KANSAS CITY — Tattooed across Jordan Bell’s chest, fittingly setting itself apart from an assortment of less-distinguishable markings and designs, is the phrase “All eyes on me.”

Spanning nearly from armpit to armpit and down to his ribcage, the ink fits Bell’s personality like a glove. The 6-foot-9, charismatic junior was the star of the sports world Saturday night, slamming dunks loud enough to silence the 18,000 Kansas fans packed inside the Sprint Center, out-muscling future NBA lottery picks for rebounds, chasing down guards to block layups and doing virtually everything in-between as Oregon’s center notched 11 points (on six shots), 13 rebounds, four assists and a career-high eight blocks. By the end of the game, the top-seeded Jayhawks avoided Bell like he had a disease, settling instead for contested shots seemingly anywhere else on the court as Kansas fell to the Ducks, 74-60, to send Oregon to its first Final Four since 1939.

Throw in Bell’s similarly freakish 16-point, 13-rebound, two-block and one-assist showing against No. 7-seed Michigan just two days prior, and the junior was a lock to win the Midwest Regional’s Most Outstanding Player award.

“He’s the backbone of our team,” said Pac-12 Player of the Year Dillon Brooks after the game. “He dunks the ball, he makes layups, he blocks shots and he can guard anyone on the floor. It puts a thing in the other team’s mind and it makes (the rest of) us want to defend harder and it gets us energized. And that’s what he did.”

So when Bell was the last Oregon player to cut off a piece of the net, waving the remaining net to the green and yellow sea below, all eyes were indeed on him.

But off to side, at the bottom of Oregon’s section, stood reminders that, for years, eyes weren’t supposed to be on Bell. Success and the glamour that come with it weren’t on the agenda.

That at one time, as his high school coach would remind him moments later, it was all a dream.

***

Sharrief Metoyer remembers Bell long before anyone was watching him. At least, before anyone was watching him in a positive light.

Self-described as a “bad kid” growing up beneath the Long Beach sunshine, Bell ended his first go-round with high school almost as quickly as it began. There was the rough patch with his mother, the time he got kicked off of perennial football power Long Beach Poly for stealing from teammates’ lockers. Outside of football, there were a variety of other delinquencies. Finally, the school “grew tired” of Bell and kicked him out of the school altogether.

With plenty of physical gifts and free time but nowhere to put it, Bell turned to basketball. He had never played competitively, but stood out quickly.

“I would go to the parks, and some of the seniors at the school saw me and saw how much I loved playing and the passion I had,” Bell recalled.

Word trickled up to Metoyer, who had turned Long Beach Poly into a strong basketball program.

Bell, stretching toward 6-foot-4 with more to come, was an obvious asset on the court, but when Metoyer fought for the school to reinstate him, basketball was secondary.

“He worked so hard just to try and get me back because he saw that I was a good young man,” Bell said. “Not even basketball, he just saw that I was a good kid and wanted to help me out a lot. He saw the good in me.”

To Metoyer, Bell was “more challenging” than most of the kids he worked with, even others with troubled backgrounds. With Ball’s father out of the picture, Metoyer would drive Ball to and from school to ensure he was on-time, help keep track of his academics and push Bell to dream of college, basketball and life beyond the Long Beach streets.

Little in life came to Bell easily or naturally. Except, of course, basketball.

“He came to us with that unique skill,” Metoyer said. “I’d love to say we taught him timing, athleticism and his sense for the game. We tried to make him as competitive and as hard-nosed as possible, but the God-blessed talent that you see? He had that in ninth grade.”

Fate played a role, too. Known best in Saturday’s game for his stifling defense and absurd shot-blocking ability, Bell bucks the trend of college players getting praise for offensive prowess while leaving defense in the dust.

A defensive end before being kicked off the football team and deeming offense for “like, soft people,” Bell had a nose for defense. He lacked the refined skills and experience that his opponents and teammates had developed over years of youth league, but could find his way onto the court by shuffling his feet and staying in front of others.

He also found that playing Guitar Hero, once a way to kill time and avoid homework or anything productive, built his timing and ambidexterity, enabling him to block better than players three or four inches taller than him.

Eventually, the work paid off, and Bell rose up rankings and recruiting boards, in large part thanks to his newfound work ethic and defensive focus.

