Iowa signs a 26 year old ex-con from the JuCo ranks

I think it is safe to say that we know who the most interesting incoming recruit in the country next season will be.

26 year old Anthony Hubbard, who signed with Iowa on Saturday.

He dropped out of high school in the 10th grade in 2002. One of his brothers was killed that same year. And on December 13th, 2003, was charged with four felonies for breaking into a house and robbing and beating a man in that house. Hubbard turned himself in three days later, eventually getting sentenced to three years and eleven months in prison. He reportedly drove the getaway car.

But that incident, as violent as it seems, was apparently an outlying mistake made by a kid than a precursor to a life of crime.


Once he got out of prison in 2007, the Woodbridge, VA, native went back to school and earned his high school diploma. He never played high school basketball, but after a friend got him hooked up with a spot on the Odessa (TX) Junior College team for a year, Hubbard return to play a season at Frederick (MD) Community College. At Frederick, Hubbard averaged 20.7 ppg, 10.1 rpg, 4.2 apg and shot 64% from the floor while earning second team all-american honors.

"It's breathtaking for me," Hubbard said when he signed on Saturday, nine years to the day his brother died. "I hope that it motivates people to never quit with their dreams, never give up. It's never over. You can do anything that you put your mind to, and I'm a testament of that. I never dreamed that I would playing in the Big Ten or at any school in the nation for that matter a couple years back."

I'm a firm believer in second chances. Everyone makes mistakes, and while Hubbard's mistake happened to involve four felonies, it was a mistake by an 18 year old kid nonetheless. Since his release, he's made the effort to turn his life around. He got his high school degree and became a good student at both Odessa (3.4 GPA) and Frederick (3.2 GPA).

He's also made an effort to help work with younger people that are in a similar position to where Hubbard was eight years ago.

"I have nothing to hide. I've been straight up with everybody," Hubbard said. "What I've been through, it made me grow up. It made me the person I am today."

"I've spent a lot of time the past couple of years working with kids, trying to help them not make the same mistakes I made. If I can help one kid stay out of trouble, it's been time well spent."

Obviously, giving an ex-con a basketball scholarship can be a point of contention for some universities, but credit must be given to FCC head coach Dave Miller and to Hubbard for being straight forward and forthcoming about the situation. It allowed schools like Iowa to do their due diligence, getting back ground checks and talking to the people in Hubbard's life.

"I heard that he was a really good player," McCaffery told the Cedar Rapids Gazette. "I didn't really know anything about him. So of course we followed up on that. His coach (Miller) immediately told me what happened and said, 'What I have to tell you is if he wanted to date my daughter, it would be OK with me. That's how much I think of him. I've never had any problems with him. I recommend him without reservation.'"

"So then of course we made sure folks here were at least comfortable pursuing that. So we needed to do our homework, and we did. We needed to get him here and meet everybody. We were satisfied after we completed our due diligence that he's somebody we'd like to have in our program."

Hubbard is going to have a short leash at Iowa, and deservedly so. I may support the decision to give this young man a second chance, but an ex-con is an ex-con. Even if it was a childhood mistake, when you make the choice to participate in a robbery you permanently give up the benefit of the doubt. That is even more true at Iowa, where fans probably still haven't gotten over Pierre Pierce.

But Hubbard has a chance to prove to the people that believed in him that he has changed. He's already turned his life around, but he now has been afforded an opportunity to earn a college degree and, possibly, turn himself into a professional basketball player.

Here's to hoping he takes advantage of those opportunities.