Austin Ash goes from smoldering embers at Iowa to full-on blazing fire as starter at The Citadel

CEDAR RAPIDS — He has no rigid schedule, where every hour of every day is strictly accounted for and laid out ahead of time.

He doesn’t have to march, doesn’t have to do pushups or anything like that. Though Austin Ash is playing college basketball at a military school, the military part doesn’t apply to him.

When the former Iowa Hawkeyes guard and Mount Vernon graduate became interested in The Citadel this past summer, that was one of the first things head coach Ed Conroy made sure he knew. As a graduate student, Ash lives in an off-campus apartment in the beach town of Charleston, S.C, where it was 70 degrees and sunny Wednesday afternoon.

“Coach Conroy was like ‘You know what, you won’t have to go to formation in the morning, you won’t have to carry a rifle. You’ll be living off campus, you won’t have to worry about that stuff,’” Ash said. “But a lot of teammates do have to be in the barracks at a certain time, have to get up in the morning, so you have to be respectful to them with their stuff.

“But this truly has worked out great for me. I’m living a really good life this final year in Charleston.”

And playing really good basketball.

Ash has started every game for the Bulldogs (9-14) and is second on the team in scoring at 15.2 points. He is one of the top 3-point shooters in the nation, ranking sixth in treys made per game.

He had seven 3s in a game the other night against Chicago State, including going 5-for-5 in the first half. Most of his deep shots are “really” deep, as a recent chart floating around on Twitter from analytics company named Synergy Sports has him ranked second nationally with an average make distance of 25 feet, 11 inches.

Since day one, Conroy has encouraged Ash to load it up and let it go first and ask questions later.

“It’s been kind of everything I was looking for in my last year,” Ash said. “I had the Big Ten experience, got to live out my dream of playing for the Hawkeyes. Just never really got to be a significant player that got to play a lot of minutes ... I had this last year, I was really just looking for a spot to be an impactful player to a program. Do everything I can to effect winning.

“Even games that you lose, just be part of it and feel like ‘Oh, I really could have done this play.’ Really just being one of the guys taking big shots down the stretch. That’s really everything I’ve had here at The Citadel this last year.”

Ash redshirted as a freshman after walking on at Iowa and played sparingly the next four seasons, though he was given a scholarship last season. Taking advantage of an extra year of eligibility due to the COVID pandemic, he went shopping for a school that would give him an opportunity to shine.

He had a difficult time finding one, until attending the summer grad party in Iowa City of Jack Devlin, one of Iowa’s team managers. Familial ties brought many members of the Conroy family to the same event, everyone except Ed, who had just taken the head coaching job at The Citadel for the second time in his career.

Conroy is a Davenport Assumption grad.

Former Iowa player Mike Gatens introduced Ash to Conroy’s brother, Duffy, an assistant coach at Tulsa. They talked for a while, and Ed Conroy ended up contacting Ash the next day.

The ball had begun to roll.

“Funny how that worked out,” Ash said.

A big issue was Ed Conroy didn’t immediately have any scholarships to give at the time of their first conversation. Ash and his mother flew to Charleston to check out campus, and a couple of weeks later, Conroy called and told him a scholarship just became open.

This was in June. Had he not gone to The Citadel, Southern Illinois-Edwardsville was Ash’s other option.

“Coach Conroy puts a lot of trust in me, and it’s been great so far,” Ash said. “Hopefully we’ll have a special end to our season.”

Ash said he always believed he had the ability to be a big contributor at a Division I program, that he just needed a chance. He mentioned how he felt he could go head to head some days in practice against guys like Joe Wieskamp and Jordan Bohannon and not feel he was out of place.

He still keeps in regular contact with his former Iowa teammates. He said it’s almost a daily thing with Connor McCaffery.

“Those were guys I was competing against and sometimes getting the best of them in practice,” he said. ”So I thought if I was at a smaller school or if circumstances were different there at Iowa, I would be getting that chance to play. Coach (Fran) McCaffery mentioned that to me before.

“But you never really believe it until you do it. Which is why this year has meant to much to me.”

Comments: jeff.johnson@thegazette.com