Utah Utes basketball: U.'s Nevill starting to tower over opponents

It's not easy being 7-foot-2.

Utah center Luke Nevill has put up with it since he was in high school in Australia when for some reason he sprouted above the 7-foot mark, while his twin brother, Sam, leveled off at 6-7.

When you're 86 inches tall and most of the rest of the adult world stands between 60 and 75 inches, you have a tendency to get noticed wherever you are.

While Nevill will say it's an advantage "because you can see above everybody else," he admits he's always getting stares when he's in public, not to mention ridicule on the basketball court from fans at opposing arenas.

"You get noticed a lot because it's not normal to see someone 7-2 walking around," he says. "People stop and say, 'Wow you're tall, do you play basketball?"'

Nevill doesn't mind that so much as the insensitive sorts who blurt out things about his height when he's walking through an airport or somewhere as if he's deaf besides being really tall.

"It's the people that walk by and yell random remarks that I obviously can hear," he says. "Like 'wow, that guy's so tall.' I'm like, 'way to point out the obvious.' I don't go around yelling at people because they're short."

Just the other day after the UNLV game, Nevill stopped to sign autographs and a woman said to him, "Did anybody give you Miracle-Gro when you were growing up?"

All Nevill can do is smile and try to be as nice as he can. "I hear a lot of things like that," he said.

Because he is taller than everyone else, Nevill is always the guy opposing teams' fans like to get on the most.

"I get singled out, because they want to get in my head," he said.

At San Diego State, the students sitting near the bench chanted "Ne-vill, Ne-vill" every chance they'd get. At Utah State, students made disparaging remarks about Australia, his home country. The cadets behind the basket at the Air Force Academy would scream Nevill's name every time he touched the ball and often when he didn't.

Nevill tries to ignore the comments or take them in stride.

"I don't really listen to them," he said. "But sometimes you get the funny comments and I'll be chuckling about it, rather than mad about it."