Ball Boy follows the adventures of Gray Taylor, a 14-year-old who discovers basketball when his mother moves them from Los Angeles to Beaudelaire, a small town in Kansas. Taylor uses basketball to become someone people notice and later to save the town. Paul Shirley (‘00 mechanical engineering), a former Cyclone basketball and NBA player, is the author of two humor memoirs, a novel, and a how-to book. He has written for ESPN.com, Slate, Esquire, the Wall Street Journal, and FlipCollective.com, a website for writers he founded.