Hank Cornley can remember coming home and seeing a piece of furniture misplaced or flipped over.

With his father out at work or running errands, Jamelle, Hank's son, would be working on an alter-ego behind closed doors.

Be it with a bandana, tie or cloth draped around his head, the future Penn State men's basketball captain would mold into Jamelletello -- "the fifth Ninja Turtle" -- and mimic his childhood heroes in the living room.

"He always thought he could do karate," Hank laughed. "He thought he was an expert, but he ain't never took a class in his life."

The attempted combat skills of the promising forward often led to a familiar exchange between Hank and Jamelle.

"How'd that happen?"

"Uh, I kind of kicked it or something."

"We know exactly how it happened."

But Hank can't help but look back and smile at the antics of his young son.

"At first you're mad as a parent, but then you have to laugh at it," he said. "Just being a kid."

But being a kid wasn't always easy for the larger-than-life figure growing up in Columbus, Ohio. In fact, those self-serving martial arts sessions may have been Jamelle's only chance to act his age.

Until now.

After years of touring the AAU circuits with older teammates, of being overlooked in his hometown, of bearing the weight of an up-and-coming basketball program on his broad shoulders as a developed freshman, Jamelle Cornley is finally at home in the role of veteran, senior leader on an untried roster ripe with postseason potential.

"I really sit back sometimes, I just think to myself, 'What do I really want? What do I wanna get outta my college career in general?' " Cornley said. "I wanna be known for somebody who was just relentless in everything that I do.

"In every facet of my life, I wanna just be relentless."

Not bad for someone few would even need to hear speak, what with Cornley's Herculean stature and bruising style of play, to verify the mission of a player that leaves opposing players and even coaches at a loss.

"If you ever have a chance to ask him who recruited him as hard as anyone else outta high school, he will tell you Butler University," former Butler and current Iowa coach Todd Lickliter said following his team's 63-59 loss to Penn State Jan. 24. "Oh, how I wish he had gone there. Now we have to face him all the time."

While Butler was the first to offer the ignored star a scholarship, memories of the high school recruiting trail does little but evoke sour feelings for Ohio's 2005 Mr. Basketball. Partly because the scarlet-and-gray squad in his backyard showed little interest in a 6-foot-5 power forward despite a dominance on every level that couldn't have screamed for attention any louder.

But Cornley persisted. Interest came from schools such as Michigan, Nebraska and even Florida, he said, but like Ohio State, all were hesitant to pull the trigger on a so-called "tweener."

Dayton, St. Bonaventure and Penn State were always in his corner, and ultimately he came to the harsh reality that better offers weren't on the horizon.

"I wanted him to go away from home, to go somewhere that was close enough but far enough that he could become his own person, do his own thing and get his own identity," Dorcella Smith, Cornley's mother, said. "So it was the best thing that could have ever happened."

However, that didn't ease the pain of being the forgotten man in the Buckeye State.

"Now being overlooked, that's a different story," Cornley said. "To put in as much work and as much time and effort as I did in the city of Columbus and not to even receive the offer at the time, that was a slap in the face."

If that wasn't enough, the challenges of establishing anything other than football in pigskin-crazed Happy Valley certainly presented themselves from the get-go.

The 240-pound frame even sparked hope among the fans whose primary team was coming off back-to-back losing seasons.

Whether by professors or students, fans or alumni, Cornley was always stopped and mistaken for a football player -- a road he might have traveled if not for a strained groin suffered in the only two games he ever played on the gridiron at Brookhaven High School.

"It got to the point where I was getting pretty frustrated because I wanted to have my own identity," he said. "It was tough at first."

Basketball was his first love, however, something his father didn't want to jeopardize after seeing his own football career cut short to injury at Mifflin High School.

But with two football-playing siblings to go with his father, Cornley said he would be lying if the prospect of lighting up the 100,000-plus at Beaver Stadium each Saturday with a body-bruising sack or game-changing interception doesn't cross his mind from time to time.

"Lord knows I could have maybe gotten hurt on the football field -- I've gotten hurt on the basketball court, as well -- but anything could have happened," he said. "So I really wish I would have given it a try. But again, I'm here now and I'm dedicated to one sport."

That dedication has often been tested, from a costly late-game turnover as a freshman in a 2006 loss to Iowa that had him beating himself up to being thrust into the leadership role after team-leading scorer Geary Claxton went down with a torn anterior cruciate ligament last January.

Anchoring a team with seven freshmen last season, Cornley felt the burden of carrying a group of newcomers while nursing a bad knee that he now says kept him at 75 percent just a year ago.

Now, at full health and fully-charged, the hungry senior is looking to deliver on the promises he made to himself when he first stepped foot in the Bryce Jordan Center more than three years ago.

One of those goals was achieved Feb. 8 when, for the first time in Cornley's career, the black curtains covering the empty upper-deck seats in the BJC were removed to make room for a packed house against Wisconsin.

The other goal, to make the NCAA tournament, remains in his foresight.

But with the Nittany Lions right in the thick of things amidst a rugged Big Ten, Cornley knows it will take a team-wide effort down the stretch to fulfill that dream.

And when the going gets tough, Cornley will look inside himself, remember what the late Bruce Howard always told him, and whisper his coach's words to himself.

"He always told me to make sure that every time that I was on the court to leave a legacy," Cornley said of his high school coach who succumbed to a liver disease just a week before Cornley's 16th birthday. "So when I get in crunch time situations, I always lip to myself, 'Leave a legacy, leave a legacy.' "

A legacy seemingly destined for success since he was an infant, when his mother would be questioned on her son's age by flight attendants and basketball coaches alike.

"Flying at 2, you didn't have to have a ticket," Smith quipped. "I'd have to whip out a birth certificate. Same way on AAU teams. They would always question his age because if he played on a team that was really his age, his skills were just more advanced and people always thought we were cheating.

"Til this day I carry a birth certificate."

Cornley was often forced to play on older teams because of his size and skills, forcing him to step up his maturity and sometimes losing chances of just being a kid.

"I never wanted him to miss out on being 8 years old because he hung around 11 year olds, to miss out on being a 12 year-old because he hung out with 15 year olds," Smith said.

Perhaps that accounted for the random "Ninja Turtle" escapades when out of sight.

Yet as the season progresses and the Lions inch closer and closer to a potential tournament berth, missing paperwork or nunchucks can't hide No. 2.

The football remarks have died down, for the most part, and the true identification is being forged each game night at the BJC, where the undersized forward continues to prove his doubters wrong by bumping and bucking his way to a 14.4 point per game average -- good for eighth in the conference as of Feb. 25 -- after getting up close and personal with the growing number of fans in this turnaround year for the program.

The relationship between Cornley and his fans is ostensible, and the captain shows no qualms about his gratitude.

"To be able to see people actually sitting in those seats that took the time out to actually come and see us perform, that's something you really can't express in words how much it really means to you," he said. "That's why I just go over and I shake as many hands as possible. I tell them 'Thank you for coming every single game,' and I'm gonna continue to do so with the [final] games I have here at home."

And while time will only tell what the fate of this group of Lions holds, Cornley has certainly left an indelible mark -- on the court and off -- for a program unfamiliar with the spotlight.

As he takes the team into this newfound territory, as the backseat of a proud athletic program emerges from the shadows of a stagnant giant, one is left to wonder how he could have forecasted this change. A seismic shift in culture and relevance at a time this breed of people is normally counting down to spring practices and trips to the Creamery.

"I might as well just give every single thing, every single ounce of energy, and make sure that those around me exert the same amount of energy that I do," Cornley said. "Because if they were in the same position that I was in, I would give them my heart, so that's what I expect."