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INDIANAPOLIS — It was just a run-of-the-mill recruiting call. At least, that’s what Quincy Pondexter thought.
Pondexter had been an assistant at his alma mater, Washington, for only a few months. He’d never spoken to Wesley Yates III but was familiar enough with the guard from Beaumont, Texas, to cold call him in 2021 to offer a scholarship.
The extraordinary part came five minutes after they hung up, when Yates’ father called back.
“Wait,” he said, “what’s your name again?”
“So I told him,” Pondexter says. “And then he tells me, ‘You’re our cousin.’
“And I said, ‘Wait. What?’”
Retelling the story almost four years later, Pondexter still can’t believe it. But that day he called his sister, who kept in touch with extended family in Texas, to confirm. It was true, she told him — their mothers shared the same last name: Gooch.
The realization changed the course of their lives, as Yates followed his cousin first to Washington and then to USC, where the redshirt freshman has emerged as a budding star for the Trojans, who will face Rutgers in the opening round of the Big Ten tournament Wednesday.
“He’s really good right now,” USC coach Eric Musselman said last month. “You can only imagine what he can do next year.”
Pondexter has played a major part in that progress, as the cousins basically have been inseparable since that call. So much so that when USC didn’t have a scholarship to offer Yates last summer, he chose to walk on with the Trojans instead of transferring elsewhere. Pondexter was the reason.
“He’s been more than a cousin,” Pondexter said, “he’s been a little brother to me.”
Their bond began with brutal honesty. After Pondexter flew to Texas to watch one of his games, Yates asked for his thoughts.
Since he was family, Pondexter didn’t hold back with his assessment.
Eric Musselman faced an uphill climb from his first day at USC, but he has made real, tangible progress.
“I told him that he couldn’t shoot,” Pondexter said.
He wasn’t going to lavish his cousin with praise like other coaches might. Yates’ form needed work. He’d fallen into bad habits with his mechanics. His elbows were up in front of his eyes. His shooting motion wasn’t fluid. He had a tendency to push the ball.
The questionable jumper was holding him back, Pondexter told him. The honesty was refreshing to Yates.
“He knew he could trust me from that moment on,” said Pondexter, who played seven seasons in the NBA.
He never tried to recruit him to Washington. He just wanted to be a sounding board for Yates through the process, to talk like family would. Yet when he sensed Yates was dragging his feet on a college decision, Pondexter finally asked him if he wanted to come to Washington.
He committed right away.
Yates injured a foot soon after arriving in Seattle, though, delaying his development. By the time his foot healed, more than a year later, Washington’s staff had been replaced, and Pondexter had been let go.
Yates agreed to return to Washington under new coach Danny Sprinkle. But after a few weeks Yates changed his mind. It didn’t feel right without Pondexter. He entered the transfer portal in April.
The problem was his cousin had yet to find a new job. And when he did get a job, joining late to Musselman’s staff at USC, the Trojans already had raided the transfer portal and used up their scholarships.
Yates came to USC on an unofficial visit anyway. Pondexter asked where his head was.
“And he said, ‘You know what I want to do,’” Pondexter recalled. “‘I want to come here.’”
Yet the only way USC could make it work was if Yates walked on. He passed up more lucrative name, image and license packages elsewhere, all without any guarantee he would fit into Musselman’s roster plans.
He still came. “He’s the best walk-on in America,” Pondexter declares.
It took time for that to become clear. Yates’ foot injury complicated matters, leaving him unable to practice until September. His shot was still a work in progress.
“Coach probably didn’t think he was going to be able to use him,” Pondexter said. “I kept telling him to trust us.”
When Terrance Williams and Matt Knowling, two key contributors, were injured in December, Musselman challenged someone to step up and fill the void, knowing USC’s season would unravel otherwise.
Yates at that point was deep in a slump — he hadn’t made a shot in three games.
But “Wes took the challenge,” point guard Desmond Claude said. And Yates has been been one of the best guards in the Big Ten since then, averaging 16.5 points per game.
He’s added a new element to his game in the meantime, knocking down almost 46% of his 92 three-point attempts since joining USC’s starting lineup. That rate, over a full season, would rank best in the Big Ten.
His evolution, Musselman said last month, “changed our season, to be honest with you.”
It’s a testament to how far Yates has come in his work with Pondexter. The cousins have even bigger goals for next season, when Yates will return as one of those most buzzed-about guards in the conference.
“By next year,” Pondexter says, “he’ll be the best shooter in the country.”
There’s no question in Yates’ mind, either, that he’ll be back at USC, even after the disappointing finish to this season. Yates said recently that he’s “locked in” with Musselman, who called Yates “a big piece of what we’re trying to do.”
“I can’t thank him enough for letting me be me,” Yates said.
Other schools likely will try to lure him away from USC after the Trojans finished below .500 for just the third time in the last decade. But he has no intention of leaving behind his cousin, who prefers to call Yates his “long-lost brother.”
If all goes well, Pondexter reminds, they won’t have much time together after next season.
“I care more about him and his career than I probably cared about mine,” Pondexter said. “And I know that the NBA is not far away.”
