At the end of his senior season at St. Louis Christian Academy, Zek Montgomery had no idea what the future held.
After a senior season in which he averaged 19 points and 8.5 rebounds per game, the 6-foot-6-inch guard had plenty of Division-I interest — including looks from Memphis, Virginia Tech and Marshall — but no offers.
“I was getting down on myself a little bit,” Montgomery said. “I was getting scared [and] worried I wasn’t gonna be on a D-I team, so I was going to have to reclassify.”
Luckily for the Louisville, Kentucky native, Bradley had one scholarship open for the 2021-22 season, and he fit the bill.
How he ended up on the Braves roster, and eventually in the spotlight with a timely 12-point performance off the bench against Loyola-Chicago on Feb. 9, was far from a straightforward journey.
Three schools, two years
After hitting his growth spurt in 8th grade, Montgomery was able to make an impact on the games he played in simply because of his height.
After transferring in prior to the season, he made his presence felt at Fern Creek High School his sophomore year, playing power forward for the Tigers on the southeast side of Louisville.
Montgomery, along with his team, took a leap in the 2019-2020 campaign, as he averaged 14 points and six rebounds a game, helping Fern Creek to regional and district championships — clinching the Tigers a spot in Kentucky’s iconic Sweet Sixteen State tournament.
However, COVID-19 forced the cancellation of the remainder of the tournament, and Montgomery’s career in Kentucky was halted there.
For his senior season, Zek and his family decided to send him to attend NELA Prep Academy in Los Angeles. After just two months on the West Coast, he realized that the move wasn’t right for him.
“That wasn’t a good decision,” Montgomery said. “I just wanted to go to see how it was … The local competition, I didn’t want it. I wanted to be on the biggest stage.”
For Montgomery, that stage proved to be St. Louis Christian, a now-defunct academy located just south of Saint Louis University’s campus. There, he boosted his stats, as well as his life skills, being out of his home state.
“It helped me grow up a little more,” Montgomery said. “I went to a young team, so I had to be one of the leaders there, helping young kids … It helped me grow as a person.”
But perhaps more importantly, Montgomery found himself under the tutelage of former Evansville great and current Missouri Valley Conference color commentator Marcus Wilson.
Working the phones
When Wilson moved to St. Louis to join the men’s basketball staff at SLU in 2013, he became fast friends with St. Louis Christian head coach Casey Autenrieth. While never officially joining the staff with the Cougars, Wilson helped out Authenrieth by putting players in touch with colleges, installing offenses and mentoring athletes.
When Montgomery was transferring from Fern Creek in the summer of 2020, Authenrieth brought in Wilson to meet Zek and his uncle on a recruiting trip.
“Casey’s a white dude, he had two assistants who were white guys and he just probably wanted to show Zek, like, ‘Hey, you’re gonna have some type of African American here as a mentor, as like a coach that comes in and helps,’” Wilson said.
A few days after the meeting, Montgomery informed Autenrieth that he would be heading to NELA Prep.
A few months later, Montgomery called back to see if the scholarship was still open. It was.
“From that point, I was always around the program, and got to know Zek’s kind of a quiet kid, so I wasn’t like best friends with him,” Wilson said. “But I would always be around, talk to him, give him a little advice — you know, stuff on his game.”
At the end of the 2020-21 season, when Montgomery wasn’t getting scholarship offers, Wilson hit the phones, using his connections to coaches in the Missouri Valley. One school in the MVC proved to be specifically interested.
“I called [that team] specifically,” Wilson said. “I was talking to [their coach] and I was like ‘Hey, man he’s good enough, I know you need a wing, you need somebody who can score.’”
After some initial interest, it was a waiting game for Wilson and Montgomery.
Eventually, like the other interest Montgomery received, it never culminated into a scholarship offer, as the coaches weren’t sold that Montgomery could provide an impact at the MVC level.
Near the beginning of the summer, the lack of interest was baffling to Wilson.
