Latonia Morris stood among the masses of Iowa State fans at the Sprint Center in Kansas City on March 12, 2015.

On the court, Monté Morris and his Cyclone teammates were warming up after emerging from the tunnel, fresh off a disappointing first half.

Down 36-25 in the first round of the Big 12 tournament and facing the Texas Longhorns, Iowa State needed a spark.

Latonia and her son locked eyes. She lifted her hand, raised a finger and moved it in a circle.

To Monté, the signal was loud and clear.

“We’ve been doing that forever, since he’s been playing,” Latonia said. “We’ve always had our little signals.”

Latonia knows Monté’s game. She knows when he’s in the zone. She knows when he needs to be more aggressive. She knows when he’s passing too much.

So, she signaled.

“She just said turn it up a little bit more,” Monté said. “That’s not even scoring the ball; that’s defensively, whatever to get my team going and give them that boost. I was able to feed off my mom’s signal and get the job done.”

Monté, who said he plays better when his mom is at his games, went on to score 24 points, saving his best for last. With five seconds remaining in the game and the teams tied at 67, he dribbled the inbounds pass the length of the court.

He drove toward the right side of the court and pulled up on the wing, near the Cyclones bench. He elevated for a mid-range jumper.

The buzzer sounded. The scoreboard clicked. Iowa State 69, Texas 67.

“It was actually surreal a little bit,” Latonia said. “I saw him hit big shots before, just never on the D-1 level. That was his first game-winning shot.”

Fans rushed toward Latonia to congratulate her. Monté turned and celebrated with teammates in front of the Iowa State bench. Later on, as Latonia was leaving the Sprint Center, fans chanted, “MONTÉ! MONTÉ! MONTÉ!”

The emotions overwhelmed her. The tears flowed.

“Every time somebody said ‘congratulations’ to me, tears would pour out of my eyes, because I knew it was a big moment for him, too,” Latonia said.

*****

Monté Morris was smitten by basketball from an early age. Latonia, who scored more than 1,000 points in her high school career, took Monté along to her basketball practices when she became a coach.

Monté absorbed everything. He spent hours playing basketball, even if there was no opponent.

“He would always play basketball in the bedroom on a little rim, and I mean really play,” Latonia said. “He would play for the national championship.”

The national anthem was played, and then it was game time.

Monté and his imaginary teammates took the court against an imaginary opponent. He would duke it out in his room, putting a little Nerf basketball through a hung-up hoop.

After a hard-fought first half, Monté would emerge from his room and enter the kitchen, which acted as a locker room, for halftime.

“Momma, I got 20 points,” Monté would tell Latonia. “The last possession was crazy.”

“You do?” Latonia asked.

“Yeah. It’s halftime,” Monté would say, as he walked to the fridge and grabbed some Kool-Aid. Then it was back to his room, where the second half was about to get under way.

“I would just laugh, because I’m like, ‘He really loves basketball,’” Latonia said. “He always has.”

Eventually, Monté’s imaginary games gave way to real ones. That’s when Latonia got a glimpse of his talent. As a fourth-grader, Monté played against sixth-graders.

Morris didn’t just fit in with the older players. He stood out. He saw the court better than most of them. He made passes that a fourth-grader should not have been able to make.

“I mean, it was ridiculous,” Latonia said. “The way he was threading that ball through the defense — I was like, ‘This little boy could play.’”

*****

As Monté progressed to high school in Flint, Mich., Latonia continued to mentor him, just as she had throughout middle school.

Besides signaling during games, Latonia would talk to Monté post-game about what went right, what went wrong and what he could do better in the future. She wore the mom hat and also a coach hat.

“I love it,” Monté said. “It gives me another perspective on life, another perspective on basketball.

“She gives it to me straight.”

That means the good and the bad.

Monté and his Flint Beecher team squared off against cross-town rival Flint Northwestern at the Coca-Cola Classic his sophomore year. It was the biggest game around. Monté estimated 2,000 to 3,000 people were in attendance.

Monté woke up with a stomach virus. He wasn’t supposed to play but refused to sit out.

He didn’t play well, though. Cyclone fans have come to know Morris as an ultra-safe ballhandler, after his record-setting 4.79 assist-to-turnover ratio his freshman season and best-in-the nation 4.63 assist-to-turnover ration last year, but on this night Monté struggled.

He racked up nine turnovers and had 10 points before fouling out. His team lost.

Monté and Latonia got into the car after the game. They didn’t say a word to each other. After a stop at the corner store, Latonia spoke.

“She let me have it,” Monté said with a laugh, although he certainly wasn’t laughing at the time.

Latonia also remembers that night. She said Monté didn’t properly prepare for the game, so she let him know it. The next day, though, it was over.

“We have a thing, whether I play good or bad. After the night, when it hits 12 o’clock, we cancel out that game and move on to the next one,” Monté said. “We don’t talk about it anymore.”

Monté likes having his mom tell it like it is. He said the straightforward input has made him a better player and a better person.

“She never gave me what I wanted to hear; she always gave me what I needed to hear,” Monté said. “She never sugarcoated nothing. A lot of kids get sugarcoated, get pushed through. She never pushed me through. She made me dig a hole and find my way out. I learned from that, and now I’m here today.”

