To say he can simply fly is selling his did-he-just-do-that explosiveness short.
With one fluid bound of his bulging right calf muscle, Tony Danridge can propel himself off the precipice of the planet. Yet, he's one of the most down-to-earth players to court the ozone layer.
"There would be multiple occasions in practice where Tony would dunk on someone going off his right leg with the left hand," said Daniel Faris, Danridge's teammate who also roomed with him for four years. "Every time the whole gym would scream, 'Ohhhh!' Sometimes that was me getting dunked on by Tony. But Tony never said a thing. He just dunked and ran back on D."
That scene was replayed throughout the season - Danridge reeling through the air and thundering home a cosmopolitan of dunks. All that on the way to averaging 14.9 points per game, 2.7 assists and 4.1 rebounds and winning the NCAA Slam Dunk Contest.
But even though his numbers are comparable to Lobo phenomenon J.R. Giddens, who was taken in the first round of last year's draft by the Boston Celtics, he's not getting as much attention from NBA teams.
Several online mock drafts, including nbadraft.net, don't have Danridge among the 60 players chosen during the draft.
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Danridge's agent, Greg Foster, said it's "50-50 right now" that the skywalking former Lobo goes in the late second round.
"It could boil down to a free-agent situation," he said. "The jury's still out on Tony's jump shot."
Apparently shooting 48 percent from the field in his senior year and leading the Lobos to their first MWC regular-season championship title ever - something head coach Steve Alford said UNM couldn't have done without Danridge's services - isn't good enough for NBA talent scouts and executives. They're still concerned about Danridge's outside efficiency.
"That actually hurts you in the long run - (not being able to shoot from the outside)," Danridge said. "That's what the (general managers) think, and they think you're not going to be a threat out there. They start looking at other people and put you on the backburner."
But they're overlooking one thing: Danridge can tickle the twine - from deep, too. In his junior season, Danridge shot 41 percent from the 3-point line, and during his senior year, he developed a deadly mid-range and just-inside-the-3-point-line game.
"Tony's an underrated shooter," Faris said. "A lot of people say that his stroke might be a little bit off, but Tony can shoot. Tony can actually shoot the 3 pretty well. Tony's role on our team wasn't to shoot a lot of threes. Tony's role on our team this year was to be a driver, slasher, rebounder."
That, and Danridge was effectively the Lobos' designated defensive stopper. In one particularly poignant effort in 2008-09, Danridge completely collared one of the Mountain West Conference's most prolific scorers, Lorrenzo Wade. The year prior, even with a noted defensive player in Giddens, Wade single-handedly scourged the Lobos for 23 points, leading the Aztecs to a 14-point second-half comeback.
On this afternoon, though, Danridge shuffled his feet and flanked Wade every square inch of the way, drawing three first-half fouls and limiting Wade to eight points.
Plainly put, Danridge was UNM's thoroughbred. The team relied on him to do everything. One day it might have been to play harassing defense the other day to score. And he managed both aspects with ease.
About two weeks before his sensational defensive performance on Wade, Danridge was called upon to score, and he was the only one doing it - in the form of 26 points against one of the Lobos' MWC archenemies, UNLV. Danridge took up the Atlas task and held the Lobos' world on his shoulders. With the end of regulation about to expire and UNM trailing 59-57, Danridge whittled way in the lane and knotted the game at 59. In overtime, he put the Lobos ahead for good with a game-winning shot.
His enduring mark, though, he saved for the biggest game of the year. With UNM's hopes of clinching a share of the MWC regular-season title hinging on them beating Utah, Danridge poured in a career-high 29 points, while scouts from Charlotte and Golden State were on hand to watch Utes' big man Luke Nevill. But Nevill's luminescence burned out - he fouled out for the first time in the season - while Danridge's shine glowed to iridescence.
"I don't know of anybody in our league that has put up bigger numbers, been harder to guard and done the job defensively that Tony has," Alford said at the post-game press conference.
Foster said, even though Danridge isn't being talked about as much, he's a rare commodity.
"There's a lot of athletic guys out there," he said. "(But) there's not a lot of athletic guys like Tony out there."
So, then, what does he have to do to separate himself from other NBA prospects?
"That's the million-dollar question," Foster said. "That's what he's working on. What are you going to do? Are you going to make a consistent effort to defend? Are you going to improve your 3-point shot? Tony's a freak of nature when it comes to his athletic ability, but he's fighting his size. He can negate that by improving his shot. His court vision and ball-handling ability, in my opinion, are underrated. If given the opportunity to be a push guy, not a point guard, but to push the ball when he gets a rebound, he can facilitate."
But Danridge said it doesn't bother him that he's being overlooked. He's been coping with that his whole life.
"Coming into everything, I never had any colleges recruiting me during high school. I was supposed to be going to JC or something," he said. "Somehow I got blessed to play at New Mexico. The whole thing's been a blessing for me. I came from nothing and now I could make money doing what I love. Even though I've been overlooked, there's always something that happens and I get blessed. Something always goes my way all the time."
And he's determined, saying that he relies on inner spiritual strength to probe through the difficulties associated with the draft process. Whenever he needs guidance, he refers to Isaiah 40:31.
"They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength," it reads. "They shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint."
Wings as eagles? Only fitting.
"I'm going to keep trying, even if I don't make it this year," Danridge said. "I'm going to push for the league next year. Your window of opportunity doesn't close until you're like, 28, so I got a couple more years."
The thing is, he needs the opportunity to soar.
"It might not come when you want it but eventually (it will)," Danridge said. "It'd mean the world to me. I always dreamed of playing in the NBA."
