LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Four years ago today, on March 27, 2015, Tennessee fired its then-men's basketball coach Donnie Tyndall.
It was a move that, at the time, seemed inevitable and yet still could have, maybe should have, set the program back years as it began searching for a new coach.
Tennessee senior guard Admiral Schofield was committed to UT back then, as a senior in high school. He could have easily de-committed. He could have looked elsewhere. The fact he didn't is in no small part why he's where he's at right now.
Schofield sits courtside at the KFC Yum! Center the day before the Volunteers' game Thursday vs. Purdue in the Sweet 16, back in the Derby City for the first time since his life changed for the better.
Back to the beginning, when his path to turning Tennessee into a national men's college basketball power began.
It was almost five years ago when Schofield was a theretofore mostly ignored prospect from Zion, Illinois, who stood out at AAU nationals in Louisville and finally got the attention of Division I college coaches.
"I came into nationals with no offers and left with 20-plus," Schofield told CBS Sports on Wednesday.
That's right: one of the best players in college basketball this season had no scholarship offers less than two months before the start of his senior year of high school. His play at nationals prompted the most aggressive interest from West Virginia, Ohio, Minnesota, Northwestern and Tennessee.
And as Schofield set out for his senior year, that's how he prioritized his list of schools.
"West Virginia was my No. 1," Schofield said. "I was going to go and play for Bobby Huggins."
But Schofield, to his own surprise, wound up at UT. The story of how and why he not only stayed committed to the Vols -- helping flip a program in the process -- is an unlikely one. It actually starts, unofficially, before that 2014 AAU tournament in Louisville. A week before, Tyndall caught Schofield playing well at the annual NY2LA tournament in Milwaukee.
"Donnie saw him play and came back and said, 'We have to recruit this kid,'" said former Tennessee assistant Chris Shumate, now at Northern Kentucky. "Wofford and Green Bay were looking around. It was the most outside-the-box recruitment of all time."
Schofield -- who played for a grassroots team, NLP, that didn't have a shoe sponsorship -- averaged nearly 20 and 10 and found himself playing some of his best ball of the summer while going up against one of the biggest Adidas-backed teams in the country, starring Dennis Smith Jr.
Mike Krzyzewski, among plenty of other coaching luminaries, were on the sideline for that game. Most bigger programs still didn't pay much attention, even though Schofield was sculpted and muscular then, only to an obviously lesser degree than what he looks like now.
Tyndall and his staff didn't want to give up their secret.
"If he was playing on Court 1, we saw him from the edge of Court 2 because we didn't want people to know we were recruiting him," Shumate said.
Al Pinkins, now an assistant at Florida, was on the UT staff then as well.
"We knew if somebody saw him, it would get crazy," Pinkins said. "You know how it is in that part of the summer. Everybody's starting to look and people miss out on guys."
Schofield confirmed this, adding that Huggins and Tyndall asked him to keep their scholarship offers to himself once he got them in Louisville. It was difficult for him to do that, because he never had received real attention and wanted to get try to get as many offers as possible. But Schofield respected the wishes of the coaches; he didn't want to threaten his own standing and scholarship potential at big-conference programs.
Plus, what if he did spread the word and then wound up not receiving scholarship offers from any other big schools, only to see West Virginia and Tennessee back off? It seems silly now, but to a 17-year-old who'd just walked into this reality, Schofield was a bit nervous and wanted to exhibit patience.
Tennessee wound up being the first official visit Schofield took. It was on Labor Day Weekend, and UT held an elite camp, the type of event where high-profile recruits normally attend but don't exactly bust out their best shoes, don some gear and play.
But Schofield wanted to. He asked -- and Tennessee obliged. You rarely see this kind of thing happen. Schofield's just different. The staff learned this almost immediately, as they took the family to dinner in Knoxville at the locally famous Calhoun's on the River.
"His dad, a retired military man, they're sitting at the table, we're giving the pitch," Shumate said. "Dad looked straight at the staff and said, 'You know what, if my kid works his butt off and listens, he's going to turn into a pretty good player. And if he doesn't ... .' He's like a man of few words, and when he spoke, we listened. You don't hear that from a lot of parents. It really stuck in my brain, because most times with parents it's, 'What can you do for us, how many shots is he going to get?' He just wanted an opportunity. True definition of diamond in the rough."
Schofield committed on that visit. When the high school season got going, Pinkins saw him play in a few more games. There was no doubt then they landed a coup of a recruit.
"It was an absolute joke," Pinkins said. "He was the biggest, strongest guy on the floor, scored with ease, played with hustle. We were shocked no other power 5s were recruiting him."
