McKay star getting defensive
January 26 , 2010
Anyone who knows big school high school basketball in Oregon know about the high-scoring 6-foot-2 kid from McKay High School named Jordan Carter.
Now in his third year on the varsity team, Carter has been known to light up opponents and scoreboards for 30 or 40 points a night.
He led the state in scoring as a junior.
But when it came to defense …
"We had to hide him. We had to hide him," McKay coach Kevin Turner admits.
For most of his career Carter would be lighting up opposing defenses for 30 or so points a game, but defensively he would guard the opposing team's third scoring option.
Or fourth.
Or fifth.
As Carter explains it, all of the endless hours which he spent training on the offensive components of basketball didn't translate to playing defense.
"You never see a guy just sliding in his driveway," said Carter, now a senior. "You always see him shooting around."
The offensive dynamo that spent most of his high school basketball career as a defensive liability has made a drastic turnaround this season to become one of the best defensive stoppers around.
"Turner sat me down and basically said, 'You know you've got the scoring, we've developed that and now colleges want to see the all-around game,' " Carter remembers.
"We believe that for our basketball to be the best we can be, I need to play defense. For the most part, it's been an effort-based thing.
"There was a point where (teammate) Major (Harris) and I both had special rules where for Major it was on offense, if he passed up a good look, he had to do pushups. If I was lazy on defense, everybody had to do pushups."
Carter's defensive improvement is not as quantifiable as his offensive numbers, but it's been a profound turnaround and a key to No. 9-ranked McKay's 12-2 overall and 4-0 Central Valley Conference season that Carter now contributes defensively.
"I think the No. 1 part of his game that has picked up has been defensively," Sprague coach B.J. Dobrkovsky said.
"This year he's really taken on the challenge of guarding people. That's what I've noticed in the tape I've seen. I think that's one part of the game I know that McKay has been trying to improve on.
In the past opponents would go after Carter when he was on defense to try to get him to commit fouls.
All of a sudden, he can guard quicker perimeter players or taller post players and do either effectively.
"Now, shoot, I'm putting him on the other team's best players if that's the match-up we need," Turner said. "And he's still scoring. It's been great to see him say, 'I'll do whatever it takes.' It's been really eye-opening for me to see him just take that role.
"He's a handful for any defense to try and contain, then we can play him anywhere for us defensively."
Much of Carter's previous issues on defense can be attributed to the styles of play in which he started playing high school basketball.
In his sophomore year when he was placed in McKay's starting lineup as an inside-scoring post in an up-tempo offense, about the only defense that was played by the team was full-court defense.
"So then junior year, I hadn't really developed anything from freshman year because freshman year I don't think we played any defense," said Carter, the CVC's co-league player of the year and a second-team all-state selection as a junior. "We tried, but it's a huge learning curve coming in as a freshman.
"Junior year, I always was a little hidden on defense and definitely got the third, fourth or fifth option on the other team."
Carter credits much of his defensive improvement to facing teammates Ian Silbernagel and Rocky Croff in practice on a regular basis.
"It's two things," said assistant coach Dean Sanderson, the team's defensive coordinator. "He's maturing and he's realizing that if he wants to play at the next level, everyone else is going to be as talented as him.
"All those guys have just bought in to if they want to achieve their goals they've got to do it on that end of the court, too. He still has a lot of room for improvement, but I think he sees the results doing things better on the defensive end, and our team is, too."
The scoring seemed to come naturally from the start. As a sophomore, Carter led McKay with 13.5 points per game.
His offensive skills were one dimensional and his defense was lacking, but Carter was chosen first-team all-Central Valley Conference.
"He led our team in scoring because he put in the time," Harris said. "There is no off-season for Jordan Carter. When football's going on, he's doing basketball workouts. When track's going on, he's doing basketball workouts. All summer long, he's doing basketball workouts.
"It was never a surprise to me. He's in the gym 24/7, getting up shots, getting his conditioning. If you're in a gym that long, you're going to be your team's leading scorer."
As a junior his offensive production jumped to 22.6 points per game to lead the state. No. 2 on that list was Grant's Michael Moser at 22.3 points per game.
Carter moved from the post to the perimeter after extensive one-on-one training after his sophomore year with Matt Espinoza, now head coach at McNary.
"I've been trying to tell that to the rest of the program" Turner said. "We try to get them to understand Carter isn't Carter because he's some freak athlete. He made himself this way because he just put the time in.
"While it's nice outside and everybody's at North Fork or out swimming, he's in the gym, dribbling through some cones and shooting jumpers. That was the biggest thing for him. That was how he was able to diversify his game."
Though his defense has improved greatly and he's put more energy into that end of the floor, his offensive hasn't declined.
Carter is averaging 22.9 points, 7.3 rebounds and 5.1 assists per game this season.
What has eased the burden for Carter is that teammates, Harris (13.2 points per game), Joey Fennimore (7.9), Silbernagel (5.5) and Croff (4.8) have taken on additional offensive production.
No longer do teammates stand around and watch while Carter does his thing on offense.
"I was a little concerned about energy management," Carter said. "I've never really been one who comes out of the game. I love playing as much as I physically can.
"It kind of develops where you focus on the defense so much that sometimes the offense just comes."
Carter didn't receive much interest from colleges until this year.
He didn't play AAU basketball — he tried out for a team out of Portland but didn't make it — so his exposure was limited to the high school season.
"I love working out and getting better, but I had never felt that in a summer league season where I was just playing that I had gotten any better," Carter said.
"Just playing, you're exercising the skills you already have, honing those, but I really felt like I needed to develop, I needed to become a better shooter so that teams couldn't just zone us or play off me and I needed to become a better ball handler so I wouldn't be turning it over in a lot of pressure."
Despite the impressive numbers he puts up during the high school season, most college coaches were put off because Carter didn't play much defense.
The college attention is coming — a number of small colleges have come calling — but like Carter's defense, it took a while.
bpoehler@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399-6701 |