You play the hand you are dealt.
It is an adage as old as the oldest deck of cards, which means that it’s about 500 years old.
Richard Ross, Old Dominion University's 6-foot-6 jumping jack of a forward, found himself in a bit of a quagmire last spring when Blaine Taylor was told to hit the dusty trail late in what would go down as the worst season in modern ODU men’s basketball history.
Ross was finishing up his sophomore season of eligibility and his third year academically. There wasn't much choice but to stick it out and play the hand he’d been dealt. It just didn't make sense to transfer out and sit a year just to play a final season somewhere else.
Besides -- and here's the really important part -- he likes it at ODU.
While many might believe the fact that Taylor had a decades-old friendship with Ross's high school coach Don Hedge had a lot to do with Ross ending up a Monarch -- and granted, it had a little to do with the decision -- Richard Ross ultimately made ODU his choice because of the school, not the coach.
It was a big decision and a mighty fair piece of distance for Ross to come to ODU from Wichita Falls, Texas, a city of about 200,000 located north of Dallas.
"Fair to say the climate's a bit different here," Ross said Tuesday night after ODU's overtime loss to a talented North Carolina Central team, 76-69. "In Norfolk, you see the seasons actually change. There's a spring and a fall.
"In Wichita Falls, there are two seasons: hot and cold."
The chill of last season, when the Monarchs suffered through a calamitous three months, truly seems a thing of a past, one that Ross was a part of but also one that Ross said was a lesson for all involved.
"When you're going through he'll, you gotta keep moving until you come out on the other side," Ross said. "Otherwise, you’re stuck in hell.
"I can see the other side now. We all can."
Seems to me there's a Rodney Atkins country song with lyrics similar to that, but I digress.
One thing about this side of that hellish season: it brought two individuals together -- first-year coach Jeff Jones and his incumbent forward Richard Ross -- and the two don't seem to mind that at all.
Asked what it's like to play for Jones, a wide grin overtook Ross.
"I like looking over to our sideline in the heat of a game and realizing that Jeff is really into it," Ross said. "He is with us on each possession, trying to make all of us better."
Asked what it’s like to coach a player like Ross, Jones replied, "I have never coached anyone who can jump like he does, ever. And he jumps like that off one foot or two. Usually a player can do one or the other, not both.
"I’m trying to find ways to best use that talent of his."
At any moment, Ross can be a highlight reel that ends up on ESPN’s Top 10 plays. His dunks are that astounding, his blocks truly eye-popping. It was a block by Ross with 40 seconds remaining in regulation that assured the Monarchs an extra five minutes of overtime Tuesday night.
Alas, Tuesday’s loss was a bit of a downer in that the Monarchs had a chance, but it was also uplifting to see what they did in the second half.
ODU trailed a hot-shooting N.C. Central squad by 13 at the half. That’s when Jones wrote one word boldly across the white board in ODU’s locker room during intermission: together.
"We’re in this together," Jones said. "It’s not like LeBron James is going to come walking through that door and be our salvation. It we want to win and move forward, we have to do that with what’s in our locker room."
Essentially, that’s a team that could use some more height and could use some more players, but that’s what recruiting is all about.
Fortunately for Jones, he didn’t have to re-recruit Ross to stay. Ross wasn’t going anywhere.
The Monarchs, however, are going somewhere on Sunday: to Richmond to play a VCU squad that has been their arch rival for eons.
VCU began the season nationally ranked. There was a day not so long ago when ODU had VCU’s number, when games like this one were not expected to be a one-sided affair.
And if all works out, there will be days in the near future when ODU returns to that level. For now, however, Jones will make the best of it and Ross will make the best of it. And they’ll do it together.
Funny thing is, when Richard Ross signed his scholarship with ODU, he had never heard of Jeff Jones.
"Hey, I’m from Texas," he smiled. "People around here knew who he was. But me? I’m not from around here.”
The good thing, however, is he decided to stick around and make the best of it.
In poker lingo, he’s going all in.