Photo by: All Pro Photography/Dale Sparks
WVU's Carter Never Stops Working, Even on Labor Day
September 04, 2017 12:01 PM | Men's Basketball
This is supposed to be Jevon Carter's offseason, a time to hit the pause button, reboot, refresh and get his mind ready for another long, arduous college basketball season.
But there are no breaks for Jevon Carter these days. Never. Not even today, Labor Day. There's just too much at stake for him at this point in his life.
The way he sees it, if he's chilling, somebody else isn't.
He didn't take a break last spring when he put his name in the NBA Draft to gauge his pro potential, an idea he admits came from coaches Bob Huggins and Larry Harrison.
"I didn't really plan on leaving," he said. "It was to go learn what I didn't know and go and work on it."
He didn't take a break last summer when he was invited to Chris Paul's prestigious CP3 Elite Guard Camp, or when he participated in the Nike Skills Academy.
A week away from Morgantown right before the start of the fall semester to visit his mother down in Memphis, Tennessee, also involved getting up a couple hundred shots a day at a gym near her house.
"I just told her, 'Give me two hours in the gym in the morning and the rest of the day we can do whatever you want to do,'" Carter laughed.
Even then, hanging out with his mom, you can bet his mind was still drifting back to basketball. It always is.
"The other day I was talking to Huggs and we were trying to think of the last player we had who worked as hard as JC does," Harrison, WVU's longtime associate head coach, said. "It's been a while, probably since Da'Sean Butler."
And before that?
"You're looking at guys like Danny Fortson, Kenyon Martin and Quentin Richardson and Bobby Simmons when I was at DePaul," Harrison noted.
Naturally, all of them were good - really good. And what made them good is the same thing that makes all players good: a never-ending drive and passion to be good.
Actually, passion is not a strong enough word. More like an obsession or a compulsion.
Those who played with Jerry West at West Virginia University always marveled at his obsessive nature regarding the game. Longtime Mountaineer Sports Network from IMG radio analyst Jay Jacobs was briefly a teammate of West's at WVU, and he once said that Jerry wasn't the life of the party because he was never at the party; he always had much better things to do with his time.
Sipping a beer at the Frat house wasn't going to help him go to his left, or improve his handle. That only happens in the gym.
That's one way Jevon Carter is similar to the Logo. Ask him what he likes to do in his spare time and he will mention "listening to music" or "working out."
But aren't those things really geared toward performance? Music as a means to get his mind right and working out as a way to get his body right?
Of course, they are.
Carter admits he wasn't always like this. The light really came on when he was in high school and a handful of local colleges started showing some interest in him. He credits his father for giving him the drive necessary to push him over the top.
But the list of schools recruiting Carter wasn't really eye-catching, and the number next to his name on those recruiting lists that always seem to make Huggins' eyes roll wasn't too impressive, either, yet it further fueled his drive.
"I always kept a chip on my shoulder so I was always out to prove something or prove people wrong," Carter said.
Meanwhile, Harrison was shopping for guards and was scrolling down through the long list of numbers in his cell phone when he ran into Carter's AAU coach at a tournament.
"I told him what I was looking for and he told me that he had somebody I needed to take a look at and it just happened to be JC," Harrison recalled.
So, he stuck around to see Carter's next AAU game, loved what he saw, realized he was tough enough to play for Bob Huggins and told Huggs he needed to catch the next plane down to Florida to watch him play.
Huggins did.
"Larry, we need to try and get him," Huggins told Harrison afterward.
"We went from there," Harrison said. "Fortunately for us, we had a connection in Chicago through his high school coach Donnie Boyce, a big-time high school player who later played at Wisconsin, and one thing led to another."
And another, and another.
Today, Carter is probably West Virginia's best-known player since Butler in 2010, and heads into his senior season in 2017-18 as one of the top returning players in the country.
