Raleigh, NC (U-WIRE) -- 151st Street, Harlem, New York.

A small apartment. There are two bedrooms, a living room, a small kitchen and a single bathroom. Jackie Robinson Park sits just a few blocks to the west, the Bronx about a mile to the north.

It's in this two-bedroom tenement that a single mother raises her two sons and her daughter. It's here where the story of Julius Hodge begins.

Hodge is 4 years old, attending a New York Knicks game against the Los Angeles Lakers. It's his first memory of basketball.

"A ball went in the stands and I just remember my mom throwing it back to Magic [Johnson] and me just smiling," Hodge said. "Just smiling and laughing and then he kind of winked his eye at me."

A wink from Magic is all it takes. Hodge knows what he wants to be when he grows up. He wants to play basketball.

"I always just wanted to be an NBA Hall of Famer," Hodge said. "I just didn't want to be a guy on the court."

Hodge is 8 now, and his father is a part of his past, but not his future. His father does leave one imprint on the childhood of Hodge.

"The best thing he did for me is he took me one Saturday morning to the Gaucho organization, that's in the Bronx its like an AAU team, thats pretty much where I started my basketball career," Hodge said. "Besides that he didn't play much of a role in me growing as a person."

Hodge is in high school now, a star at Saint Raymond's. Where his father isn't, his older brother is.

Steve Hodge, along with Hodge's mother, help keep his head out of the clouds and on hard work, finishing school. His mother doesn't get on him about much, but she gets upset when Hodge doesn't focus on his schoolwork. His brother guides him, encouraging Hodge to keep working - basketball could be his meal ticket out, Steve tells him.

"With my father leaving when I was a young child, that was definitely tough." Hodge said. "But my brother stepped in and filled his shoes to a 'T' and even better."

Hodge is McDonalds All-American, a Parade All-American and New York's Mr. Basketball his senior year. He's also committed to N.C. State University, a program that hasn't been to the NCAA Tournament in 10 years.

Immediate impact

Hodge is a freshman, and he walks into the Wolfpack basketball world with an unwavering confidence. He starts throwing around the words "championship" as though he had just joined up with the Blue Devils or Jayhawks.

He's here to win the big one, he says. Those listening chalk his statements up to youthful ignorance. His teammates, though, listened.

"He's a natural born leader," former-teammate Will Roach said. "That's why he came here, to be a leader and win a championship."

It's December, but the cold outside the Carrier Dome doesn't match the chill rippling through the echoing stadium on this night some three years ago.

Out of nowhere, the Wolfpack had taken a late lead on No. 9 Syracuse, with the game slowly becoming out of reach.

Hodge, the New York native who shunned orange in favor of red plays with a chorus of boos following every touch of the ball. The symphony of hate that poured into the ear of the freshman that night did little to unnerve him, as he sank 7-of-10 free throws and finished with 12 points in a win.

A win that proved to be the first step in reestablishing State as a respected basketball program again. But it was just a taste of what Hodge had to offer.

"I had over 30,000 people wanting me not to do good, but with me playing well and my team winning," Hodge said. "That just told me I could do anything if I put my mind to it."

Hodge is all but robbed of the ACC Rookie of the Year award. He leads all freshman in scoring and ranks second in assists, rebounding and steals. He receives more votes than anyone else on the All-ACC freshman team, but falls to Georgia Tech's Ed Nelson for the rookie honor. His revenge would come on the court.

It's the ACC Tournament, and March Madness is in full swing with State up 79-66 on Maryland, the regular-season conference champions. There are but a few scant minutes left, and the Terrapins start fouling. It's working, State can't hit its free throws.

One after another the shots clank off the rim, as Maryland draws closer and closer and the air surrounding the Wolfpack players gets thicker.

The lead is only three points now, and State has the ball with the shot clock winding down. The team can't find an open look. Time ticks... 3, 2..... Hodge launches a desperation 3-pointer. Swish.

"Julius just stepped up and made a great shot," State Coach Herb Sendek said. "Great players do that."

Blood, sweat, and tears

The Pack is back in the tournament.

The team sits on the cusp on the Sweet 16. Down by a point with time dwindling, Hodge is on Connecticut's Caron Butler like fly paper, not giving an inch to the man who has single-handedly given the Huskies this lead. Desperate to get off a shot before the 35-second clock expires, he rises up and shoots, Hodge still right with him.

The shot clangs away. But there is a whistle. Hodge is called for a foul, giving Butler three shots. He makes all of them.

A few minutes seconds, a desperation 25-foot shot by Hodge glances off the front of the rim to end State's season. He falls face down at midcourt and stays down, unable to accept his fate.

"I thought I was just playing really good defense," said Hodge. "I didn't think I fouled him, but obviously the official did."

It's December 2002. Hodge is a year older and completely in the spotlight as State's star player. Hodge is playing a relatively meaningless early season game against North Carolina A&T at Reynolds Coliseum.

The sophomore is dropping bounce passes for highlight-reel dunks to his teammates, grabbing rebounds and barely shooting. He amasses a triple-double, the first in N.C. State history. He is versatile in a way that is becoming rare among basketball players -- he wants to be really good at everything.

"That's what makes him so special," Sendek said. "His value comes from the fact he can be among the statistical leaders and contribute in any numbers of categories. He's not a specialist; he's a versatile player who can do everything."

The clock reads 1 a.m., and State is on a bus ride back from a brutal road loss to Maryland in late January. As the team approaches Raleigh, Hodge goes to the back of the bus and asks a simple question to fellow sophomore Roach.

