DENVER – How good was the MSU Denver men's basketball program in the early 2000s?
 
So good that a future Division II National Player of the Year, Mark Worthington, spent his first two seasons coming off the bench.
 
"Mark had to wait for his time," former MSU Denver coach Mike Dunlap said. "We had a very talented team and he had to pay his dues.
 
"He evolved to National Player of the Year, and that's something that's hard to do. When he came over, we had a lot of culture and tradition by that time, and he just continued it."
 
Indeed, Worthington also put in the work to make him one of the best basketball players in the country. He developed into a player who would go on to play for the Australian National Team at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics, as well as at the FIBA World Championships in 2006 and 2010. He played professionally from 1999 through 2017, primarily in Australia, and even came out of retirement to play again in 2023.
 
Already a member of the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference's Hall of Fame, Worthington will finally be inducted into the MSU Denver Athletics Hall of Fame on April 20, along with other Australian-turned-MSU Denver stars Mitch McCarron and Luke Kendall, former Roadrunners assistant and head coach Derrick Clark, and the 2010-11 MSU Denver women's basketball team that won a regional championship.
 
The ceremony will take place at the Tivoli Turnhalle on the MSU Denver campus. Tickets are $50 for adults and $25 for kids 12 and under. The evening starts with a 6 p.m. social, followed by dinner at 7 p.m.
 
Kendall, who arrived at MSU Denver from Australia a year before Worthington, has been close with Worthington since the two established their connection as Roadrunners.
 
"When he came in, obviously that Aussie connection helped," Kendall said. "We'd look after each other. It can be quite daunting, but he was mentally strong.
 
"He got physically stronger, too, and I was amazed at his basketball IQ. From day one, he was in the right spots – he picked up the system really quickly. He worked with players, set screens, had great timing on rebounding … all those little things, the old-man skills that you develop over time, he had them quite early. It was an easy connection with us because I had the ball a lot of the time, and he'd either get me open or vice-versa."
 
The 6-9 Worthington proved he could play all over the floor, but it took time.
 
He averaged 3.6 points per game as a freshman for the 2001-02 national championship team, then scored 7.0 the following season and 11.7 per game the next. As a senior in 2004-05, he averaged 19.8 points and 6.2 rebounds.
 
"He could play the 1, and he could play the 5," Dunlap said. "Any position. Wherever our need was, that's where we played him. He was easy to coach because he was a great teammate and wanted us to win. We moved him around. He was the biggest wing in the country. He gave us the luxury of making us look like we knew what we were doing."
 
Worthington, named to the 12-player RMAC All-Century team in 2009, was an All-America first team selection by the National Association of Basketball Coaches in 2005, when he was also the RMAC Player of the Year and was named the most valuable player of both the regional and RMAC Tournaments.
 
He finished his career ranked fifth in program history with 1,413 career points (he's now 11^th), and his 654 points in the 2004-05 season were at the time the second-most in program history. He made a then-program record 196 free throws in the 2004-05 season.
 
Worthington played for teams that were a combined 118-18, including 67-9 in regular-season RMAC play. The Roadrunners advanced to the national quarterfinals three times with Worthington by winning regional titles, won two regular-season RMAC championships (including a 19-0 season in 2003-04) and won three RMAC Tournament title teams.
 
"He ended up being a tremendous leader because of his likability," Clark said. "It was fun to watch him develop from Year One to Year Four – kind of a poster child for the process. Every year he got a little bit better. He got into the weight room and started getting serious about changing his body. He put in a lot of work. It's unusual to have a guy 6-9 with the skills that he had. He could carry the ball, shoot it … didn't have a lot of holes in his game."
 
Said Dunlap: "What stands out is that he had the trappings of a winner. If you asked him to do something, he knew exactly what to do. He was a good model for our younger players. He knew what a good leader was by the time he was a senior, and our opponents around the country could see that he was very special."