But things got ugly for Tennessee. Tyndall got in trouble with the NCAA regarding issues stemming from his tenure at Southern Miss. The investigation was ongoing during Tyndall's one and only season at Tennessee (2014-15). Throughout that time, Schofield was firmly committed to UT; he had signed his National Letter of Intent. On his spring break, he took another trip down to Knoxville at a time when rumors were swirling that Tyndall wasn't long for the job.
Schofield said Tyndall told him things would be fine. Schofield was two months away from stepping on campus, officially, as a University of Tennessee student.
"Admiral came to campus on spring break, and we said, 'This kid's going to be mack truck,'" Shumate told CBS Sports. "He was 6-6, 249 pounds and had 4 percent body fat as a senior in high school. He walked in, you see him in the hallway and it was like, shouldn't he be over there, talking to (former Tennessee football coach) Butch Jones?"
Schofield left his unofficial visit confident and reassured.
Tyndall was fired the next day.
"I slept that night, woke up the next morning and Donnie Tyndall was no longer the head coach," he said.
He was sitting on the edge of his bed that Friday morning when his parents told him Tyndall was fired. Schofield wondered if his scholarship at UT would no longer be on the table. Who was going to be the next coach? Schofield worried immediately. He really wanted to go to UT, even without Tyndall. This was fresh off a big senior year in high school -- to the point where Michigan State and Oregon developed interest along the way.
"I really loved Tennessee," Schofield said. "I felt like it was the perfect fit for me as far as academics, the fan base, everything around it. Thought I could be really successful, especially academically, and grow as a man. That was the biggest thing."
West Virginia was still "knocking hard," Schofield said, but he Googled Rick Barnes' name and came to learn a lot about the coach. Schofield stayed on, trusting that Barnes would want to keep him. And he did. Neither wavered.
In that spot, a lot of coaches and a lot of players would split. It's not right or wrong, it's just how these things sometimes go. But Schofield, as he's proven consistently throughout his UT career, is wired differently. We saw it just last weekend, when he volunteered to sit out in overtime and successfully convinced Barnes to not put him back in the game vs. Iowa in Tennessee's second round game.
If Tennessee loses, Schofield's college career is over. But Tennessee won. Schofield's instinct was right. He's as patient as they come, as Rick Barnes explained after Schofield talked him out of putting him in the game during final minutes of the Vols' second-round victory vs. Iowa because Kyle Alexander was playing better at the time.
"He's a competitor," Barnes said. "He's been here longer than anyone. He and Kyle (Alexander). It was great to see it happen today. I thought it was great no selfishness on his part. He's been with this guy forever, Kyle Alexander, he's watched him grow up from a little baby giraffe to where he is today, where he used to wobble down the floor. And it's amazing when you think how far he's come."
A long way -- four years to the day from when things could have gone differently.
"I felt Tennessee was perfect," Schofield said. "I thought the fan base was amazing and didn't want to just up and leave. I thought I was tough enough to fight through any situation. Hearing those names, Oregon and Michigan State, that's enticing. But at the same time, I'm the type of person, (if) you didn't know about me before, I'm not trying to get your interest now."
That decision altered the trajectory of Tennessee's program. Grant Williams came aboard a year later, and the two-time SEC Player of the Year has built a tandem with Schofield that's among the best, and certainly strongest, in college basketball.
Tennessee's men's basketball program has been to one Elite Eight in its history (2010). There are no Final Four showings. If Schofield opts out in 2015, you can make an easy argument that Tennessee isn't playing this weekend.
"I'm a big piece of this and I take pride in that," Schofield said.
Another interesting side note: Lamonte Turner, a junior on this year's Vols team, was on campus ready to commit less than 36 hours prior to Tyndall's ouster. Then Tyndall got fired and things went sideways. The staff was done within 10 days, Tennessee lost commitments and fell out of big recruiting battles.
Pinkins remembers the young man he saw back when things were supposed to be different for Tennessee, when Tyndall was set to be the coach for who knows how long. But for UT, it's all worked out beyond expectations across the board.
"A typical yes-sir no-sir kid, raised the right way by both parents," Pinkins said. "They've done a great job and the rest is history. A lot of Admiral's doing is Admiral."
A lot of Tennessee's doing is Admiral's, too. His final game could come Thursday vs. Purdue or it could come next weekend in Minneapolis at the Final Four. Whenever it ends, it's irrefutable that his loyalty and patience had as much impact on Tennessee's team as anyone -- Barnes included.
