With plenty of heart, a Southern Utah guard plays with only one hand

"I'd like to be known as a good basketball player," Crum said. "A good one-handed basketball player wouldn't bother me, either."

Crum walked on at Southern Utah in 2005-06 and played in 11 games. He sat out last season, taking his redshirt and graduating, and planned to return to the team last fall as a graduate student. But when new coach Roger Reid was hired, he told Crum his chances of making the team were slim.

If Reid expected that to be enough to discourage Crum, he was mistaken.

"It's a marvel and a great story about a young man that has said I can do it instead of 'I can't do it,"' said Reid, who started Crum in the last six games of the regular season. "He's earned it. He could have quit many, many times."

Crum wasn't recruited for basketball despite winning three New Mexico state titles at Kirtland Central High School. He also excelled in soccer and went to Arizona Western junior college on a soccer scholarship. He also played basketball there before transferring to Southern Utah.

He played in 11 games for the Thunderbirds his first season, then took last year off. When Reid was hired, Crum met with the new coach and learned he would have to try out again to make the team.

No problem.

"I didn't like being told that, 'You can't do this. You're not going to be a basketball player,"' Crum said. "Well, why not? People don't want to answer that question."

Lately, fewer have been asking.