DENVER – For his entire playing career, Jonathan Morse never expected this.
 
MSU Denver Athletics Hall of Famer.
 
"I grew up watching DeMarcos Anzures (MSU Denver's all-time leading scorer), and (national player of the year) Mark Worthington was my brother's roommate," Morse said. "My senior season, I was the fifth-best player on our team. It never crossed my mind that I was in that category.
 
"But after my senior season, Eric Lansing and RoadrunnersTV did a special on me and the basketball team, and Eric said, 'the Hall of Fame will be calling J-Mo's name one day.' I was like, 'Don't mess with me, what are you talking about?' But since then, you look at the numbers, and I guess I was OK. I just had such phenomenal teammates the entire time I was there."
 
Numbers indeed.
 
Morse is the program's all-time leader with 1,029 rebounds and he's eighth in program history with 1,565 points – he's the only Roadrunner ever to top 1,000 points and 1,000 rebounds. And he played for teams that compiled a record of 103-25 in four seasons, including a national runner-up finish in 2012-13 and another trip to the national quarterfinals.
 
That's all well above the threshold needed to join the pantheon of Roadrunners legends.
 
Morse will be inducted on Oct. 1, along with women's soccer star and Team USA Paralympian Courtney Ryan, women's track & field and cross country standout Breanna Hemming, and men's soccer great Phillip Owen.
 
Tickets to the ceremony at the SpringHill Suites Denver Downtown on the MSU Denver campus are $50 for adults and $25 for children 12 and under.
 
Morse's roots with MSU Denver basketball run deep. Two brothers preceded him in Red & Blue.
 
"I had grown up around the program," Morse said. "I was the annoying kid starting chants in the stands and slamming on chairs. I was at all the road games. I was always there."
 
So entrenched in the program was Morse that, apparently, no one thought to recruit him. He didn't get an offer and commit to the Roadrunners until after he had completed a standout senior season at Fairview High School in Boulder.
 
"I found out later that almost all the RMAC teams wanted me, but they thought I had signed already," Morse said. "Nobody thought they had a chance."
 
Once on campus as a player, the 6-foot-8 and 245-pound Morse fit in seamlessly.
 
"My brother had coached me in high school and we were running a lot of the same things that he had learned at Metro," Morse said. "So the concepts came naturally to me, and I started from day one. But all four years, I was  never the best player on my team. I just kind of did my job. My freshman year my job was to rebound and make layups when I got the ball next to the hoop."
 
That year, the Roadrunners were 24-7 overall and won the RMAC Tournament Championship. The following year, they went 22-8. Then came a 25-7 season and a run to the Division II national quarterfinals. And finally, the 2012-13 season: 32-3 overall, 20-2 RMAC champions, RMAC Tournament champions, and a Division II national runner-up finish.
 
And maybe Morse isn't just being modest about being the fifth-best player in the 2012-13 starting lineup: both Brandon Jefferson and Mitch McCarron would go on to be Division II national players of the year, Nick Kay won a bronze medal as a key player for Australia in the 2020 Olympics, and Demetrius Miller played for Team USA's 3x3 World Championship team.
 
Obviously, with talent like that in the program, multiple magic moments stand out.
 
Morse tried to identify the biggest ones: "Winning the RMAC (Tournament) championship my freshman year, coming back from (19) down (with 15 minutes to play). Finally busting through to get to the Elite Eight my junior year, beating (Colorado School of Mines) on their floor in the regional championship when they were No. 1 in the country and cutting down the nets there. Winning the last handful of games at home during the RMAC Tournament – where B.J. hit the game-winner – and the regional my senior year.
 
"There's so many."
 
Morse, who broke a femur as a youngster and played throughout his MSU Denver career with a crooked leg that got worse over time, stayed on as an assistant coach for two more highly-successful seasons while undergoing two surgeries to straighten the leg.
 
After re-teaching himself how to play basketball with a straight leg, he then played two seasons overseas – one in Portugal and one in Australia – as a professional.
 
All the time spent rehabilitating his leg, both before and after his surgeries, led him down his current path to being a stretch therapist with a Denver firm. He's done some work with both MSU Denver's men's and women's basketball teams, and you'll see him from time to time checking out the Roadrunners in action.
 
He's not starting chants or banging on chairs though.
 
"I just kind of hide in shadows," he said.
 
Maybe like his playing career?
 
"Our goal was just to do whatever it took to win," Morse said. "We had a bunch of guys who could score 20 or 30 on any night. They made the job I did very easy – they could all score, and if they missed a shot, I just had a knack for getting offensive rebounds."