ALL-AREA BOYS HOOPS: Edward Bell's Carr adds Player of Year to mantel

Damien Carr doesn’t need to be told how good he is.

The Central Region MVP and Final 48 co-MVP awards, the selection to the Alabama-Mississippi All-Star game, the Class 1A boys Player of the Year, the whispers going around the Acadome and BJCC Arena come playoff time — “Who is that number 23?” — they’re all icing on the cake.

But the 5-foot-10 Edward Bell senior guard doesn’t need to be told something he already knows very well to be true.

“I don’t think I can be guarded by any high school player,” Carr said. “At my height, at least.”

The player who scored 16 points in a quarter to keep the Bears’ season alive against Autaugaville.

The same one that hit six 3-pointers in his first Final Four game at the BJCC Arena, tying a 1A record.

The guy who scored 10 points in 85 seconds to help bring Edward Bell back from 13 down in the championship game against J.F. Shields.

The Opelika-Auburn News boys Player of the Year: Damien Carr.

“Confidence is not an issue,” Bears coach Mitch Joiner said.

After scoring 19.3 points per game as a junior, Carr struggled in the early part of the season.

But he found his stroke in a big way about 10 games in, scoring a combined 61 points in two games against defending state champion
Loachapoka and punishing everyone else for the rest of the season with repeated displays of lights-out shooting.

A small sampling: the 3-point play he completed at Loachapoka when he was fouled from behind during the shot and turned to get a look at who was fouling him as he swished a 15-footer; the 4-point play he completed against J.F. Shields, in which he scrambled for a loose ball in the corner, rose up for a 3, had his legs cut out from under him and found nothing but net while falling flat on his face, the second-best play of the
Final Four according to al.com.

Carr used the regional and state playoffs as his coming-out party, averaging 24.0 points over four games and dazzling spectators.

Over the span of 19:34 in those four games — about two and a half quarters — Carr put up 56 points.

“Now, Shields stuck him good,” Joiner said of Carr’s 24-point performance in the state finals. “If they didn’t stop him from scoring, they really aggravated him. But nobody else did.”

That’s because, for as hard as Carr worked honing that unorthodox jump shot since he was small, he spent just about as much time running from double- and triple-teams to free himself up to shoot it.

All throughout the year, Joiner knew what assignment to give to his players if he wanted them to work hard in scrimmage.

Stop Damien.

“Sometimes I get breathless and go to another person and tell them to guard him while I get my breath,” senior teammate Cobe Bowens said. “I just like the competition, for real.”

Carr averaged 20.9 points per game this season — putting his point total at 989 for the past two years — and nailed 93 3-pointers, or 3.4 per game.

Most of the time, it was an unconscious thing, something Carr couldn’t really explain: see the basket, hit the absolute bottom of the net.

“I just feel it, like any other great player,” Carr said after his record-tying performance in the state semifinals. “We just make shots. That’s what we do.”

Carr will most likely be making shots at the next level next year and, as his star keeps rising with tryouts and All-Star games, he could be doing it in Division I.

It would be quite a journey from his little corner of Tallapoosa County.

“(Carr’s) the best that’s ever been at this school,” Joiner said after the Bears’ region title. “He’s the best I’ve seen in 16 years.”

But you don’t have to tell him that.

dmorrison@oanow.com | 737-2568