Andrew Morgan’s Basketball Journey Has Farming at Its Center

Ever since he can remember, farming with his father has been Andrew Morgan’s dream.

The Morgan family farms corn and soybeans in rural southern Minnesota, sitting near “a triangle of towns,” Morgan said. Waseca and Waterville are the closest towns, but Morgan adds they’re still 10 miles away. That is where the Nebraska senior grew up, on farmland once owned by his grandfather. Morgan says his father, Keith, bought back the family’s farmland and equipment after his grandfather lost the farm in the mid-1980s farm crisis. 

“I grew up in the country, 100%,” Morgan said. “I was kind of away from the town life, never really knew what the town life really was. I was always out on the farm.”

The Supervisor

When Morgan was little, spent as much time as he could around the farm. So much so that he said his nickname was “The Supervisor” because, “I was always around everybody who was doing everything. I liked to see everything that was going on.”

He was kept away from grain bins and big equipment, but he would often hop on a little four-wheeler and see whatever he could. It was only natural, then, that “The Supervisor” added more and more responsibilities as he got older. His first job? Mowing lawns of the farm yards — the closest his dad would let him get to using heavy machinery. He also began riding shotgun in the tractor when people worked in the fields.

Riding in the passenger seat in tractors and combines gave Morgan on-the-job experience before he knew it — it wasn’t long before he was taught how to drive machinery. By 10 or 11, Morgan said, he already knew how to handle tractors. 

“I was driving tractors on the road well before I even had a car,” he said with a laugh.

Sports Enter the Picture

Basketball wasn’t at the top of Morgan’s mind as a kid — but the Minnesota Vikings were. A huge football fan and a  physical kid, Morgan joined the school football team in sixth grade. A tall kid (now 6 foot 10 inches, 242 pounds), Morgan was spotted by a member of the basketball association in Waseca — who encouraged him to go out for the sport. At the time, Morgan didn’t know much about basketball. 

He said he was a little scared when classmates were talking about Kevin Love, the former Minnesota Timberwolves star, getting a “triple-double” (a name for a player scoring at least 10 points, grabbing 10 rebounds, and 10 of another stat) — he didn’t know the terminology. Eventually, he was convinced to join the team. It was good timing, as the basketball season usually didn’t start until after harvest was complete. 

“You’re not doing anything in the winter on the farm, so I was like, all right, I’ll just keep playing basketball more and more,” Morgan said. “Then, I had a lot of good friends on the team, so it was enjoyable for me.”

By 10th grade, Division I basketball programs were starting to pay attention to Morgan’s play. His first offer came from South Dakota State, and it caught Morgan off guard. Until the offer arrived, he hadn’t considered the possibility of high-level colleges looking at him.

“I was like, dang, that must be pretty good [laughs],” Morgan said. “I didn’t know you could do that. The biggest college to me in my mind was Mankato State, because that was the closest college that I knew. Then the Gophers (University of Minnesota) offered. You have to be obviously really good to play for the Gophers, in my mind.”

COVID-19 hit during Morgan’s junior year of high school and ended his basketball season prematurely. The pandemic’s arrival also meant the end of his football career: Knowing he was going to play basketball in college, he decided to spend his fall helping with harvest and “sit in the combine and listen to it on the radio.”

Thanks in part to COVID, Morgan didn’t take too many college visits before making a commitment to North Dakota State. There were a few reasons he chose to spend his first three years of college in Fargo, but at the top of the list was finding a place to get a good agriculture education. After winning a Class 2A Minnesota State Championship with Waseca and averaging 22.1 points and 11 rebounds per game, a new journey began.

Adjusting to College Life

Going from the family farm to Fargo and a Division I basketball program was not an easy transition for Morgan out of the gate. The day-to-day grind of a college athlete, along with being away from home during the start of harvest, weighed on him during his freshman year. At points, Morgan found himself sneaking off to Minnesota to help with harvesting however he could.

“I talked to my dad all the time about what was going on, but it was just weird not being home for things I’ve been home for the past 18 years of my life,” Morgan said. 

In later years, Morgan found a way to get his farming fix by helping out on a farm in Mapleton, North Dakota, outside Fargo. Time spent working on a farm gave him a way to get his mind off of basketball when he needed a mental escape. 