"He comes back and says, 'Do you want to get some shots up?'" Roach said.

Hodge convinces Roach and Marcus Melvin to come shoot with him in the middle of the night. The three play one-on-one for more than an hour. Hodge wins every game.

"I've never seen anyone with that much energy," Roach said.

It's March again, and State is in the NCAA Tournament for a second straight year, this time drawing California in the opening round. It's overtime, and Scooter Sherrill has just buried a 3-pointer to give State the lead. But Cal comes back with a game-winning 3-pointer of its own, the nail driven into the coffin by an Englishman named Richard Midgley.

Hodge can't hold his emotions in check after the game. He questions everything, from not being asked to carry more of the offensive burden to Sendek's strategy.

"It's just real frustrating," Hodge said. "We come out of the timeout, and we're out there, and we're out there on the court -- the players -- and we know what's working. And then you have to do something else."

Confidence or arrogance

It's the dead of winter, February, and Hodge is pounding the floor, waving his arms to pump up the crowd as State clings to the smallest of leads against No. 1 Duke at home. A junior now, he's on the verge of pulling off his biggest upset. The emotions flow freely from him, this is how Hodge plays the game. He doesn't know any other way but full throttle.

It's his desire and passion that has driven him this far, he isn't changing. The league seems to be in consensus about Hodge. He's good, and he's arrogant.

"He has this arrogance type of image around the league," Duke's Daniel Ewing said earlier this season. "Which is good for him, he's a guy that takes on that 'I'm-the-man type of role.' I was talking to him earlier and he was like 'You know you all are going down when you play us at State.'"

Hodge has no problem sharing his thoughts with the rest of the league. Florida State's Anthony Richardson says he respects Hodge in spite of it.

"I don't have anything personal against him," Hodge said. "He does talk a lot of trash, though."

For the opposition, the idea of losing to State is even more painful when Hodge is involved. Watching Hodge skip around the court in ecstasy after taking down your team is the last thing players like Wake Forest's Taron Downey want to see.

"You never want to lose to him because you know he's going to let you know about it if you lose," Downey said.

Hodge is unaffected by the league's perception of him. In typical Hodge fashion, he dismissed the notion of being arrogant.

"Some guys may say I trash talk, some other guys trash talk," Hodge said. "A couple of them, I get on the court and I'm just going to out play them, out work them. If they see that as being arrogant, they could. I just see it as being confident.

"I really don't care if opposing players don't like me. I would much rather have it that way because he could feel more anguish and disgust when my team is winning."

Senior forward Levi Watkins claims that Hodge has always had the same sense of confidence, or arrogance -- depending on who you ask.

"Its part of being from New York. That's just him," Watkins said. "He's like that at practice, he's like that when we play video games, he's like that when we're eating. He has a lot of pride in what he does; I can't knock him for that. But if I was on the opposing team, I wouldn't like him."

It's March again, and again the Wolfpack has made it to the second round of the NCAA's. State holds a 10-point lead over Vanderbilt with less than three minutes left, the Sweet Sixteen oh-so-close to becoming a reality. Then Hodge fouls out and goes to take a seat on the bench, turning from on-court leader to off-court cheerleader.

The lead promptly starts melting away before his eyes. He watches Vanderbilt's Matt Freije hit impossible shot after impossible shot, watches his team collapse before him. When the final buzzer sounds, State is again on the losing end.

Hodge sits motionless, head between his legs and eyes fixated on the floor. He can't look, can't see the same sight all over again. For the third straight year, a heartbreaking tournament loss.

"There's no way I'd thought with 2:44 and me being fouled out of the game and up by 10 points that we were going to lose this game," Hodge said. "The plays that happened, one after the other...it was unbelievable."

A decision to stay

Hodge walks into a press conference with Coach Sendek to tell the world his decision. He sits, stoically and waits for everyone to settle in before he starts. He's going to the NBA, he says. There is a silence in the room. A reporter begins to ask the first question.

"Gotcha!" Hodge says, smile brimming from one ear to the other.

Hodge is a comedian, and the media gives him the perfect performing stage. Even a matter as serious as his decision to stay for his senior year becomes a tool for him to crack jokes and show off embarrassing pictures of his coach. Appropriately, he's taking drama classes at State. Sendek could care less about the jokes, all he cares about is the decision.

"He took inventory along the way, and considered his options and possibilities, but he didn't go in with any predetermined conclusion like some guys do," Sendek said. "I think he evaluated each step along the way, and made decisions that were in him and his family's best interest. He has uncommon maturity."

It's November, and Hodge talks of winning a national championship, just like he had three years earlier. That youthful ignorance is still in full effect, except now it doesn't appear quite as ignorant. Now State is ranked No. 19 in the preseason AP poll, and is coming off a second-place finish in the ACC. Hodge is the reigning ACC Player of the Year, and the talk of national championships isn't absurd. Sendek said much of the credit for that fact has to be given to Hodge.

"He's had a remarkable career for us," Sendek said. "When we recruited him we had great expectations for him, and he's certainly met them every step of the way. He's been instrumental in the reestablishment of N.C. State basketball and he deserves a lot of credit for that."

Hodge sits in hallway after practice in late November, waiting for his teammates. He's been through the gauntlet in his time at State, but his only thought now is that he can't wait to get to bed. He has to be up early for a scrimmage tomorrow.

He cracks a smile, and beneath those 21 years of emotion and hard work, a little boy comes through, laughing gleefully as Magic Johnson looks his way and winks.

(C) 2004 Technician via U-WIRE