His teammates had long been back to the locker room by now, changed into stylish sweatshirts and sweatpants to head back into the East Alabama cold, but Aden Holloway was still shooting. They came back past the practice gym riding their scooters on the hardwood and cheered on the freshman as he furiously, repetitively fired basketballs into the air.

The freshman hardly noticed. It was as if the only ones in the gym were himself, the ball and the graduate assistants passing it back to him.

It all has to be perfect. His feet set exactly the same way. His hair in exactly the same position. The ball flung off his palm in the exact spot in his arc. Make even the most minor mistake and do it all over again.

He starts in the corner. He can’t move on to the next spot until he makes 10 3-pointers in a row. An assistant counts off each make.

Swish, swish, swish. Over and over.

He’s approaching 200-something shots now and by the time he gets to the very last shot at the very last spot — the far opposite corner from where he began — Holloway steps back into the very edge of in bounds, all the way behind the backboard, and flings off one final shot.

And he does this every day. After every practice.

Holloway has quickly emerged as Auburn’s freshman shooting savant. With one of the purest jump shots in a long line of free-flying, gunslinging Bruce Pearl point guards, Holloway is the next up. His path to Auburn took him through high schools in three states and a five-star rating next to his name.

Yet the origin of the shooting stroke that has brought him this far? It was a young boy teaching himself in a North Carolina dining room.

***

Robin Raimey bought her son Power Ranger action figures, Tonka truck toys and Lego sets. He ignored them all.

It was only the Fisher-Price basketball hoop that could keep the attention of the toddler in his Pull-Ups.

Or at least Holloway didn’t touch those other toys unless he could make it about basketball somehow. Raimey remembered finding him as a young boy playing with five blue two-by-one Lego pieces and five yellow ones. He moved the pieces around on the floor as if it were some sort of court.

“Dummy, you’re supposed to build something,” Raimey remembers joking with her son. “What are you doing?

“Playing basketball,” Holloway responded.

“It’s a true story,” Raimey says now, thinking back on Holloway’s childhood. “Like, he’s just wired for the game.”

Holloway was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, but has Canadian and American citizenship. Raimey was born in Calgary, Canada. Raimey’s father Dave played college football at Michigan before a brief NFL career followed by a Canadian Football League Hall of Fame run with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers from 1965-1968 and then the Toronto Argonauts from 1969-1974.

Raimey has three kids: Holloway, his older brother Leito and younger sister Mila. Leito played college basketball at Division III Mississippi College. Mila is a high school senior and four-star recruit who signed with Michigan in November.

In Raimey’s first Charlotte home, the Fisher-Price basketball hoop was set up by the front door at the end of a hallway. Holloway would dribble in the hall, spin around and talk to himself in the process. He dreamed in that hallway like so many kids that he was instead in the center of that Bobcats’ arena, counting down the final seconds before shooting an imaginary buzzer-beater.

Holloway would play this game for hours, Raimey said.

As the kids got older, the hallway was no longer a big enough showcase. So Raimey moved into a bigger home and bought a six-foot hoop.

She didn’t bother to buy a dining room table. Carving out space in the kitchen to eat would be enough. The dining room was just a loose term for the basketball court room.

There was no furniture in the dining room. Just a cage Raimey put over the light so no heaved-up trick shots would smash the bulbs.

Every few months, they repainted the walls.

It was on this floor — inside the walls of his childhood home where the only lines of a court were in your head — that Holloway learned to shoot.

He taught himself through YouTube videos. Raimey said his inspiration was NBA Hall of Fame guard Steve Nash, a fellow Canadian.

“I would kind of just watch videos on YouTube, videos of people who could shoot,” Holloway said. “Looking at their little mechanics, and then as I would shoot I would just find little things that I noticed when I shoot it and it goes in, to just repeat that process over and over again.”

***

When Holloway finally began playing organized basketball and receiving coaching from a human and not a screen, it was clear he was talented, but he didn’t truly understand how to play basketball.

His coaches essentially threatened him to shoot more.

“I had a rule with him,” Jeff Bishop said. “Every three assists that he gave out, he had to take a shot. If you didn’t take a shot, I’m subbing you out.”

Bishop was Holloway’s AAU coach in Charlotte. He began working with Holloway around fifth grade.

But the grainy videos of Holloway go back to second grade. They show a small kid where the basketball was almost too big to hold, where any of his deep shots looked purely like a heave just to get the ball with enough height in the air. Then, he wasn’t afraid to shoot.

Yet as he made his way onto Bishop’s team, Holloway played far too unselfishly. Sometimes, Bishop said, a point guard needs to be a bit selfish. Holloway was a quiet kid — still is — and as opposed to most players rated like him, he would rather just pass the ball off. When Auburn head coach Burce Pearl says Holloway even still is more focused on winning than he is on an NBA future, it isn’t some cliché. Pearl genuinely means it.

It shows in some of the impressive assists he makes nowadays at the college level. Holloway is among the nation’s best assist-to-turnover ratios.

But Bishop’s push to force Holloway into more shots is what flipped the proverbial switch for him as a player.

“We captured it in one picture we have of him when he’s young, he just has that look on his face,” Bishop said.

Holloway began dropping gaudy scoring numbers despite playing up an age group. He played on a middle school AAU team sponsored by Chris Paul which made it to the national championship in the age group. Bishop and Holloway lost to a Blue Chips team coached by NBA superstar LeBron James and his son Bronny James.

Bishop developed Holloway’s shooting, especially by focusing on coming off high-ball screens. Holloway may not be the quickest, Bishop said, but he doesn’t need much space to flick off a shot.

