Pitt Basketball: Tray Woodall is a brand name in a knockoff world
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A good pair of sneakers has always been a symbol of success for Tray Woodall. He estimates he owns about 80 pairs, many of which fill the closet in his apartment. -
Melanie Wilmot, 22, talks about her boyfriend, Pitt point guard Tray Woodall, right, at his apartment. The day she met him, she never would have known that a decade earlier he had been selling drugs on the streets of Brooklyn. -
Woodall makes one of his first appearances in a Pitt uniform as a true freshman in a November 2008 exhibition game against Seton Hill at Petersen Events Center. Nearly four years later, he is scheduled to graduate this spring with a degree in sociology.
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Tray Woodall sits leaning forward on the beige loveseat fit for a bachelor pad, Xbox 360 controller in hand, his long fingers directing "GQTray1" around a wartime setting on the flat-screen TV in front of him.
The game is "Call of Duty," and the mission is to capture the flag before the other players who have joined him online can. These gamers do not know that GQTray1 is Woodall, Pitt's starting point guard who was recently named the Oscar Robertson National Player of the Week.
They show Woodall no mercy. GQTray1 is shot and killed 13 times in about a five-minute span, by players with names like "ElectricLizard7" and "Wasabi eG." Unlike many college basketball players, he simply is not all that good at video games.
As a boy in Brooklyn, the only system he'd ever played was an Atari. That was all his mother could provide, and it was such a Stone Age experience, Woodall rarely touched the controller. There was more excitement happening outside anyway, and he wasn't going to get the money to buy the latest sneakers or clothing styles by tapping that old joystick.
Now Woodall can give himself the things he desires most without moving a muscle. On Wednesday night, in the fifth-floor Washington Plaza Uptown apartment that he shares with teammate Dante Taylor, Woodall's iPhone is constantly buzzing. He shows a visitor a stream of text messages from friend Mike Hawthorne, who sends pictures of sneakers that have come into his store, Social Status. If Woodall likes them, Hawthorne will put them aside for him. Woodall estimates he owns about 80 pairs of sneakers, most of them the trendy Nike Air Jordans or Foamposites.
The "GQ" in Woodall's gaming handle is well-placed. He always tries to look fresh, he explains while wearing a pair of white Jordans, tan slim jeans, a jean jacket, a red watch and a flat-billed New York Giants cap.
"I don't want to meet somebody for the first time looking like a bum," says Woodall, a 22-year-old junior. "First impression is everything. I mean, I got her like that."
He points to his right, where his girlfriend, Pitt graduate student Melanie Wilmot, sits next to him. She laughs, because it's true. They were in a history class when Woodall was a freshman, and she saw the kid wearing a black North Face hooded sweatshirt. She had never seen a hoodie like that.
First Published February 19, 2012 12:00 am
