Finally Injury free, Westry Shining For UAB

By Steve Irvine

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - February 27, 2026

The ease with which Chance Westry often does things on the basketball court certainly doesn’t match his path through college basketball.

Truth is, the UAB guard, is getting a chance to do things this season that his body didn’t allow him to do in his first three seasons in college basketball. There were knee injuries in back-to-back years that limited him to 11 games as a true freshman at Auburn and ended his first season at Syracuse before it started. Then, there was an illness that kept him out nearly the entire season in second year at Syracuse. And none of those things hit him as harder than the death of his mother not long before he moved to Auburn.

“He loves going to church, man,” Ersell Westry said of his son. “His belief has been strong. His mom's from Georgia. She passed a couple of years ago. The kid has been through a lot of adversity, man. And sometimes, you know, you want to say, ‘God, why is he going through these things?’ You know, it's only to make him better, man. God puts you through things and puts you through different things. He puts you in different situations. I don't know if it’s to test your faith or to get you through it. But you got to go through some things. You got to do it something to get where you need to be faithful, I guess.”

His perseverance through college basketball is finally paying off in his first season at UAB. The 6-foot-6, 205-pound Harrisburg, Pa. native leads the Blazers in points per game (15.3), minutes played (30.1 pg) and assists (4.9 pg) and leads the American Conference in assist-to-turnover ratio (plus-2.6). He gets to the free throw line more than any of his teammates and has made 114 of his 162 free throw attempts. He is also tied for team lead with 39 steals.

There have been spectacular moments. Last week, he combined for 47 points, 14 assists, six steal and six rebounds, while shooting 14-for-23 overall from the field, 3-for-6 on 3-pointers and 16-for-20 from the free throw line, in road wins at Temple and Memphis. He was chosen as the American Conference Player of the Week and earned the USBWA National Player of the Week award. Westry scored in double figures in the first six games of the season, topping 20 points in four of them, and had a season-high 31 points, which included 12-for-15 shooting from the field, in a victory over Cleveland State just before the Blazers opened conference play.

“I just see a lot more,” UAB head coach Andy Kennedy said after the Cleveland State game. “He's a talented kid, and I need him to be locked in on both ends of the floor. There are times that he'll just take plays off that I see that just drive me crazy. My job is to push him to a level he can't push himself, and so I'm going to try my best to do my job.”

There have certainly been times during the season that Westry looks like he’s still trying to figure out college basketball. One of those came in a recent home loss to Tulane when Westry was 3-of-10 from the field with misses on all six of his 3-point attempts in the one-point setback to the Green Wave. Afterward, Kennedy said Westry’s Superman cape must have been “at the laundry.”

The meaning of that statement was that Westry must be at its best for UAB to have success. For the most part, even though he’s still relatively inexperienced in on-the-floor minutes in college basketball, that has been the case.

“Chance Westry has had an incredible year,” Kennedy said on his postgame appearance on Blazer Sports Network from Learfield following the win over Memphis on Sunday.  “I think he’s one of the most underrated players in college basketball when you think about a kid who has not played (much prior to this season). He played a little bit as a freshman at Auburn, then barely played at all at Syracuse for two years. For him to be able to come and have the durability to get through the season - knock on wood - then to be able to shoulder the load of the responsibility that we give him, he's had a tremendous year.”

Honestly, this is what was expected from him all along following a high school basketball career that carried him from Pennsylvania to California to Arizona. His junior season was spent at Sierra Canyon School, where he averaged 14.2 points while playing with Lebron James and other NBA players watching from courtside.

“Going across the country without my family was a big learning curve for me,” Westry said. “Learning how to manage myself, stay down and work even when they're not around. Just doing things right. It was just like, dang, I’m out in LA, a new place. Not every kid manages to see that, going to Sierra Canyon with all that comes with it, seeing the Lakers and being friends with celebrities and stuff like that. Adjusting to that was a big shock coming from where I’m coming from.”

What Westry didn’t face at any of his high school stops was injury. Obviously, he expected the same when Westry, a four-star recruit, chose Auburn over a list of offers that included schools throughout the country. That didn’t happen but Westry said he wouldn’t change the journey, even though it was far from easy.

“I felt like everything was just a learning curve,” Westry said. “I mean, the injuries taught me to be responsible for the work to get back after being hurt. I feel like the injuries made me who I am today.”

He is on his way to finishing his first healthy season as a college basketball player. The Blazers have three games remaining on the regular season schedule, beginning with an American Conference game against North Texas on Sunday at 11 a.m. at Bartow Arena. If UAB wins out, the Blazers will finish in the top four in the conference standings, which would give them at least a spot in the quarterfinals of the American Conference Tournament and the BJCC and possibly the semifinals.

Kennedy sees a connection to the first season at UAB for Westry and former Blazer Yaxel Lendeborg.

“Honestly, I think that if you look back at it, Chance's first year is very reminiscent of Yax’s first year,” Kennedy said on his postgame radio appearance after the Memphis game. “Yax had never played Division I basketball, and he was trying to find his way. And then once the light came on, he just had a tremendous finish to his first year. I hope Chance can do the same thing. Yax led us to the AAC Championship in Fort Worth and then the rest is history.”