And as Holloway entered high school at Covenant Day School in North Carolina, the boy who spent hours shooting in the hallway became the teenager who wouldn’t leave the gym. Raimey said there would be nights when she’d sit in the car waiting until midnight for her son to finish his practice. Those late-night hours were one of the rare slots Holloway could find an open gym close to home.

It was clear on those nights to Raimey that Covenant Day, or frankly Charlotte, wasn’t going to provide Holloway what he needed.

“If you want to play this game, you’ve got to go,” Raimey told her son. “You gotta go to a school that you can get in the gym in the morning. You’re gonna have to go.”

Raimey said Holloway didn’t have the resources he needed — meaning consistent access to a gym. Raimey knew she had to find her son somewhere he did.

Holloway went first to La Lumiere in La Porte, Indiana, a prestigious high school program. After a year there, he went further west to Prolific Prep in Napa, California. That year, he improved his stock from a four-star to a five-star recruit and he decided to join a line of Auburn elite guards under Pearl including Jared Harper, Sharife Cooper and Wendell Green.

But this is the path of an elite high school recruit these days. It’s become so normal that level to play for high schools in name only that foster terrific basketball development programs.

That means a strain on parents’ time and money. Raimey never thought she’d be one of the parents to spend thousands on travel basketball. But here she was. She can’t go to every game with multiple kids all playing the same sport in the same season.

It means many high school coaches who serve as parents for kids hundreds of miles from home. In a way, it prepares a player like Holloway for college.

“I’m a single mom, I can’t just jump in the car and go to Napa,” Raimey said. “When I took him to La Lumiere, I got off the plane and I sat there and was like ‘What have I done? Like what the hell are you doing lady.’ But I had to do it. It was a blessing.”

Raimey changed careers to work as a real estate agent now, which has allowed her to manipulate her schedule in order to watch as much of her kids as possible.

“I was explaining to Bruce and different people, I think that that’s when you realize that your kid is different, when you go from local to national,” Raimey said. “Because the best of the best, it’s not convenient anymore.”

But to her, it was worth it.

To Holloway, it paid off.

***

Maybe what makes a great shooter is how they handle when they’re not making it.

Holloway began his college career in a flurry. He quickly earned his way into the starting lineup with his 3-point shot creating a spark off the bench. He made a statement on national television in Auburn’s season opener against Baylor with 19 points.

He made at least two 3-pointers in each of Auburn’s first five games. But in games six and seven of his college career, Holloway looked like a freshman.

In a Nov. 29 win over Virginia Tech and Dec. 3 loss to Appalachian State, Holloway shot a combined 2-17 from the field and 0-8 on 3s. He didn’t score against Virginia Tech at all.

In a slump, Holloway thought back to his work with trainer Travis Walton. Walton is the first high-level trainer Holloway has ever worked with. Walton said when he reviews Holloway, he compares his film to that of Golden State Warriors guards Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, who Walton describes as two of the best three shooters of all time. What makes them different, Walton said, is discipline.

Holloway doesn’t quite have that yet.

“When guys are elite-level shooters in high school, they’re not as disciplined,” Walton said. “If you see Aden, at times like he falls over, kicks his foot out, he does different things. But he made those shots in high school.”

Those shots don’t always fall in college.

Holloway has had his “wow” moments in an Auburn uniform. But adjusting to college basketball means going back to a player’s most fundamental basics, Walton said. Holloway’s basics aren’t quite the usual. It’s the basics he taught himself compared to the coached techniques he learned later on.

Auburn had a week off between the Appalachian State loss and its next game. It was time for Holloway to stew on what had gone wrong. He called Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green, Walton said, for advice on getting through a slump. Green was college teammates with Walton at Michigan State and the two work together now.

Later, Holloway would say that Green stressed bringing energy and effort to every possession as only a freshman can.

It worked.

So Holloway boarded the bus to Atlanta unfazed. Auburn was set to play Indiana on Dec. 9 at State Farm Arena. The plan was to let Holloway see the ball go through.

Auburn went to Holloway immediately. Before the ESPN starting lineup graphic even went off the screen, Holloway was taking the ball in a handoff from center Johni Broome. It was the high ball screen Holloway knows so well. He put up a quick shot. Swish. Hardly a minute later, Indiana left Holloway wide open in the corner. Broome found him again. Swish.

Holloway went on to score 24 points that day and shooting 5-for-8 on 3s. Auburn won the game 104-76.

After the game ended, Raimey texted a GIF to an AL.com reporter reading simply, “Boom.”

***

It’s the last game night before Auburn begins SEC play. Holloway is settled in here now. More comfortable going through Auburn’s shootarounds, more willing to break a smile amid his strict routine.

There’s a group of kids lined up courtside an hour before Auburn played Penn that January night. When Holloway was nearby, a teen in a powder blue sweatshirt reached out with a basketball and a Sharpie. Holloway quickly broke over and signed the ball for the giddy kid. A group of other kids got up in reaction, thinking it was a chance to talk to an Auburn player.

Holloway didn’t quite see. He was back to shooting.

His routine has resembled Curry’s, whose trick shots are a standard practice before a game.

As Auburn players run back into the locker room after different stages of warm-ups, Holloway is always part of a group that attempts a half-court heave. He’s pretty good at it, almost always making at least one.

He didn’t make one on his first run-through. Not even close, actually.

But be damned if Holloway was going to end on a miss. He ran toward the locker room following his shot and as it sailed wide, he caught a pass from a manager. Still running, Holloway chucked up a wild attempt at the basket from just in front of Auburn’s bench.

Somehow, swish. And back into the tunnel he went.

“Aden has got some of that ‘it’,” Pearl said. “He’s got some special in him.”

Matt Cohen covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @Matt_Cohen_ or email him at [email protected]