“All these schools were like, ‘I like him, but we’re just gonna stay in the transfer portal,’ or ‘I don’t know if he’s good enough to play at the MVC level,’” Wilson said. “I’m looking at teams at the bottom of the Valley like, ‘The guys you have aren’t good enough … Like, come on now.’ So, I was getting a little frustrated.”
That changed when Wilson called up Bradley assistant coach Drew Adams.
‘The basketball world is kind of a small world’
With the team’s last scholarship still open at the end of May, Bradley head coach Brian Wardle knew how he wanted to fill it.
“I always say we have to put together a team, not talent,” Wardle said. “But you [need] to have guys that are different and will understand their roles and fit what you already have. … We didn’t have a 6-6 guard that can play-make and go one-on-one and score.”
Montgomery fit the mold that Wardle and company were looking for, and appeared on the coaching staff’s recruiting radar from two directions: the tip from Wilson, as well as a connection to Adams’ dad, Mark, who is on the board of directors at Indiana Elite, the AAU program Montgomery played with.
“The basketball world is kind of a small world,” Wardle said. “Once you start and you’ve been doing it as long as me and the assistants, you start having contacts and connections and a network.”
The connection between Adams and Wilson went back to the Bradley assistant’s time at New Mexico in the early 2010s, and the familiarity played a big factor, as Adams was receptive of Wilson’s endorsement of Montgomery.
“I called Drew up and said, ‘Hey, this kid is good, man,’” Wilson said. “And he was like, ‘Well, Marcus, you know I respect you. If you say he’s good enough, I believe you.’”
The endorsement checked out, as just a week after Adams’ initial visit with Montgomery, Wardle and company extended a scholarship offer — Zek’s first and only at the DI level.
According to Wardle, the first time he watched Montgomery online, his game jumped off the computer screen.
“He was smooth; it looked effortless,” Wardle said. “His ability to get to his spots and he can score like it doesn’t look like he’s sweating out there. That’s hard to do …That’s his gift.”
One and done
Shortly after the scholarship offer, Wardle invited Montgomery to Peoria on a two-day official visit on June 14.
While it is customary for players to bring parents and other family members on a visit, Montgomery brought one of his friends — which is not considered to be standard practice.
Wilson heard about it, grew concerned and placed a late-night phone call.
“I didn’t want Zek to mess up this opportunity,” Wilson said. “So I called him; I was like, ‘What’s going on?’”
Eventually, Wilson breached his own protocol and let Montgomery know that he was the one who put in the word with the coaches at Bradley.
“I usually don’t tell kids, because I’m not doing it for attention, or because I want you to give me some pat on the back,” Wilson said. “[I told him] how you do anything is how you do everything … They can pull that offer just as quick as they gave it to you.’”
Wilson told Montgomery to go to sleep and put his best foot forward the next day.
Zek did just that, and signed his National Letter of Intent on June 15, filling Bradley’s final roster spot.
“That’s my friend,” Montgomery said with a smile when asked about Wilson. “He’s the one who got me here, for real … He helped me a lot.”
These days, Wilson still keeps up with Montgomery with less intense texts and phone calls to make sure he’s doing the right things.
“That’s the big thing with most freshmen is, who is in their ear, keeping them accountable to hard work,” Wilson said. “That’s why I touch base with him here and there and just say, ‘Hey, man, stay focused. Great game, but keep working.’”
Montgomery’s work has paid off with increased playing time, as the first-year has seen substantial minutes in each of the Braves’ last five contests, after seeing limited action in 14 of the team’s first 22 games.
More than anything, Montgomery is grateful for the opportunity, and Wardle and the coaching staff are grateful to have him.
“We were very fortunate,” Wardle said. “We’ve been very, very happy with him. He’s gotten better all year… He’s always smiling. He’s a very grateful young man.”
“Bradley came and changed my life,” Montgomery said.
