The sound of the basketball bouncing always let Aloha Wilks know where her son was. It was the greeting that announced Melsahn Basabe had arrived in her Glen Cove, N.Y., home, and its absence signaled when he left.

The bounce of the basketball provided the rhythm to Basabe’s young life.

It carried him from the courts of the Landing School around the corner from his Long Island home to the legendary Rucker Park in Manhattan and eventually to Iowa, where he’ll play for the Hawkeyes today against Michigan (4:30 p.m., Big Ten Network).

His journey, though, is more nuanced. Basabe is a suburban kid with a decidedly city game.

“I didn’t play basketball a lot on Long Island,” Basabe said. “I played in my neighborhood and a few areas, Westbury, Queens. But a lot of the basketball I played was in Harlem, the Bronx.

“I played a lot of NYC basketball, so I never was really a Long Island basketball player as far as staying on Long Island. That was never really me.”

Growing up on Long Island, Basabe learned the talent level in suburbia was nowhere near that of the city center, let alone what is considered the best basketball city in the world.

So the decision to abandon the Long Island game in favor of New York City was an easy one. While home in Glen Cove, he’d spend hours on the Landing School courts, playing one-on-one. As a 12-year-old, he’d play against men in their early 20’s just because they’d be the only ones there.

“He was the only kid in the neighborhood who was that intense about it,” Wilks said. “That serious about it.”

He honed his game there, sometimes working on alley-oops until 1 or 2 a.m. When he wasn’t at Landing, his mother drove him to the city in search of more competition.

“We were up in Harlem a lot,” Wilks said.

Basabe earned respect there, playing in Riverside Park and eventually with the New York Gauchos, one of the pre-eminent AAU programs in the country. That is where Iowa coach Fran McCaffery started recruiting him — for Siena.

McCaffery was the first coach to recruit Basabe, who was an under-the-radar player that Michigan coach John Beilein said he never saw play on the AAU circuit. So Basabe repaid the loyalty, eventually committed to the Saints while playing at St. Mark’s, a prep school in New England.

“I thought he had the ability to keep us at the top of the league,” McCaffery said. “To be one of the elite teams in the league.”

Then McCaffery left upstate New York for Iowa. Basabe, then a 6-foot-7 prospect who had Big East suitors, made another easy decision. He’d go with him. Basabe and Wilks felt a loyalty to a coach who saw potential in a player when not many others did.

“He was there first, that was coach Fran,” Basabe said. “So I just stayed with him.”

It paid off. A player who McCaffery thought might dominate on the MAAC level transitioned well to the Big Ten.

Basabe averages 10.6 points and seven rebounds a game for Iowa, a team McCaffery said has had to rely on a freshman more than he’d like.

Basabe adjusted easily. He’s made the transition before, being accepted in the city as a player from suburbia, as a player recruited to the MAAC but is turning into a star in the Big Ten.

“I always knew I had talent,” Basabe said. “I don’t know if everybody else knew, but I always believed in myself.”

Michael Rothstein covers University of Michigan basketball for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at (734) 623-2558, by e-mail at michaelrothstein@annarbor.com or follow along on Twitter @mikerothstein