The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
A banner week for Lorain leader Grant
Titans senior chooses college, scores his 1,000th career point
Lorain coach John Rositano stopped by the scorer’s table during halftime of his team’s season opener and said, “Grant’s putting on a show, isn’t he?”
The Titans were in the midst of an 82-65 rout of Euclid Dec. 1 at the annual Bob DiFranco Memorial Tip-Off Classic in which Devon Grant scored 32 points — 25 of which came in the first half — as the senior picked up where he left off after last year’s breakout season.
Grant wowed the crowd, certainly, but more impressively wowed his coaches and teammates who have watched him put on show after show. He set the single-game DiFranco tournament scoring record before turning around and doing it all over again against Richmond Heights on Dec. 4.
In an 83-51 win over the Spartans, Grant scored 31 points, including 27 in the first half, before handing some of the scoring responsibilities off to his teammates.
Grant averaged 21 points per game through the regular season last year and is averaging 28.6 points through three games to begin his senior year, and most recently became the second player since the consolidation of Lorain High School in 2010 to reach 1,000 career points in a win over Strongsville Dec. 11 — a feat even if he had known he was approaching would likely not distract much from the team goals for the quiet, humble player.
“I had no idea I was coming up on 1,000,” Grant said after the game. “When I found out I was really excited. That’s been one of my goals since I was a freshman in high school. I’m glad I was able to accomplish that.”
“He’s not a point guy, he’s a team guy and a winning guy,” Rositano added. “He grinds every day in practice and spends the extra time in the gym. These things don’t happen by accident. They happen because you put the work in and Devon has done that.”
Grant moves to second all-time in scoring behind former Titans standout Naz Bohannon, who finished his career with 1,345 points, but the way the 6-foot-2 point guard has played to start the year, there’s little doubt he can catch Bohannon’s record.
Especially considering opposing teams have yet to figure out how to stop him.
“We knew matching up (with Grant) would be tough, and we did a terrible job at recognizing who he was,” Euclid coach T.J. Kwasniak said after losing to Lorain Dec. 1. “He’s a very good player. He might be the best player we see all season and once he got going there wasn’t much else
you could do.”
And finally, after going all last season without so much as a second look from most colleges, the uncertainty of where Grant will play after high school is gone when he announced his commitment to the University of Miami Dec. 9 on Twitter.
Quite the list of accomplishments for a player who still finds so much joy in the game despite being overlooked much of his career.
“It’s fun. It’s always fun,” Grant said. “Even when I’m not, I don’t have it going or I’m off, it’s still fun to me. I might not show it but it’s still fun to me always to play the game.”