He was named the NABC and Lefty Driesell National Defensive Player of the Year, was named a 2017 Arthur Ashe Jr. Sports Scholar Award winner, earned Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year honors, was a second-team All-Big 12 choice in a conference last year loaded with guards, and finished ranked seventh in the country in steals.
Across the board, his statistics have improved each season he has been at West Virginia, averaging 8.1 points per game and shooting 36 percent as a freshman, to 9.5 points per game and shooting 38.3 percent as a sophomore, to last year averaging 13.5 points and shooting 43.9 percent as a junior.
The way players always seem to improve under Huggins, one can only imagine how much Carter's numbers are going to swell this year.
That's what prompted Harrison to convince Carter to check out the draft to get his name circulated a little bit more prominently for this season.
"We thought he was as good as anybody in the country and he just wasn't getting the (publicity) that these other guards were getting," Harrison said. "We reached out to the Nike people for their academy and the CP3 people called also. I think it was really good for him because he really opened up a lot of eyes as far as people at the next level."
Carter said the experiences this summer were eye opening for him as well, particularly going up against Paul, a nine-time NBA all-star.
"That's a smart guy," Carter said. "He knows a lot about basketball. He was actually with us, hands on, working with us. I even got to guard him some and he guarded me some. We talked some. I found out his wife is from Greenbrier County (in West Virginia)."
The best advice Paul gave Jevon?
"Don't lose my competitive edge," he said.
Yeah, like that's going to happen.
The Nike Academy was more about playing against other top players, Carter said. And the personal workout he had with the Boston Celtics before he removed his name from the draft was just like a typical Huggins practice, minus the treadmill, of course.
"It wasn't anything new," Carter said. "It was things right up my alley, and I felt I did well."
All eyes are going to be on Carter this year, from the moment he steps onto Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany to play against Texas A&M on Friday, Nov. 10, in the season opener, all the way through the Big 12 tournament and beyond.
His name is already beginning to show up on those preseason lists that once escaped him when he was a high school senior at Proviso East High in Maywood, Illinois.
"I don't pay attention to stuff like that," Carter admitted. "I just go and play. Whatever happens, happens. There is no point in focusing on stuff like that. I'm not where I want to be yet."
That response naturally required a follow up: "So, Jevon, where do you want to be?"
"National championship," he answered.
Nothing eats at him more than the ending to the Gonzaga game when West Virginia couldn't hold on to a three-point lead with 90 seconds to play in last year's Sweet 16 matchup in San Jose, California.
Carter, who put the Mountaineers in the lead with his three at the top of the key with 1:47 remaining, had the ball in his hands in the same area of the floor with less than 30 seconds left and West Virginia trailing by three.
He took a desperation shot and missed, but teammate Daxter Miles Jr. was there to rebound it and send it back out to Carter. Another chance.
But a second attempt to tie the game never happened. He was smothered by two taller Gonzaga players and was unable to get off a shot.
"I go back and look at it and what I could have changed," he said. "I feel like on that last shot I took I didn't need to shoot a three. I could have got it to the basket and either got fouled or scored and then maybe got a steal or a foul (to try and extend the game). It could have been different."
It was a learning experience, for sure, one you can only get by having it happen to you.
Carter said he will be ready if it happens to him again this year, and chances are good it probably will.
Despite the losses of Nathan Adrian, Tarik Phillip, Elijah Macon and Teyvon Myers, Carter believes all of the parts are there for an even deeper run in the NCAA Tournament this season.
The new guys, now down one with the unfortunate preseason knee injury to freshman guard Brandon Knapper, seem to be fitting in well with the veterans.
"Open gym has been real good so far," Carter mentioned. "Every game has gone down to the last shot and I think everybody is buying into the fact that we're going to have to play a lot of different ways. We may have to go big or small to change it up. I think everybody is ready for it."
As for the new guys being ready for that fourth practice in a row with the big bear growling in their ears?
