Lovington, New Mexico, sits in the southeastern corner of the state — high plains country, oil-and-cattle country, an hour from the Texas border and four hours from anything that anyone outside New Mexico would call a city. The 1990 census put the population at 9,322. In the early 1990s, the Lovington Wildcats high school athletic program produced two future legends in two different sports. One was Brian Urlacher, the lineman-turned-safety who would grow into a 6-foot-4, 258-pound middle linebacker, the No. 9 overall pick in the 2000 NFL Draft, eight-time Pro Bowler, and Hall of Famer. The other was his classmate, friend, and basketball court rival: Jerome Taymon Domzalski.
Urlacher would later write about Domzalski in his children's book, The Middle School Rules of Brian Urlacher. "A gifted athlete who could do it all," Urlacher described him — the kid who first put Lovington on the national basketball recruiting map. By Taymon's high school years, the visits to the little southeastern New Mexico town had become legendary local lore: Bobby Knight of Indiana sat in the Domzalski family kitchen. Roy Williams flew in from Kansas. Coach K himself made the trip. Jim Harrick, fresh off UCLA's 1995 national title, came to Lovington in person. "He brought national attention and excitement to Lovington," Urlacher would write — a town so small that famous coaches showing up was the talk of the school for a week each time.
Domzalski transferred to New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell, New Mexico, for his senior year — the storied junior-college-and-prep-school where a basketball player could simultaneously sharpen his game against tougher competition and stack academic credits. At NMMI in 1994-95, Domzalski became one of the most decorated student-athletes of his class. He was named Gatorade New Mexico Boys Basketball Player of the Year. He was named Second-Team Parade All-American. He was named to the McDonald's All-American team alongside Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Chauncey Billups, Vince Carter, Antawn Jamison, and Stephon Marbury — the generational class that would reshape the NBA over the next decade. And in the spring of 1995, Domzalski was named the Dial Award Winner as the top male student-athlete in the entire United States, co-recipient that year with Olympic gymnast Shannon Miller as the top female. He turned down scholarship offers from UCLA, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Kansas to sign with Mike Krzyzewski. He represented Team USA at the 1995 FIBA Under-19 World Cup that summer, averaging 4.8 PPG and 3.2 RPG across five games before reporting to Durham.