine to play in the big-time.

"I was sad to hear that he got reassigned, but I don't put the blame on me for that. It's not like, as soon as I left he got reassigned. And he still had some great players."

Two of the players Conley noted were his roommates while at VMI - Radee Skipworth and Richard Little. While he doesn't regret transferring, he's admittedly envious of the pair's VMI graduation this past year.

"As much as I had fun at Missouri, and I had a great experience and everything, deep down inside I always wanted to graduate from there," he said of VMI. "I wanted to play at the Missouri basketball level, but I wanted to graduate from there because it's such a big honor, it's such a personal honor to go through all that stuff and still make it."

VMI is famous for its discipline, but Conley had a message for recruits who might shy away from the Lexington school.

"In reality," he said, "you're better off getting a better education from VMI."
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Record Number: 10ABB749325F788D