Rodney Purvis looked as good as ever at the Greater Hartford Pro-Am on Sunday afternoon, seemingly a bit leaner, with a little more bounce in his step on the Sports and Medical Sciences Academy basketball floor.
But Purvis, the UConn guard, was playing with a heavy heart.
Just a few days earlier, Purvis’s close friend, Tyrek Coger, passed away after a workout at Oklahoma State University. Coger was 22.
Biologically, Purvis is an only child. But Coger, who was taken in by Purvis’s mother, Shanda McNair, when he was in eighth grade, was as close as Purvis has ever had to a sibling.
“He lived at my house,” Purvis said on Sunday, shortly before his Pauly Chute Slamm took on Cambyland in a GHPA game. “He was basically like my brother.”
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