Well …
"I don't know if they're ready for that," he laughed. "Nobody can come in and be ready for that right away. That's just something you have to work your way into."
Work being the operative word – something right up Jevon Carter's alley.
But there are no breaks for Jevon Carter these days. Never. Not even today, Labor Day. There's just too much at stake for him at this point in his life.
The way he sees it, if he's chilling, somebody else isn't.
He didn't take a break last spring when he put his name in the NBA Draft to gauge his pro potential, an idea he admits came from coaches Bob Huggins and Larry Harrison.
"I didn't really plan on leaving," he said. "It was to go learn what I didn't know and go and work on it."
He didn't take a break last summer when he was invited to Chris Paul's prestigious CP3 Elite Guard Camp, or when he participated in the Nike Skills Academy.
A week away from Morgantown right before the start of the fall semester to visit his mother down in Memphis, Tennessee, also involved getting up a couple hundred shots a day at a gym near her house.
"I just told her, 'Give me two hours in the gym in the morning and the rest of the day we can do whatever you want to do,'" Carter laughed.
Even then, hanging out with his mom, you can bet his mind was still drifting back to basketball. It always is.
"The other day I was talking to Huggs and we were trying to think of the last player we had who worked as hard as JC does," Harrison, WVU's longtime associate head coach, said. "It's been a while, probably since Da'Sean Butler."
And before that?
"You're looking at guys like Danny Fortson, Kenyon Martin and Quentin Richardson and Bobby Simmons when I was at DePaul," Harrison noted.
Naturally, all of them were good - really good. And what made them good is the same thing that makes all players good: a never-ending drive and passion to be good.
Actually, passion is not a strong enough word. More like an obsession or a compulsion.
Those who played with Jerry West at West Virginia University always marveled at his obsessive nature regarding the game. Longtime Mountaineer Sports Network from IMG radio analyst Jay Jacobs was briefly a teammate of West's at WVU, and he once said that Jerry wasn't the life of the party because he was never at the party; he always had much better things to do with his time.
Sipping a beer at the Frat house wasn't going to help him go to his left, or improve his handle. That only happens in the gym.
That's one way Jevon Carter is similar to the Logo. Ask him what he likes to do in his spare time and he will mention "listening to music" or "working out."
But aren't those things really geared toward performance? Music as a means to get his mind right and working out as a way to get his body right?
Of course, they are.
Carter admits he wasn't always like this. The light really came on when he was in high school and a handful of local colleges started showing some interest in him. He credits his father for giving him the drive necessary to push him over the top.
But the list of schools recruiting Carter wasn't really eye-catching, and the number next to his name on those recruiting lists that always seem to make Huggins' eyes roll wasn't too impressive, either, yet it further fueled his drive.
"I always kept a chip on my shoulder so I was always out to prove something or prove people wrong," Carter said.
Meanwhile, Harrison was shopping for guards and was scrolling down through the long list of numbers in his cell phone when he ran into Carter's AAU coach at a tournament.
"I told him what I was looking for and he told me that he had somebody I needed to take a look at and it just happened to be JC," Harrison recalled.
So, he stuck around to see Carter's next AAU game, loved what he saw, realized he was tough enough to play for Bob Huggins and told Huggs he needed to catch the next plane down to Florida to watch him play.
Huggins did.
"Larry, we need to try and get him," Huggins told Harrison afterward.
"We went from there," Harrison said. "Fortunately for us, we had a connection in Chicago through his high school coach Donnie Boyce, a big-time high school player who later played at Wisconsin, and one thing led to another."
And another, and another.
Today, Carter is probably West Virginia's best-known player since Butler in 2010, and heads into his senior season in 2017-18 as one of the top returning players in the country.
He was named the NABC and Lefty Driesell National Defensive Player of the Year, was named a 2017 Arthur Ashe Jr. Sports Scholar Award winner, earned Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year honors, was a second-team All-Big 12 choice in a conference last year loaded with guards, and finished ranked seventh in the country in steals.
