Carr starting to show why he’s ‘special guy’
AUSTIN — While most of his teammates scattered back to their homes during the winter break, Torontoborn Marcus Carr was stuck in Texas.
Zooming up to Canada with COVID-19 infections surging was too risky. Instead, Carr hung around in balmy Austin, hooping and conditioning and hanging around with coach Chris Beard.
The quality time together was good for the pair — one in his first year with the program, the other back after a quarter-century away.
“Marcus, he’s a special guy,” Beard said.
Carr’s also a special basketball talent — no denying that. Just check the tape from Minnesota’s overtime upset of No. 4 Iowa last season, when he dropped 30 points on 9-for-16 shooting, dished eight assists and sniped a game-tying 3 with five seconds left in regulation.
Exploits like that, along with season-long averages of 19.4 points, 4.9 assists and 1.3 steals, turned the Golden Gopher into the NCAA transfer portal’s golden boy this past offseason.
And Beard was thrilled to land Carr after he decided to withdraw from the 2022 NBA draft.
But the 6-foot-2 guard hadn’t really electrified like that through 12 games at Texas. Growing pains were expected with this cast of Longhorns — and Carr wasn’t immune.
The All-Big Ten first team peformer even came off the bench in consecutive games against ArkansasPine Bluff and Stanford, a short-lived experiment that illuminated the ongoing nature of Beard’s pursuit of the ideal rotation. But even on a team loaded with allconference performers and other battle-tested veterans, Carr belongs among the starting five.
He proved as much on New Year’s Day. Carr helped propel Texas (11-2, 1-0 Big 12) to a 74-59 win over short-handed West Virginia at the Erwin Center, pouring in a game- and seasonhigh 20 points on 7-for-11 shooting with four rebounds, two assists and two steals over 34 minutes.
This wasn’t Carr fully unleashed, but it was maybe as close as he’ll get playing within this system. There was more swagger in his demeanor and movements, more decisiveness imbued within his actions on both ends of the floor.
“Marcus is a guy who wants to win,” Beard said. “He cares about his craft.
He’s a great teammate.”
Said Carr: “We’re coming together. I know there’s a lot of questions that people might have been concerned about early on, but we never let that affect us.”
His big day against WVU was encouraging, but Carr is still figuring out the right buttons to push and when exactly to push them.
Beard’s motion-heavy offense isn’t really designed for one player to heave 15plus shots a game. This team has too many players worthy of touches for one to overshadow the rest. Sharing the load with other capable scorers and playmakers has been the biggest adjustment for Carr so far.
In his first 13 games at Minnesota last season, Carr attempted 94 free throws and hit 75. Through 13 games with Texas, Carr is 18 of 24 from the stripe. His field-goal attempts have also plummeted from 15.6 to 8.5 per game and he has hit the 20-point mark once after doing so 12 times in 29 games in 2020-21.
Of course, Carr’s outing against WVU showed he can still put up points in bunches and do so in an efficient manner. Fellow backcourt starters Courtney Ramey (15 points) and
Andrew Jones (14) also got theirs, showing there can be enough shots to go around when everyone’s in sync.
“The objective wasn’t for Marcus to come here and lead the league in scoring,” Beard said. “The objective was for Marcus to come here and help lead Texas to a Final Four.”
Carr may not lead his own team in scoring, let alone the Big 12. His 9.5 points per game rank fourth among Longhorns behind senior forward Timmy Allen (11.6), junior big Tre Mitchell (10.5) and sixthyear guard Jones (9.6).
Not that Carr’s scoring average will matter much if Texas keeps on winning. And whether he puts up two shots or 20, Carr will be vital in extending the No. 14 Longhorns’ five-game winning streaking Tuesday in a road game against Kansas State (8-4, 0-1) at Bramlage Coliseum.
Forget the slow start: If Carr starts pulling the right levers at the right time, Texas becomes a major threat to every team in the nation’s most formidable conference.