Palmer ready for his next opportunity at Young Harris
Few players in northwest Georgia enjoyed a breakout year like Heritage’s Carson Palmer did during the 20202021 basketball season.
As a junior, he showed flashes of what he could do and made the CatoosaWalker Dream Team’s honorable mention list, but he took his game to another level in his senior season.
Averages of 10.2 points, 3.4 rebounds, 2.0 steals and 1.6 assists not only earned him first team honors in Region 7-AAAA, but also caught the eye of college recruiters.
This past Wednesday, a player that didn’t even make the Heritage freshman team four years ago is officially an NCAA Division II player as he signed on with the Mountain Lions of Young Harris College in northeastern Georgia.
“This day means everything to me,” Palmer said. “Coming from a little bit of a nothing in (my) basketball career to something like this really proves that almost anybody can make it as long as you want to put in the hard work.”
Palmer said he was impressed with the school on his visit.
“Young Harris has a beautiful campus and once I got over there, the coaches were absolutely outstanding,” he added. “The facilities, the court, the weight training room and all the things they have, it was just an outstanding thing to see coming from a school like that.”
Palmer was part of a balancing scoring attack for the Generals all season long, but stepped up his game on several occasions, most notably in the 7-AAAA tournament where the Generals won all three games and took down Cedartown, 53-42, for the program’s long-awaited first region championship.
He scored 20 points with six 3-pointers in the opening win over Pickens, dropped in eight in a victory over Ridgeland and finished with a team-high 17 in the finals against the Bulldogs. It was Heritage’s only win in three tries against Cedartown last season after losing twice in the regular season, both times by just three points.
“He stepped up for us,” Terry said. “He was second on our team in scoring and showed he can score in a lot of different ways. He’s hard to guard and teams really had to key on him. We ran a lot of our offense through him this past year.
“He was kind of a late bloomer too. He didn’t even make the team his freshman year (because) we had a really deep group that year, but he kept working, kept improving and kept coming back and he ended up being one of our main pieces his senior year. He’s one of our most improved players for sure.”
Palmer said he couldn’t wait to get to work for his new team.
“I’ll be able to offer (Young Harris) some things that will really set me apart, like my 3-point ability, the inside driving, the playmaking and the defending, so