Leading the way
Baylor U. signee’s record-setting production fueled unbeaten run in district play
Morton Ranch head coach Khris Turner calls senior LJ Cryer a once in a lifetime player to coach. Cryer proved that much in 2019-2020 when the team needed him to be even more extraordinary than usual.
Cryer, the All-Greater Houston boys basketball player of the year for the 2019-20 season, averaged 34.2 points on 55 percent shooting from the field and 44 percent from the 3-point line. He also had 5.3 assists, 2.6 rebounds and 2.4 steals per game in helping Morton Ranch to its best playoff run with a Class 6A Region III semifinal appearance.
Cryer, who has signed with Baylor, owns every scoring record for a Morton Ranch program that had never realized massive success until his senior class showed up on campus. He finished this season with 1,164 total points and scored 3,488 points in his career, which ranks fifth all-time in Texas public schools and tops for Houston area public schools.
“LJ has brought a different mentality to our program,” Turner said. “He is a program changer. He brought a sense of competition in every aspect of the program — scoring, defense and academics. To be able to coach a player at his level was initially intimidating but he has prepared us for every level of player that could come after. He helped put Morton Ranch High School on the map. He led by doing, not by talking. He’s a prime example of hard work paying off.”
Q: It feels like Morton Ranch had a tale of two or three season in 20192020. How would you describe it?
A: “I feel like we fought the whole year. At the beginning of the season, we didn’t come out as strong as we should have. So, as the year went on, we just progressed and started playing better as a team. We faced a lot of adversity with injuries, but we just pushed through. We didn’t want to lose in the playoffs but that was the farthest we ever made it in school history, so it was still an accomplishment.”
Q: The most noteworthy injury this year was the loss of TCU commitment Eddie Lampkin for part of the year. What did you have to change in order to keep winning without his presence?
A: “Just knowing that he wasn’t playing, I knew my team was going to need me to step up big this year because we lost another scoring option and one of our best players. I was just in the gym all day, every day to try to put my team in the best position. As far as the slow start, we knew we didn’t have Ed, so we all had to come together and bond off the court and that helped carry on the court.”
Q: How did it change the way defenses played you?
A: “I’ve never seen so many looks in my life like that. It was like a different look every game. I just had to make sure I came out locked in because I knew that were going to send one, two people at me. We just had to adjust and play a little faster because we were undersized. We just had to play at a faster tempo to outrun teams because we didn’t have as much size as the other teams.”
Q: Morton Ranch still went undefeated in district play this year. What does it mean to you to accomplish that in your senior season?
A: “I expected to win district because I have confidence in our guys. We went undefeated the past year and I was expecting to do that again. Just knowing that we did accomplish that with all those teams giving us their best shot in every game is big.”
Q: What led to signing with Baylor? A: “I started building a relationship with them when I was in eighth grade. Just the family-like atmosphere and it’s a Christian school. I just feel like it was the perfect fit.”