Monté found plenty of success during high school.

As a freshman, he guaranteed his mom a state championship. As a junior, he delivered on that promise and dedicated the title to his mom.

As a senior, he won a second state championship. The Flint Beecher star went on to be named Mr. Basketball for the state of Michigan.

On his birthday, June 27, Monté signed his official letter of intent to play college basketball at Iowa State. His mother was right by his side.

“That’s the day she gave birth to me,” Monté said. “So for her to have me that day when she could hold me in her hand to now it’s the day where I am taking my talents to the next level … the timing of everything was just crazy.

“I won’t ever forget that day.”

Monté had pushed the right buttons for his mother.

“It was his special day, but he wanted to share his special day with me, so that made me emotional,” Latonia said. “He knows how to get me crying.”

*****

More than a year later, Latonia watched Monté jog out of the tunnel at Hilton Coliseum for the first time.

Monté looked up and found his mom during warm-ups.

“I seen it in her eyes when I ran out,” Monté said. “I was looking up there during warm-ups. She got emotional, you know? It’s a big step in life. A lot of kids from my hometown don’t experience that.”

It was more than basketball for Latonia. It was a sense of accomplishment. Her baby was playing Division I basketball.More than that, he was in college.

“A lot of people don’t understand that you have to be a student-athlete,” Latonia said. “In order for him to lace up the gym shoes, he had to be able to be productive in the classroom, so I just looked at him like, ‘Wow, he really did it.’ He got to where he wanted to go.”

Monté has long since settled in at college, but that doesn’t mean he gets a free pass from his mother. They still talk after every game, and she still critiques his play when she thinks she needs to.

“He knows that if he has a bad game,” Latonia said, “I’ll cut into him a little bit.”

During a tournament in Hawaii during Monté’s freshman season, Latonia didn’t like his body language as he sat on the bench. After the game, she called him.

“I told him to get it together,” Latonia said. “I told him to figure out what he needed to do to get out on the court. And he did.”

It’s not all about focusing on areas to improve, though. After a heart-breaking, season-ending loss to the University of Alabama-Birmingham last season, Latonia knew she had to take a different approach.

Usually, Monté calls his mom after a game; not after the UAB loss. So Latonia called Monté instead. She knew he would be in a bad mood, so she carefully considered her tone.

“I needed to find the correct words to talk to him after that loss,” Latonia said. “I just told him to use it for motivation next year and that you can never underestimate anybody on the court.”

*****

After being coached by Fred Hoiberg for the first two years of his collegiate career, Monté now takes direction from first-year ISU coach Steve Prohm.

Prohm has developed a reputation as a point guard’s coach because of his success with Cameron Payne and Isaiah Canaan, former Murray State point guards who ended up in the NBA.

Monté, who has already developed into one of the nation’s best point guards, is expected to be third in that line.

“They’re all different, but what Monté is — just like those guys — he’s great in the moment,” Prohm said. “When the moment is big and the stage is bright, he delivers.

“He is a winner. Those kids from Flint are tough.”

*****

Monté is tough. He grew up in Flint, Mich., and he did it without a father. It was Monté and Latonia, and that had to be enough. Latonia and Monte’s father had broken up while Latonia was still in college, before Monté was even born.

Monté said it wasn’t always easy to see his friends with their fathers when he was younger, but he bears no ill will toward his father, who has since died. Monté said he thinks he died of a heart attack, but Latonia said she is unsure of the cause.

“I don’t trip about it no more,” Monté said. “It’s not really on my mind. Even when I see his relatives — his brothers, his sisters — I treat them like family. There’s no hard feelings. I know it’s life and things happen. I just take the good with the good and try to keep the bad out of my way. I don’t take it as bad or nothing.

“It’s a learning experience for me as a person, just so, whenever I’m in that position to raise my kid, whenever that may be, [I’ll] just try to be in my kid’s life no matter the situation, even if it’s rough.”

Perhaps it’s part of the reason why Monté and his mother are as close as they are.

Latonia took him to games, she taught him basketball, she taught him to ride a bike, and she took care of the yard work.

She made sure Monté had money in his pocket, clothes on his back and a roof over his head. She provided for the family. She cooked. She cleaned. She did everything. As Monté has grown older and realized everything his mother has done for him, he has grown increasingly appreciative.

“She showed me the way of life just in stuff that dads are supposed to do,” Monté said. “My mom always did father things with me.”

Monté said his mother has always been his biggest inspiration, both on and off the court.

“She’s everything,” Monté said. “She keeps me going. If my mom wasn’t here, I don’t think I would be able to play ball.”

It’s hard for Monté to condense their relationship into words.

“We’re like each other’s best friends,” Monte said. “She knows everything about me; I know everything about her.

“That bond we have will never be broken.”

Latonia also struggles to put 20 years of togetherness into words.

“He’s my only child,” Latonia said. “It’s just been me and him. It’s been me and Monté for so long. He’s my rock. When I need to talk, I’ll call him. When he needs to talk, he’ll call me. We understand each other. He is a son, … but he’s a friend. We have a very special relationship; we really do.”