Essex County, New Jersey is a 130 square miles of land just west of New York City. Roughly 800,000 people reside there, in the cities of Newark, Montclair, Bloomfield, and Livingston. Essex also plays host to arguably the best high school basketball teams in the country.

Kyrie Irving, J.R. Smith, Lance Thomas, Randy Floyd and Tyler Ennis are a handful of names on a very long list of NBA stars that the county has produced.

Men's basketball guard, Dallas Anglin also hails from Essex County, but his playing days didn't begin there.

Perhaps it was foreshadowing for his collegiate career, but Anglin has taken the road well-traveled to get to Northern Colorado.

Anglin always had a knack for basketball, but how could he not? It's in his DNA.

His father, Kyle Anglin, was a Division I standout in basketball at Saint Bonaventure, his grandfather, Roosevelt Brown, is in the NFL Hall of Fame, and his uncle Mark Tyree, is in the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame.

Anglin's passion for sports was instant, something he believed he was meant to do.

"I played a lot of sports growing up, football, baseball, soccer, lacrosse, basketball, chess – my parents would put me in anything just to let me try it out," said Anglin. "Honestly, I was better at football, but when I was younger I broke my arm playing it and after that I just wasn't with it anymore. I had been playing basketball since I was three, and that was my first love, so I talked to my parents and decided that was the route I was going to take."

The decision was the correct one.

Anglin began his high school career at St. Peter's which was in Jersey City, New Jersey, over an hour away from his home in Montclair.

During his freshman season, he led St. Peter's to a league championship, but after two years at the Prep School, the constant travel started to take its toll on Anglin.

"I used to wake up at 4:30 a.m. every morning to catch a bus, a train and then walk, just to get to school," Anglin explained. "I'd go throughout my day and then have practice after school, so I wasn't getting home until 11:00 p.m. at night. When I got home I'd have homework and stuff, and then have to wake up and do it all over again, and that really started to wear on me as a 14 and 15 year old."

Anglin and his parents made the decision to transfer schools to Seton Hall Prep, just 10 minutes away from his house.

The decision was yet again the correct one.

Anglin flourished at SHP, leading the Pirates to back-to-back Essex County titles. He averaged 17.2 points a game as a junior and 19.0 points as a senior, taking SHP to the New Jersey state title. He was named Essex County Player of the Year and earned Second Team All-State honors.

College coaches across the east coast took notice of Anglin, and the other 24 players that signed to play Division I ball out of Essex that year.

He eventually decided on Hofstra University and was off to Long Island, New York.

Anglin was only at Hofstra for a few months before a series of unfortunate events unfolded and he was released from the team.

Determined to get back in to Division I hoops, Anglin signed to play at the highly touted junior college, College of Southern Idaho.

From New York City to Twin Falls, Idaho, the school opened Anglin's eyes to a whole new culture.

"A lot of people say, 'Oh that must have been boring,' but I kind of like boring," Anglin said about the move west. "I saw that movie, 'Napoleon Dynamite' and they said that was filmed there, so at first I wasn't too thrilled to go out there, but Twin Falls was nice and had everything you needed. It also helped me focus on the right things and lock in on my goals of getting back to Division I ball."

Academics also played a major factor into Anglin's move to Idaho.

"If you have ever met my mom she doesn't play when it comes to academics and my schooling," he said. "If I'm slipping in the classroom she gets pretty upset, so when CSI guaranteed my academics and guaranteed that I would graduate on time, that's all that mattered."

As he had done everywhere, Anglin continued to dominate on the hardwood. In just one season, he helped the Golden Eagles to a 27-5 overall record and a berth in the Region 18 championship game, averaging 13.4 points, 3.9 assists, 3.0 rebounds and 1.1 steals along the way.

That's when men's basketball head coach B.J. Hill took notice of Anglin's skill set.

"He reminded me a lot of Tevin [Svihovec], in the sense that he's really athletic and kind of a combo guard like Tevin was. He's not as big, but maybe a little more vertical of an athlete," Hill said. "He's very explosive and brings a lot of the same things to the table in his ability to draw second defenders off the bounce and knock down jump shots."

After narrowing it down to two schools, Northern Colorado and Southern Miss., Anglin's current coach at CSI, Jeremy Cox took an assistant position with the Golden Eagles under head coach Doc Sadler and he elected to follow Cox to Mississippi.

Southern Miss. was school number three for the then sophomore, but as soon as he arrived, Anglin knew it wasn't for him.

"The south wasn't really for me. I'm an up north guy and it really didn't have anything to do with the school, I loved the school, but just going home every day I wasn't happy," he explained. "I called my dad and he asked what I would do if I could do it all over, and I told him I'd go to Northern Colorado."

So Anglin called up Coach Hill and asked if he had a spot open at UNC.

"He just felt like he made a mistake and the situation wasn't right for him and wanted to know if we were still open to taking him," Hill said. "Because it was the middle of the year we didn't have a scholarship to give, so he had to make quite a sacrifice and pay for a full semester of school, which I think showed how much he wanted to be here."

Anglin arrived in December of 2014 and jumped into practice, bringing a new level of energy and leadership to the team.

"We were really happy to have him. He's a really good player and he's talented," Hill said of his new guard. "Players are drawn to him – I think it's a little bit deceiving in the fact that he's a junior, but he doesn't have a whole lot of playing time under his belt. He's been in programs, but he doesn't have a lot of game experience, so right now I think he's learning a lot, just like our other new faces."

Due to NCAA rules, Anglin was forced to sit out an entire year, and won't be eligible until the Bears home game against in-state rival, Colorado State on Dec. 13.

He'll also be wearing #55 this season, a number made famous by former men's player Mike Higgins. Higgins is the only Bear to ever play in the NBA and holds nearly every scoring record in the program.

"I kind of felt a little pressure about it from throughout the community," Anglin said. "People were asking who was wearing it, but Coach Hill spoke to him [Higgins] and he is going to let me to wear it. I haven't talked to him yet, but I look forward to showing him some love and thanking him for allowing me to wear the number."

Anglin is now on school number four, but has reached the end of his basketball journey.

"I'm not going anywhere," he said, "This is it for me."

Again, this decision is the correct one.