Across the board, his statistics have improved each season he has been at West Virginia, averaging 8.1 points per game and shooting 36 percent as a freshman, to 9.5 points per game and shooting 38.3 percent as a sophomore, to last year averaging 13.5 points and shooting 43.9 percent as a junior.
The way players always seem to improve under Huggins, one can only imagine how much Carter's numbers are going to swell this year.
That's what prompted Harrison to convince Carter to check out the draft to get his name circulated a little bit more prominently for this season.
"We thought he was as good as anybody in the country and he just wasn't getting the (publicity) that these other guards were getting," Harrison said. "We reached out to the Nike people for their academy and the CP3 people called also. I think it was really good for him because he really opened up a lot of eyes as far as people at the next level."
Carter said the experiences this summer were eye opening for him as well, particularly going up against Paul, a nine-time NBA all-star.
"That's a smart guy," Carter said. "He knows a lot about basketball. He was actually with us, hands on, working with us. I even got to guard him some and he guarded me some. We talked some. I found out his wife is from Greenbrier County (in West Virginia)."
The best advice Paul gave Jevon?
"Don't lose my competitive edge," he said.
Yeah, like that's going to happen.
The Nike Academy was more about playing against other top players, Carter said. And the personal workout he had with the Boston Celtics before he removed his name from the draft was just like a typical Huggins practice, minus the treadmill, of course.
"It wasn't anything new," Carter said. "It was things right up my alley, and I felt I did well."
All eyes are going to be on Carter this year, from the moment he steps onto Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany to play against Texas A&M on Friday, Nov. 10, in the season opener, all the way through the Big 12 tournament and beyond.
His name is already beginning to show up on those preseason lists that once escaped him when he was a high school senior at Proviso East High in Maywood, Illinois.
"I don't pay attention to stuff like that," Carter admitted. "I just go and play. Whatever happens, happens. There is no point in focusing on stuff like that. I'm not where I want to be yet."
That response naturally required a follow up: "So, Jevon, where do you want to be?"
"National championship," he answered.
Nothing eats at him more than the ending to the Gonzaga game when West Virginia couldn't hold on to a three-point lead with 90 seconds to play in last year's Sweet 16 matchup in San Jose, California.
Carter, who put the Mountaineers in the lead with his three at the top of the key with 1:47 remaining, had the ball in his hands in the same area of the floor with less than 30 seconds left and West Virginia trailing by three.
He took a desperation shot and missed, but teammate Daxter Miles Jr. was there to rebound it and send it back out to Carter. Another chance.
But a second attempt to tie the game never happened. He was smothered by two taller Gonzaga players and was unable to get off a shot.
"I go back and look at it and what I could have changed," he said. "I feel like on that last shot I took I didn't need to shoot a three. I could have got it to the basket and either got fouled or scored and then maybe got a steal or a foul (to try and extend the game). It could have been different."
It was a learning experience, for sure, one you can only get by having it happen to you.
Carter said he will be ready if it happens to him again this year, and chances are good it probably will.
Despite the losses of Nathan Adrian, Tarik Phillip, Elijah Macon and Teyvon Myers, Carter believes all of the parts are there for an even deeper run in the NCAA Tournament this season.
The new guys, now down one with the unfortunate preseason knee injury to freshman guard Brandon Knapper, seem to be fitting in well with the veterans.
"Open gym has been real good so far," Carter mentioned. "Every game has gone down to the last shot and I think everybody is buying into the fact that we're going to have to play a lot of different ways. We may have to go big or small to change it up. I think everybody is ready for it."
As for the new guys being ready for that fourth practice in a row with the big bear growling in their ears?
Well …
"I don't know if they're ready for that," he laughed. "Nobody can come in and be ready for that right away. That's just something you have to work your way into."
Work being the operative word – something right up Jevon Carter's alley.
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