Two of the bullets remained in Pope's body when he was released after 11 days. Nearly two months went by before he returned to playing basketball. On Wednesday he'll be back in Aliquippa, at a court hearing, to face Longmire. Pope says there is no animosity toward his shooter.

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"I can't be mad, because of where I live and the things that I've seen," he said. "I'm more disappointed in myself, because I had chances to go to private schools and get out of the area. That was a way to stop this from happening; otherwise, I don't think it was preventable. It happened a quarter of a mile away from my house."

When he spoke those words on a recent September morning, Pope was sitting in the basketball office at New Mexico State, where he's on scholarship as a freshman. Who would have thought while Mayo and Love went to Los Angeles, Pope would go to Las Cruces?

Pope took only a few pictures of his girlfriend and his family with him, and didn't even have a functioning cell phone when he arrived in New Mexico. There weren't many ties to break from Aliquippa, where he says his mother and father abandoned him as a child. Pope had left once, attending Montrose Christian -- Kevin Durant's former school -- in Maryland as a freshman, but came back to Pennsylvania.

Pope had considered leaving again as as senior, nearly enrolling at Arlington Country Day in Jacksonville, Fla., where he was pushed by AAU influences to get closer to Bob Huggins, who's friends with Arlington coach Rex Morgan. Pope, however, finally found a way to get out by backing out of his commitment to Pittsburgh, spurning efforts to get him to play for Huggins at K-State, and turning down places like Louisville and Texas to seek out the remoteness of Las Cruces, where no direct flights arrive from Pittsburgh.

Leaving, though, did not end his string of bad luck.

About 24 hours after Pope arrived in Las Cruces, Reggie Theus, the coach who had coaxed him to New Mexico State, as well as visited him in the hospital the day after the shooting, called Pope in for a meeting. The news: Theus was going to accept an offer to coach the Sacramento Kings. More adversity for Pope to digest; again, without animosity.

"I supported him," he said of Theus. "I like money, and I know everybody likes money. You can't pass up $6 million [Theus' contract with the Kings], and also to become an NBA coach, that chance doesn't come around often."

It was fortunate, perhaps, that Pope had yet to acquire a cell phone with service in Las Cruces. Had he been easier to contact, he might have been pulled back to Aliquippa. Pope said he considered jumping to Texas, but waited to see what would be New Mexico State's next move. Ten days later it hired a new coach, Marvin Menzies, who, coincidentally, had been Pope's main recruiter from Rick Pitino's staff at Louisville.

Pope was the Aggies' highest-priority recruit -- he was, after all, Rivals.com's No. 31-ranked player in the country, and willing to play in the relative obscurity of the WAC -- and he and Menzies already had a relationship. Therefore, said the new coach, "The conversation was easy. I showed Herb that the reasons he picked New Mexico State were pretty much intact."

Theus was gone, but a familiar face had taken over the helm, and Las Cruces was still 1,800 miles away from Aliquippa. Pope stayed.

He needed stability. He had been a solid student in high school, earning a 3.0 GPA, but had earned a volatile reputation as a basketball player, which resulted in a severe drop in his recruiting stock. After his Aliquippa team blew a double-digit lead and lost the Pennsylvania Class AA state title game in March 2007, a demoralized Pope drew the ire of onlookers by dropping his runner-up medal on the ground and walking off the court.

He had been kicked off his AAU team, the Pittsburgh J.O.T.S, after getting into a fight with an assistant coach while at an AAU tournament in Orlando. The coach of Pope's AAU team, J.O. Stright, said that "Herb, being the athlete that he is, had somewhat of an attitude that he was invincible." Retired ABCD Camp director Sonny Vaccaro said that Pope "was a rebel who played by his own rules."

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