Deborah Screen had a passion for basketball. A burning desire to win she developed as a state champion at Hayfield High School in Alexandria, Va. An intensity for the sport she passed on to her son, Butler center Andre Screen.

Andre's father, Phillip, grew up a football fan in Georgia. He took a hands-off approach to his son's basketball career, keeping statistics for his travel teams on his iPad, and always staying even keeled after games.

Deborah had more of a coach's personality. She let her opinion be heard from the stands of Andre's AAU games. She was the first to put a basketball in his hands at 3 years old and helped foster his growth as a player.

"That passion was there, that support was there, that willing to participate at the earliest ages with him at basketball-and-parenting activities," Phillip said. "She wanted to do those things. When she wanted to do those things, I let her run with it."

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Even as Andre grew to be a 7-foot, Division I prospect, Deborah continued to go out to the hoop in front of their home to give her son pointers and rebound for him.

She was the one who knew how to best flip the switch that turned Andre from a mild-mannered post player, into a player with an edge. The type of player to slam home a dunk and let the defender know about it.

Phillip calls it Andre's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde complex.

Andre, who has carved out an important role on a rebuilding Butler roster, carries those lessons from his mother every day. When he steps on the court, he's honoring his late mother's memory the best way he knows how.

"My mom was really passionate and very supportive," Andre said. "She just was really inspirational and a motivator for me to just keep on getting better even when things weren't so good.

"When I wasn't successful (she said), just keep on working, keep on working because that's how you see results. Everyone has their time, and I was always working because I knew my time was coming eventually."

The light finally clicked on

Phillip and Deborah knew they were going to have a tall child.

Both are around 6-1. Deborah has relatives well over 6-foot on her side of the family. Andre was nine pounds at birth, and long. The doctors projected him to grow somewhere between 6-6 and 6-8. He reached 6-6 by the eighth grade.

"He grew like six, seven inches in a year, and we were constantly going back to the store," Phillip said. "I knew he was still growing because he had a lot of aches, Osgood-Schlatter they call it. Where kids are growing so fast that their joints have to adjust, it's kind of painful."

Andre always had touch at the rim. Scoring the ball wasn't a problem for a kid his size. DeMatha High School coach Mike Jones first met Screen when he was a middle schooler at St. Stephen's & St. Agnes School in Alexandria. Jones was an assistant coach at SSSAS at the time and remembers Screen as a gentle giant who everyone enjoyed being around.

Even with solid coordination for his size, Screen couldn't do a single push-up his freshman year.

"We challenged him to really get in the weight room," Jones said. "You could see the skill, but it was just about him growing and maturing into his body.

"He always had good form on his shot. It was just about him getting in shape and getting stronger, building up his core, getting his base stronger and his upper body stronger. Once all those things happened for him, he turned the corner."

Screen played junior varsity as a freshman. He started to show flashes of potential as a sophomore, and heading into his junior year, standing 6-10, Screen started to find his footing.

His breakout performance came during a scrimmage against DeMatha, a powerhouse program in the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area. Screen matched up against current Towson forward Charles Thompson every day in practice, but DeMatha represented a higher level of competition. That team was led by current Kansas center Hunter Dickinson, and also featured Villanova guard Justin Moore and former Miami and Memphis guard Earl Timberlake (now at Bryant).

Playing well against other top prospects reinforced Screen's belief playing Division I was possible. Before facing DeMatha, Screen was taking standard college visits with other perspective students, unsure if high-level basketball was in his future.

With one Division I offer already, after the strong scrimmage, more offers came rolling in.

"Once he faced Hunter, I felt like the light clicked," Jones said of Screen. "He did really well against some really good teams. ... Those guys were all a year older than Andre, so once he did really well, he figured out he could do some things."

Screen was a three-star prospect in the 2020 class and the 14th-best player in Virginia, per 247Sports and committed to Bucknell.

Screen's progression at Bucknell was gradual. He played in 10 games with two starts as a freshman. As a sophomore, he made 22 starts and finished third on the team averaging 11.4 points per game. He had his first 20-point game in November against Rider. He was consistently reaching double figures and seemed to be finding his groove as a college basketball player. But before a Jan. 13, 2022, game against Lehigh, his life changed forever.

'There are lessons in everything'

Phillip and Deborah loved traveling to Andre's games. They'd arrive the day before, work through the following day and attend the game at night.

Andre met with his parents the night of Jan. 12, hugged his mom goodbye. Then he got a call from his father early the next morning. His mother had died from a heart attack. She was 60 years old.

"It was sudden," Andre said. "It was like 4 in the morning, my dad called me and told me she passed. Luckily, I was able to give her a hug the night before. ... It was just random. It was definitely tough, still dealing with it now. It was really tough on my dad. I've had to step up and just be more of a man, take on a lot more responsibilities.

"There are lessons in everything. I had all my brothers at Bucknell, my coaches there. I'll never forget them because they really helped me through a tough time."

The daily grind of class, practice, film sessions and weight training became his refuge from the pain. If he was having a practically tough day, he knew he could blow off some steam in the weight room or on the basketball court.

"I look back on those times and it was some really rough times, but I had basketball," Screen said. "To just put my head down, grind, coming to the gym. I knew I had practice. I knew the day-to-day like, 'Okay, we're gonna grind. We're gonna get better.'

"I could take all the emotion and all the feelings I was feeling and just put it all into the game."

Screen grew as a player and person at Bucknell. He played his best basketball as a junior averaging 11.2 points per game and finishing with the fifth-best single-season field goal percentage in program history at .622. But after a 12-20 campaign the coach who recruited him to campus, Nathan Davis, was fired.

Now Screen had to make a decision: Deal with the uncertainty at Bucknell and stay at a place he'd grown to love, or enter the transfer portal and try to find a new home.

'I wanted to win'

Screen entered the transfer portal after his junior season. He visited Butler on March 21 and committed to two weeks later. The culture coach Thad Matta curated in his return to Butler is what attracted Screen to the program.

Screen joined a roster in transition. When he committed, six former Butler players were in the portal and the roster had four open scholarships. After three losing seasons at Bucknell, Screen said he felt joining Matta at Butler gave him the best opportunity to win.

Sporting his signature glasses — he hates putting things in his eyes, shunning contacts or LASIK surgery — Screen brings energy off the bench for the Bulldogs.

After operating as a focal point of the system with the Bison, Screen has embraced a new role as a Bulldog. Standing 7-1, Screen is tasked with guarding another large, physical presence every game in Big East play. Screen excelled during nonconference play, making his first nine shots. He's shooting a team-best 67.7% from the field and is third on team with nine blocks.

Everything Screen has gone through helped him get to Butler as a stronger person. Now he's thriving on his new team and has fully embraced the Butler Way.

"A big thing with every guy here who came is they wanted to win," Screen said. "I hadn't seen a winning season in all my years at Bucknell. We had all the pieces there. We just couldn't put it together.

"The numbers and all that, that was out the window — I wanted to win. I wanted to go to a place where I knew guys around me wanted to win and we built that as soon as we got here, building team chemistry and building relationships with each other. That's what we came here to do, and that's what our culture is centered around every day."

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Butler basketball: Bucknell transfer Andre Screen making impact