It's a script fit for a Hollywood director.
Take a small-town boy who comes from an athletic family and has a sudden growth spurt in his early teens.
He's dabbled in football, which is what his father played, but he's getting so big that Dad now thinks he ought to give basketball a try.
The boy prefers skateboarding, but when he's 15, he finally starts playing a little bit of hoops.
After a few months, he decides he likes it and that he's going to try out for the team, with some more urging from Pop. He's the last player kept for the sophomore squad and hardly plays at all.
However, he soon goes to see the high school head coach, with his mother in tow, and announces that he's decided he wants to become a basketball player.
Three years later, he's a starting center as a freshman in the Big 12 Conference.
Sounds like a great storyline for a movie - but of course, things like that don't happen in real life, right?
Actually, this did, to Alpine's Justin Hamilton, who developed a fierce work ethic to compliment his raw size and intelligence and thus turned an unlikely dream into reality.
To this day, Lone Peak coach Quincy Lewis vividly remembers how shocked he was when Hamilton came in and made his announcement.
"I just didn't see it coming," the coach explained. "I was really expecting him to quit. As for what's happened since that day, it's unbelievable.
"He just came farther quicker than anybody could have anticipated," Lewis added. "It's a credit to how hard he's worked from day to day."
But make no mistake, toil it was. Once he'd made his decision, Hamilton came to ask the coach what he needed to work on to become a better player. Never one to mince words in such situations, Lewis laid it out for him in black and white.
It's a credit to Hamilton's determination that he didn't give up right then.
As he continued with his personal workouts, his game gradually started to improve and he earned a few more minutes by the end of his sophomore season.
He was used almost exclusively in junior varsity games the next season and didn't really start playing with the top group at his own school until spring ball started in 2007.
It was that summer, however, when he came to the attention of Iowa State coach Greg McDermott, who was then approaching his second season with the Cyclones and was looking for talent with which to rebuild a program that had seen a few tough years.
"At the time, we were looking for a front-line player," McDermott recalled. "Our first choice was to find someone committed to academics with a good work ethic and solid basic skills who could hopefully come in and make an impact right away.
"If we couldn't find a player like that, then we were looking for someone with the same attributes but who was not yet a finished product," the coach continued. "Justin fell into that category.
"At the time, he was 6-foot-11 and 215 pounds and hadn't played a lot of basketball. There were a lot of things on the floor that didn't come naturally to him," McDermott said.
Nevertheless, the coach invited him for an official visit, which Hamilton took in mid-September of 2007. The Monday after he returned, he gave the Cyclones his oral commitment without ever having started on varsity at his own high school.
That moment arrived Nov. 20, when the Knights took on defending state champion Provo to open the year.
"When we played that game, he was not that good," Lewis said. "We realized he had a million miles to go.
"He was the main reason we played zone for the next month and a half," the coach added. "He couldn't defend, and we had to bring him along to where he could hold his own in man-to-man."
The Bulldogs won that first game on a buzzer-beater, but Lone Peak's only other loss that season was to eventual national champion St. Anthony of New Jersey. Hamilton continued to practice many hours outside of his team schedule, and it showed.
"I had an idea before the season began that that's where we'd be starting with him, but I had no idea what a force he'd become by the last three weeks of the season," Lewis said.
McDermott then got his chance to counsel Hamilton on what he should do next. "He asked what he needed to do to be on floor at the Big 12 level. I told him the first thing was to add size and strength."
Lewis watched the whole transformation first-hand.
"One of the big things with him is that he kept working," the Lone Peak coach explained. "On a lot of teams, kids get to the end of the season and if they have already signed a Division-I scholarship, they'll work but not as hard as before because they know they're set come September.
"The week after we won the state championship, Justin started on a dietary and weight regimen and worked on his game three or four hours a day," Lewis said.
When Hamilton reported to Ames in the early summer, he shocked his new coach as much as he had the last one.
"Justin showed up here in June at 255 (lbs.) and had done all we asked him to do in strength training and nutrition," McDermott said.
Was the coach surprised? That would be an understatement.
"I'd never seen it before," he said bluntly. "It was in part a natural maturation process, but also he was very committed to it."
There was more amazement to come.
"We were pleasantly surprised at the start of practice that he had very few bad habits," McDermott said. "This was partly because he hadn't played very much, but it's also a credit to his high school coach.
"Quincy is a big reason Justin has been able to develop as quickly as he did," the ISU coach added. "We watched him at several practices and he teaches good fundamental basketball. We're reaping the benefits of that still.
"Also, Justin is very coachable. When we give him something new, he works at it and tries to learn," McDermott said. Although the staff had originally planned on red-shirting Hamilton his first year, by the start of the season, they'd decided against that course.
Hamilton spent the first 11 games coming off the bench, playing around 10 minutes a game and contributing a few points and rebounds.
Then, the Cyclones' senior center sprained his ankle two days before the team took on Houston on the road.
"At the morning shootaround, we could see that Alex (Thompson) was not mobile enough to start, so Justin found out he was starting five hours before tipoff," McDermott said.
"He scored eight points against a very good front line and had a career-high 12 rebounds," the coach added. "He also blocked a very important shot in the closing minute of the game which was a huge defensive play for our team."
Hamilton has started ever since, nine games in a row now. His minutes and scoring have nearly doubled, while his rebounds have more than tripled. McDermott said both he and the former starter have been more productive in their new roles.
"Justin has continued to work hard and the progress he's making is very impressive," the ISU coach said. "He's learned to use his body and understand positioning against players his size.
"It's one thing to do that against smaller players, but quite another against someone your own size that's competing against you. He's made constant improvement in that area, and his work ethic is as good as I've been around."
In Hamilton's mind, earning the chance to start was just a matter of time.
"Personally I feel like it's not too much of a surprise," he said. "I set expectations pretty high for myself. I knew I would start sometime, whether it was this year or next year or the year after that. I knew I would as soon as the coaches felt I was ready."
He said that the pressures of being a starter are different, however.
"It just means that you have to be more consistent in everything you do," he explained. "I push myself harder in practice and try to give more help with double-teams defensively. And, I need to knock down shots I'm supposed to make."
He has relished the whole Iowa State experience.
"It's been pretty fun," he said. "The fans like to be connected with the team and people like to be involved here. People come up to me in the supermarket and make comments. Overall, the team's been really good to welcome me and we all get along."
Despite all the long hours he put in preparing to get there, Hamilton's biggest surprise so far has been how much time his commitment to the team requires.
"We wake up at eight, go to school all morning and then go straight to practice after," he said. "Then it's film and weights and taking more extra shots. I don't come back to my dorm room until nine at night and then I still have homework."
That schedule can be hard on grades, but the team does have a learning specialist to assist the players who even travels with the squad.
The transition to university life wasn't too tough for Hamilton because his high school program had the same kind of expectations.
"My experience at Lone Peak helped me a lot to acclimatize to the college format," Hamilton said.
"How Coach Lewis runs his program, all the different disciplines we're subject to and how he teaches us to take pride and honor in what we do all laid a good foundation for me.
"It all comes from knowing what the college coaches expect," Hamilton added. "Coach Lewis does a really good job preparing us."
Even though Lewis has been astonished at how well Hamilton has progressed at ISU, he couldn't be more pleased than McDermott is.
"We just feel lucky to have him as part of our team," the coach of the Cyclones said. "As we've gotten to know his parents and family, we knew we were getting a very well-rounded young man.
"He's everything we could have hoped for and more," McDermott concluded.
