Eargle’s pro career on hold

March 3, 2014 at 12:05a.m.

YOUNGSTOWN

It took more than six months for Damian Eargle to get his foot in the door in professional basketball.

It took him less than a week to injure it.

Eargle, a former standout at Youngstown State, is back in town rehabbing a torn tendon in his foot he suffered with the Saint John Mill Rats, a National Basketball League of Canada team in New Brunswick.

Eargle played in one game before he got injured, scoring eight points with seven rebounds in 11 minutes in a 115-108 loss to the Windsor Express on Dec. 14.

“It was just like, ‘Man, this is the worst luck ever,’” Eargle said. “I played really well in my first game and it was a lot easier than I expected.

“I thought college was harder. The players [in the NBL] were a lot more talented but it was a lot less organized. More of a one-on-one type of thing than a team thing.

“I had a lot more freedom to do a lot more things, so I was kind of mad when I got hurt.”

Originally, Eargle expected to miss about three to four weeks, which would have allowed him to return for the playoffs.

“But I don’t feel like I’m ready for that yet,” he said. “I didn’t want to rush back into it.”

Eargle, a Youngstown native who graduated from Warren Harding, played three seasons with the Penguins after starting his career with UNC-Greensboro.

He set school and Horizon League records with 309 career blocks and finished with 1,061 points at YSU. He was named the Horizon League’s defensive player of the year last season.

“As you know, we were a 3-point shooting team so I didn’t really get the ball as much as I’d like, but that was fine with me,” he said. “We had amazing players and we all got along [well]. The chemistry was there. I was a defensive player and I just wanted to win with the team that we had.”

With Eargle manning the paint, YSU put together its first back-to-back winning seasons in almost 30 years and qualified for its first postseason tournament as a Division I program. The Penguins advanced to the second round of the CollegeInsider.com tournament.

Eargle has drawn interest from teams in Iceland and Germany, although he turned down an opportunity to play overseas soon after he graduated.

“It was one of those situations where they weren’t paying their players, so I didn’t want to get into a predicament where I was stuck over there playing but I wasn’t getting any money,” he said.

For now, Eargle is working out every day with a group of players, including his older brother Terrell, a former standout at Austintown Fitch. He even texted this reporter at 4:30 a.m. one day because he was getting ready for a 6 a.m. workout.

“I’m excited to be making money doing something I love to do,” he said. “I’m not ready to get a real job yet.”