He did not wear a cape, change in a phone booth or literally leap tall buildings in a single bound.
Most of the other crazy stories you've heard about Gary Trent's three years playing college basketball at Ohio University are true.
Saturday's ceremony that brings Trent back to Athens will end with his No. 20 jersey going into the rafters at the Convocation Center. The buildup to Saturday has sparked memories of incredible performances, rim-rattling dunks and – at a time long before anybody spoke of mid-majors and BCS conferences – a pebble and a slingshot type team showing up on the national stage with its own Goliath.
"I really was unstoppable," Trent said earlier this week. "I knew that coming into games and I felt that as games kind of developed. A lot went into that, including great preparation by our coaches and great teammates around me, but it was a mindset for me – I was unstoppable."
The numbers – and the stories – back up his claim.
Trent remains the only three-time MAC Player of the Year. He was a three-time league scoring champion, two-time rebounding champion and one of just three players in league history with at least 2,000 points and 1,000 rebounds.
"Shaq of the MAC" was a very well-earned nickname. At 6'8 and in the neighborhood of 230 pounds then, Trent not only bullied opponents on the block but jumped over them, too.
"At least once a game, we would miss a free throw and Gary would come from out of nowhere and dunk it right back in," said Geno Ford, Ohio's point guard in Trent's final two college seasons and now the head coach at Bradley University. "I've never really seen anything like it. He would go between two guys and over another sometimes. He was an unbelievable finisher in traffic.
"We played Ohio State, Kentucky, UConn, Virginia, just to name a few. And we always had the best player on the floor."
Trent shot 65 percent from the field as a freshman, when he averaged 19 points and 9.6 rebounds per game. He averaged 25.4 points and 11.4 rebounds as a sophomore and 22.9 points and 12.8 rebounds as a junior.
Ohio won 25 games and went to the NCAA Tournament in Trent's sophomore year (1993-94) and won the Preseason NIT in 1994, winning road games at Ohio State and Virginia and going to Madison Square Garden for the tournament's final four, where it defeated George Washington in the semifinals and New Mexico State in overtime in the championship game.
Trent played all 45 minutes in the title game. He went 12-of-12 from the floor, scored 33 points and grabbed 20 rebounds.
"It was a little different then as far as exposure and TV games and having a million different preseason tournaments," Trent said. "That night we were the only two teams in the country playing college basketball, playing in Madison Square Garden and playing on national TV. And the nation got to see us."
Trent was named the Preseason NIT's Most Outstanding Player, an award that had been won in preceding years by Sherman Douglas, Vernon Maxwell and Chris Mills and was won the year after Trent won it by Allen Iverson.
There are other recognizable basketball names who became less willing participants in Trent's legend.
"We played UConn in a tournament out in Hawaii when they had Donny and Donyell Marshall – that was a team that went far in the NCAA Tournament," Ford said. "Gary physically pulverized those guys for 40 minutes. We ended up beating UConn by 12 or 15. Because of Gary, it wasn't even a close game.
"We played at Virginia when they had an All-American type guy named Junior Burrough. Gary took a missed free throw and dunked it right on his head. "
Said Jeff Boals, a forward on those OU teams and now an assistant coach at Ohio State: "He was absolutely dominant. He's probably the best player in MAC history and he put together a stretch of games that you'd put up against anybody's, ever. I appreciate it more and a little differently now, but even then I catch myself watching him and thinking how incredible some of the things he did were."
Boals said his favorite memory of Trent is of a home game vs. Bowling Green when OU "went through the motions" in the first half and coach Larry Hunter's halftime speech was directed at getting Trent to start playing to his capabilities.
"Gary had 10 points at halftime, which to me would have been a career day but to him was subpar," Boals said. "And he finished with 46. It was absolutely unbelievable."
Trent was the No. 11 pick in the 1995 NBA Draft by the Milwaukee Bucks. He played 11 NBA seasons and now lives in Minneapolis and works in the St. Paul School District as an intervention specialist.
"He finished his college degree not too long ago," said Hunter, now the head coach at Western Carolina. "Considering the kind of starting point he had, that's as big an upset as some of the ones we pulled or that we were able to get him in our program. And it's something I'm extremely proud of."
How OU was able to land a player as talented as Trent can be traced to Hunter's personal relationships with the principal and superintendent of Hamilton Township Schools, near Columbus. They knew of Trent's talent but were more concerned with a kid who bounced from house to house, once dropped out of high school and ran with the wrong crowd.
"Gary, by the time he was 14 or 15 years old, had already experienced and been involved with a lot of the good and bad things you can experience in life – mostly bad," Hunter said. "That's been well documented. But people in the school had laid out a plan to get him on the right path and he did the right things.
"He needed to meet some things academically to have a chance to play college basketball, and for two years he went to summer school to make that happen. That meant two years that he was essentially off the AAU circuit and away from the spotlight. He did the work, and it all worked out."
Trent, who once asked his future head coach if Ohio University even played Div. I basketball, now fully appreciates the patience and persistence Hunter showed.
"Coach Hunter means everything to me," Trent said. "I'm not going to say he changed my life. He saved my life. He taught me about work ethic, staying focused, priorities – things I never really had or thought I needed in my life when I was younger."
Trent called coming back to campus this weekend to see his jersey retired "really unbelievable" and an event he will treasure.
"Those three years at OU, that was the greatest basketball experience of my life," Trent said. "The NBA was great, but that's what got me ready for the NBA. My teammates, my coaches, having those experiences, it was the greatest time of my life."
Hunter said he "still chuckles" when thinking about the way Trent dominated games and became "kind of a rock star" when traveling for games in the 1994-95 season.
"If we were the Beatles, he was definitely Ringo Starr," Hunter said. "And once the games started, it was like all he did was dunk on people."
Said Boals: "You couldn't help but notice the people packing arenas to the rafters when we went on the road. There was always a buzz. It was such a thrill to be a part of that at places like and Kent and Akron and it was amazing to play at Madison Square Garden. We all know everybody who came out was coming out to see Gary."
Saturday afternoon, Ohio's game with Miami-Ohio is expected to be sold out.
More than 12,000 are coming to see Gary Trent one more time.
