Anybody who has ever seen Tyrekus "A.J." Bowman play basketball would not be surprised to know the Augusta State junior possesses a playfully flamboyant personality.

When asked why he didn't heed the siren call of football at Washington-Wilkes, the Tignall native quickly responds, "I'm too cute to be wearing a helmet."

When asked how the Jaguars might respond to a potential NCAA Division II tournament bid, the front-runner for player-of-the-year honors in the Peach Belt Conference refused to deal with hypotheticals.

"You can quote me on this: We're getting in," Bowman said of the 21st-ranked Jags. "There's no assuming on that. You can put that in any newspaper you can. Augusta State will be in the NCAA Tournament."

Confidence doesn't seem to be in short supply for the junior forward considered the most exciting player to ever don a Jaguars uniform. His slam-dunk artistry has dazzled fans since high school and drawn comparisons to Hall of Famer Dominique Wilkins as being Augusta State's version of the "human highlight reel."

What might surprise everyone is that the player averaging 20 points per game and leading the Jaguars on a 10-game winning streak didn't believe he was cut out for Augusta State. The Bowman who electrifies the crowds with his above-the-rim style is the same player who walked into Dip Metress' office as a freshman and told his coach, "I don't think I'm good enough to play here."

Bowman - 6-foot-5 and skinny - was getting pushed around in practice. His knees and ankles suffered under the strain of his high-flying style. His confidence suffered with it.

"He was having a hard freshman year," said Melissa Bowman, his mother.

It reached the point where Bowman called home one Sunday morning before his mother left for church and told her he planned to turn in his uniform.

No way, she said, and pointed him to look in the book she sent him off to school with for guidance.

"He was real down and said, 'Mom, I can't take it,'" Melissa Bowman said. "I asked him, 'Where's your Bible?'"

While she went to church praying for him, he read his Bible and called back an hour later with a message.

"Mom, I ain't no quitter," he said.

"And that was the last of that," his mother said. "I don't know what scriptures he read, but that's what happened. It seems like after that everything just blossomed."

Bowman has blossomed into an indispensable leader for Augusta State. He started the last nine games of his injury-hampered freshman season, averaging 5.9 points on the year. He started all but seven games as a sophomore, leading the Jaguars with 12.9 points per game.

Now a junior, he leads Augusta State in points (19.9 per game), rebounds (8.1) and steals (43 total). He stretched his game by adding the 3-pointer option to his inside arsenal. He took summer classes to stay on track to graduate on time in business marketing. And he has avoided what he and his coach call "A.J. days," when his focus wanders off the basketball court.

In short, he's become the impact player Metress believed so strongly in that he drove to meet him on his way to accepting the Augusta State head coaching job three years ago.

"He had a really nice touch, and I thought this guy could be a special player," said Metress, who had been dazzled by Bowman's skills at the same high school all-star game in Christenberry Fieldhouse in which he won the dunk competition.

On the way to his introductory news conference, Metress veered through Washington to have his first conversation with Bowman.

"You don't know me, but at 2 o'clock I'm going to be named Augusta State's new coach," Metress told him. "And I want you to be the first guy I sign."

The gesture made an impression on Bowman.

"Prior to that moment, I hadn't had a head coach come talk to me directly," he said. "So that was a big moment for me."

Not that Division II Augusta State was where Bowman's mother wanted him to be. She initially preferred he take one of the Division I offers from Winthrop, Nichols State or Radford.

"A lot of people had told me he was a player who could change a team," his mother said.

But Bowman opted for the proximity of Augusta State.

"Sometimes people get caught up in Roman numerals and say he should be a Division I player," Metress said. "He might be now, but he wasn't when he came out of high school."

Bowman plays the game in leaps and bounds, which is exactly how his talent has grown. He got cut from the Washington-Wilkes team as a freshman, but he grew 6 inches the next year and made the varsity squad. His dunking skills had already been honed for years on lower rims.

"Honestly, it came out of nowhere and one day I realized I could do some things I couldn't do the day before," he said. "So I just took it and ran with it."

Bowman's Washington-Wilkes teams won consecutive region titles and were the team to see even in a town that loves its football.

"You wouldn't believe the crowds we had when Tyrekus was here," said Don Keiser, his high school coach. "He put on a show. They were throwing passes from half-court and he'd go up and get them and dunk them. Everywhere we went, home or away, was just packed."

Augusta State is finally starting to generate some buzz around this team, and Bowman is a big reason, along with 7-foot sophomore center Garret Siler of Richmond Academy.

The Jaguars (18-3, 10-0) put their longest winning streak in nearly 30 years and perfect conference record on the line Wednesday night in a heavyweight showdown with sixth-ranked Clayton State (19-2, 8-2).

"It's kind of sad that it took us to start winning for people to start noticing us," Bowman said. "Now that we do have some fan support, it's a great feeling to know that night in and night out we're going to have some people cheering for us and not just there because we were giving away a car."

People come to see Bowman's flamboyant style, which might spontaneously generate something worthy of an ESPN play of the day. As a general rule, however, coaches don't put together highlight reels for players to watch all the things they do right.

"This is my third season, and I've seen a lot of highlight tapes, and haven't seen one highlight yet," Bowman said.

He and Augusta State are still working on them. Bowman guarantees a postseason berth this season, and next year's team has the potential to be even better.

Whether the future takes him to a pro career at some level or to a job in the advertising sector, Bowman is satisfied with where he's heading.

"Once I finish up school, if I can have a chance to play basketball beyond that point - great," he said. "If not, I will always have these memories and hopefully some rings to show for it."