“He accepted that and understood that that’s a great way to play a lot,” said Oregon assistant Kevin McKenna, who was part of the Ducks staff that beat out Texas, Connecticut, Southern California and several others for Bell.

Bell did need a season in prep school to academically qualify for Oregon, but in the summer of 2014, Bell finally beat all the odds, enrolling in college thanks to basketball.

“That was always a priority with us,” Metoyer said. “Just trying to keep him focused and keep him engaged in basketball and school so that he can enjoy opportunities like this and then rejoice in the blessings of it.”

To be “saved” by basketball is something of a cliché these days, but Bell is adamant that the game saved him, largely because of the thought of where he’d be without it.

“I honestly don’t know, probably Long Beach, doing nothing positive, working at McDonald’s or something,” Bell said. “Just doing nothing with my life right now, so I’m really grateful.”

But even when Bell finally made it to Eugene, there were few eyes on him. For that praise, he needed to grow — literally and figuratively.

Long before the world watched Bell dominate big man after big man, Oregon coach Dana Altman remembers his latest star player being a 6-foot-7, 190-pound wing that didn’t shoot enough.

“He’s always had a knack for shot-blocking,” Altman said. “It was the other stuff that had to be brought out of him.”

In the world of comical point totals in AAU games and a focus on “going viral” with flashy dunks and plays, defense has taken a backseat at the youth level.

Between Bell’s late arrival to the game and devotion to physicality, he proved to be an old-school exception, where suddenly his lack of offense was an issue.

It caused him to see a decline in minutes in his first two seasons. But by the time Bell entered his junior year, he was two inches taller, 35 pounds heavier and had matured into a regular double-double threat.

But still, defense remained his calling card, and a pretty good one at that.

“I think it’s what’s going to lead him to a place in the NBA,” said McKenna. “There’s guys like him that are out there, the Dennis Rodman types, Kurt Rambis types that are all about defense.”

Playing in the 80s and even alongside Rambis for a season with the Lakers, McKenna wasn’t blowing smoke. His eyes locked in after he compared Bell to two NBA household names.

“He can play like that,” McKenna said.

While thriving in the NBA is several steps away for Bell, he certainly looked like a force to be reckoned with in Kansas City. Both the Jayhawks and Wolverines — each with one of the top-five offenses in the country — could hardly throw their trash away without the Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year blocking it or causing a poor decision during the shot.

“Those were the best games he’s played in his career,” Altman said. “He was unbelievable.”

Just like many of his jaw-dropping blocks, Bell’s timing to play the best basketball of his career couldn’t have been better. Michigan’s Cinderella run was silenced, the Jayhawks’ army of local fans were too, and Bell carried the Ducks further than they had gone since before anyone even had televisions.

And in a thunderclap of a weekend, Bell showed that it wasn’t just his game that had grown either.

“He’s matured a great deal, he really has,” McKenna said, noting that both Michigan and Kansas made second-half runs that put the Ducks’ season on the line. “Other guys were shook up, and he did a great job calming everyone down in the huddle. He just showed great leadership.”

Bell’s leadership is a rather recent development, but one that is seemingly universally recognized among those that know him.

His roommate, junior college transfer and foreigner Kavell Bigby-Williams notes that Bell puts in an “extra effort” to making teammates feel welcome, even choosing to live with Bigby-Williams so the 6-foot-10 forward could acclimate to life at Oregon smoothly.

His mother grinned as she saw her son cut down the nets in Kansas City, recalling how open Bell has become to returning home to Long Beach and instilling the same positive influence Metoyer gave him.

Even a random fan told Metoyer about the time where the Ducks were at a fundraiser, and Bell went out of his way to meet everyone that attended — all 30 tables of them.

“He was the only person that did that,” Metoyer recalled the fan saying. “He’s just grown up so much.”

Seconds later, Bell — with the Final Four net around his neck — would come visit his cluster of friends and family. The youngest of five children, there were plenty of hugs and praise as the Ducks cohort of fans began to thin out.

Metoyer, standing in the back of the crowd three rows up, shouts, “It was all a dream.”

The hugging stops, as Bell pauses to look at Metoyer. Trying to point an aimless kid in any direction, the coach taught Bell as much about dreaming as any basketball fundamentals. After pondering the line for a moment, Bell flashes a grin, hugging his old coach and responding, “It was all a dream.”

Today, it’s Bell’s reality.

At last, all eyes are on him.