Boogie Ellis reflects on 'great journey' and finding his place at USC

Boogie Ellis has become rather open and introspective during his senior season at USC, more comfortable engaging with reporters and willing to get candid about this basketball journey he's been on the last four years.

Maybe it's because his story has just gotten better and better as these last weeks and months have unfolded. Or because he finally feels at home in the role he always envisioned and had been chasing all this time.

"If I was to tell my freshman self something [it would] probably be just to trust the process and don't worry about what everybody else is doing. Just worry about you and getting better every single day. Just putting coins in the cookie jar every day," Ellis said a couple weeks ago.

His freshman self needed that perspective at the time.

Before Ellis was a first-team All-Pac-12 guard, ranking second in the conference in scoring at 18.0 points per game and leading USC back to the NCAA tournament for a Friday morning matchup vs. Michigan State, he was off on his own in Memphis facing true basketball adversity for the first time.

Rivals had ranked Ellis the No. 37 overall national recruit in the 2019 class coming out of high school in San Diego.

He had his choice of schools, settling on a final list of Duke, North Carolina, USC and San Diego State and committing to the Blue Devils at one point.

Instead, he ended up at Memphis, having a late change of mind.

He wanted to go where he knew he would play right away, and with the Tigers he did. Ellis started 27 games as a true freshman, but he averaged 8 points and shot 33.0 percent from the field.

"Out of high school I never had any problems. I was a top-30 recruit, had every school in the country. Then I got to college, I kind of struggled. So that was my first time really facing adversity with basketball," Ellis said, reflecting back. "So that's kind of tough for an 18-year-old kid to go through. And I was in Memphis, obviously by myself, so I had to figure that out."

He shot the ball better as a sophomore, averaged 10.2 PPG and was even named the AAC's co-Sixth Man of the Year while starting half of Memphis' games.

But something was off.

"He called me one night and just let me know that things weren't working out. It was tough for him. It was tough because once you make your choice you don't want to feel like you made a bad choice," said Marshawn Cherry, Ellis' basketball coach at Mission Bay HS in San Diego. "So it was tough for him because he thought the relationship with him and [Memphis coach Penny Hardaway] was strong -- I just don't think he felt the support he needed out there.

"He's a big family person. He's always been around grandpa, grandma, mom, dad, they've always been there, so I know when he was out at Memphis it was tough for him because basically he was out there by himself. I talked to him a couple times a week, and it was just tough -- you could tell he was missing his support system."

Ellis entered the transfer portal after his sophomore season and eventually found his way back to the school and coach that had first offered him a scholarship at the very start of all this -- USC and Andy Enfield.

Two years later -- two years of relentless work, critical self-evaluations and pushing to reach the potential he saw in himself -- Ellis is right where he always wanted to be.

One of the top shooters in a major conference about to step back under the March Madness spotlight Friday while making his NBA dreams seem more realistic than ever.

"Confidence," Cherry said when asked what he sees different in Ellis this season. "The coaching staff believing in him, his teammates believing in him and the fact that he knows he puts in the work. One thing about him is if you believe in him and he knows you believe in him, you're going to get the best out of him. ...

"He works his ass off, so it's not going to ever be a thing about him not being prepared -- it's more or less him believing that you believe in him. That's when you get the best out of him."