LA Tech guard Amorie Archibald: From the youngest to the most experienced

Amorie Archibald has been the runt of the litter much of his athletic life.

His description.

Being the smallest player has been a direct connection with him often times being the youngest.

“I remember middle school basketball, my coach went up to my mom and let her know I wasn’t going to play [because I was the youngest],” said Archibald. “I’ve always had to fight through that adversity.”

His age didn’t deter Louisiana Tech head coach Eric Konkol from recruiting him. Neither did the fact that Amorie had never played basketball year round.

“He really liked football, but early on it was one of our questions. Is this going to be a guy that always has that itch to play football,” remembered Konkol. “He was very adamant that he loved football, but he wanted to be a college basketball player.”

It was the middle of July in 2016, the summer before Amorie’s senior year at Trinity Christian Academy in Deltona, Florida and the summer after coach Konkol’s first year as head coach of the Bulldogs.

His name popped up on a roster at the Nike Peach Jam in Augusta, Georgia. Then his skills popped up on the court at the AAU Nationals in Orlando, Florida, scoring close to 30 points against a team from Wisconsin.

Guessing Konkol, a native of Amherst, Wisconsin, didn’t take that too personal. “As soon as we were able to, we put a call in to him and his mom, and got very aggressive in the recruiting of him.”

Konkol liked his energy, his ability to score, how he can make plays for others.

His basketball analysis of Amorie was similar to his football analysis of the quarterback. “I can’t say that I’m an expert in football by any means, but he could sling it. It seemed like in football and basketball, he had a feel for how things went and that he had a way of making his teammates better.”

“I was just taking everything and every school in stride,” said Archibald. “At the end of the day, it was my decision to play both sports. Having the chance to play with friends and having the passion for playing football stuck with me, coming up from Pop Warner to high school. I feel like it all worked out in the end.”

He took his first official visit to Louisiana Tech. That would be the only official visit he would take.

“It felt like this was the place to be. I took it and rain with it.”

Amorie arrived in Ruston in the summer of 2017. And not only was he the youngest person on the roster, he was almost 10 months younger than the next youngest person.

“I remember coming into weights for the first time, I thought I could lift as much as everyone else,” said Archibald. “I got under the bar to squat and it was horrible. I thought it was a lot, but it was only like 90 pounds.

“I had to put on like 20 pounds. I remember drinking protein shakes every day. They tasted like concrete. Didn’t like any of the flavors. They were horrible, just like my lifting.”

Again, this wasn’t a new feeling for Amorie. He was reliving being the runt of the litter. Add to it, he was playing basketball full time for the first time. And he was further down on the depth chart behind older, experienced guards like Jacobi Boykins, Derric Jean and DaQuan Bracey.

But this would not be an episode out of “The Young and the Restless.”

“We always try to be transparent about where guys are at and just talk,” said Konkol. “He had just turned 18 the first week of class in September. We were leading up to our first game at the end of October and I told him the moment he steps foot in one of these games, it is going to be a year of eligibility.

“I told him if he wanted to use the year as a development year, I would support that. It was never that I wanted him to redshirt and he said no. It was a conversation about where he was at. I will never forget, he came back to me the next day and said, ‘Coach, I’ve always been the runt of the litter and have always wanted to get better and help the team in any way I can.’”

And so his freshman year began and he suited up, but he didn’t go to the scorer’s table to check in too often. Amorie averaged just five minutes of action during non-conference and didn’t even see the floor at all in four of those games.

However, injuries started to mount on the roster and an opportunity presented itself to him. He suddenly went from a few minutes here and a few minutes there to morphing into the primary point guard, playing 30+ minutes, dishing out assists and sinking threes.

“We grew as he grew and he had some really good moments,” said Konkol. “He was right on the cusp of making the All-Freshman Team that year.”

“I remember starting against UAB, being brought in with love,” said Archibald. “I had a double-double that game and just went from there. Have never looked back. Now it’s senior year. A blink of an eye. I’ve been blessed. Blessed to have my daughter. Blessed to be here at Tech. Blessed to be part of this team, this family.”

He’s now the most experienced Bulldog on the team, having just played his 100th career game. He’s got the most career points of any Bulldog, just eight points shy of 1,000 which will make him the 43rd player in program history to reach that milestone. He’s also got the most career assists.

“The great joy for us as a coaching staff is that whole process of watching him as a young, rising senior in high school and seeing him through his senior year of college,” said Konkol. “He hasn’t missed much, practices or games. That effort has consistently been there.”

In many ways, Amorie is now the alpha of the litter.