Morgan adjusted and thrived with the Bison. In his junior year, he started 29 games as the Bison ended the season one game away from making the NCAA Tournament. After averaging 12.9 points and five rebounds a contest, a difficult decision awaited Morgan: stay in Fargo or spend his final year of college in a new spot. 

The Cornhusker Trailer

Morgan entered the NCAA Transfer Portal — a system that allows student-athletes to move to a new school for the next academic year — and found himself looking at two Big Ten Conference schools above the rest. 

The University of Minnesota means a lot to Morgan. His father, Keith, went to the university, and growing up 90 minutes away from Minneapolis, it was the biggest university he knew growing up. With a solid agriculture program and hopes to build off a 19-win basketball season in 2023-2024, it was an appealing option. Before making a decision though, Morgan said he owed it to himself to make a visit to Lincoln, Nebraska, and see what the Cornhuskers were about. 

Why was he drawn to Nebraska? An assist went to the grain trailer that Morgan remembers from the farm — made by Cornhusker 800 Trailers.

“I was like Lincoln, Nebraska, Cornhusker. Oh, well that’s cool. They named the trailer after the school [laugh].”

With a nod to the Cornhusker trailer and a sense of intrigue about the town and school, Morgan visited Lincoln — and loved what he found. Lincoln has a population of 294,757, as of the 2023 census, but Morgan said it still felt like the towns he grew up around in southern Minnesota. 

“This gives me a home feel. It’s got old buildings. It’s a town where everybody loves Nebraska, and so the support around here reminded me a lot of Waseca growing up and playing high school ball there,” Morgan said. He described it to his father as “all the towns we live around, put together in one.”

A Step Up

Morgan finished up school at North Dakota State in May 2024, spent a month at home and helped out during planting season, then left for Lincoln in June. It was the beginning of a whirlwind year at Nebraska — one that left him so busy that he has yet to visit home since the last week of August. 

The culture at Nebraska has been different than at NDSU, Morgan said, but in a good way. NDSU felt like a developmental program — with the Huskers, “they expect you to be a pro. Like, do the right things and we don’t need to tell you to do them. We expect you to know this. We expect you to eat right, work out right.” Morgan said it was another adjustment to make, but returning players like Sam Hoiberg, Brice Williams, and Juwan Gary helped him settle in and get used to a new environment.

In the classroom, Morgan got to work learning the nuances of Nebraska agriculture, which has been an eye-opening look into differences between priorities in Nebraska versus North Dakota crops. 

On the court, it was an up-and-down season for the Huskers. Early in February, the team looked safely in the NCAA tournament picture with a 17-9 record, but five straight losses to end the regular season knocked them out of the tournament with a 17-14 record. Morgan averaged 6.3 points and 4.3 rebounds per game, starting on nine occasions. 

To end the year, the Huskers will play in the inaugural College Basketball Crown in Las Vegas. Morgan said the team took a vote on whether to play in the event or not, and the result was unanimous.

“We didn’t want it to be over,” Morgan said. “Everybody on the team was like, we want more, we wanted to end this the right way, and we have an opportunity to do it the right way.”

Nebraska faces off against Arizona State in the first round of the CBC March 31 at 7:30 p.m. CT on Fox Sports 1. 

Decisions, Decisions

Morgan clearly plans to return to his family’s farm and continue farming alongside his father when his basketball career is over. 

But as his time at Nebraska nears its end, there remains one question to answer: Will other opportunities to play arise? Or will the draw of “home sweet home” be too much to pass up?

Morgan said he isn’t thinking about it until the school year (and basketball season) are over. He’ll weigh options when the time comes. But the chance to hop right into building on his father’s farming legacy has a strong pull. 

“I’m gonna weigh all my options here and take a look at pro ball on one hand and going back to the farm on the other and see what I really want to do,” Morgan said. “For me, going back home to farm is just something that I enjoy. A million times over. It’s something that I love doing.

“That’s been my main goal ever since I was five, to continue whatever my dad was doing and just keep working with him and building the farm that he built from the ground up and, and building onto it.”