Today is the first day high school basketball players can sign national letters of intent. So ends the signees' recruiting process, and in the minds of so many begins the necessary step of going through the motions of playing one year of college ball before they begin to collect the inevitable NBA paycheck.

The months go by, and they arrive on campus and get a glimpse of college basketball by practicing two hours a week. Then mid-October hits, and they practice daily. Then they play an exhibition game against a Div. II opponent. Reality begins to settle in, and if they are even a little bit capable of seeing themselves, the fantasy that a lucrative pro career can be taken for granted starts to fade away.

Brandon Rush arrived at Kansas thinking that guarding was something the guy assigned to him tried and failed to do. He quickly turned himself over to his coach, let him tell him what he needed to do and did it. In time, he became a lock-down defender, and even an ACL surgery couldn't keep him from becoming an NBA lottery pick.

Rush wasn't a born leader, but he picked the right guy to follow in his coach, Bill Self. He followed him all the way to a national title and a seven-figure annual salary.

Watching Marcus Morris, a skillful 6-foot-8 freshman forward from Philadelphia, play in KU's first exhibition game against Washburn University, the thought occurred he might not have the wisdom to take Rush's path to improvement. He fouled out in seven minutes, totaled two points and one rebound and didn't appear to have an intense bone in his body.

Tuesday night against Emporia State, Morris had 11 points, six rebounds, two steals, an assist and a blocked shot in 16 minutes. The best sign of progress came when Morris discussed not what he did well, but what he needs to do better.

In a nutshell, he tires too easily, and when he does he tends to space out when his man doesn't have the ball and gets, in his own word, "lazy" on defense and on the boards. The first step in solving a problem is admitting you have one. In the area of becoming a better rebounder, Morris might have had a little way to go in pleading guilty when confronted with it by Self at halftime.

"It's kind of hard to rebound with Cole (Aldrich) on your team because you're boxing out, and his arms are so long that when you go for the rebound he already has it," Morris said. "Then at halftime coach says, 'You don't have any rebounds.' I'm like, 'I can't take it from my own teammate. No reason to fight him for it.' The second half, I knew I had to go after everything. I couldn't leave the game with no rebounds."

He didn't. In seven second-half minutes, Morris took in six rebounds, the first coming with a little reminder from the bench.

With 6:48 left, Morris rebounded and fired an outlet pass to a sprinting Tyrone Appleton in the middle of the floor. A smiling Self made eye contact with Morris, held up his index finger and said, "That's one."

That triggered a span of 3:18 in which Morris picked up six rebounds.

There are two ways to respond to nagging: Either tune it out or prevent it by doing what you're urged to do. The first one isn't an option for a college basketball player who would prefer to play than to sit. Morris just might be figuring that out.