Bruce Hornsby told AP’s Will Graves after UNC-Asheville almost toppled Syracuse in Pittsburgh that he’s just another Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter who wishes he was a better baller. Think Kanye West, or Nelly, but with fewer tattoos and radically different tastes in music. Best known for the 1980s easy-listening hit “The Way It Is,” Hornsby is taller than you’d think seeing him on TV — 6-foot-4, though at age 57, he insists he’s “shrinking” — and knows his way around a court better than you’d ever guess.
He turned down a basketball scholarship at Randolph-Macon to play piano, eventually graduated from Miami, and roots for UNC-Asheville because his son, Keith, chose the fork in the road that Dad bypassed and plays shooting guard there. Funny how things worked out.
“This is a new thing for our family,” Hornsby said, clad in Bulldog blue. “There’s never been an athlete at this level in this branch of the family.”
The old man knew that when Keith finally smoked him one-on-one as a ninth-grader, despite plenty of smack.
“And I talk,” Hornsby said, laughing, “like you wouldn’t believe.”
