Mock drafts predict he will be taken as a lottery pick this year. Pro scouts laud him as an athletic phenomenon – a human highlight reel waiting to happen.
On Feb. 18, he parked right down Freret Street and mangled the Tulane Green Wave in a Conference USA game with a game-high 24 points. He made all four of his 3-pointers and had three plays primed for SportsCenter in 18 minutes of play for the Memphis Tigers.
“This is the deepest team I’ve had since the 1994 UMASS team,” said Coach John Calipari, alluding to an Elite Eight squad which starred Marcus Camby. “We’re 11 men deep,” he said of his No. 3 Tigers.
As Calipari marshals his ship of championship contenders, the most potent asset he can rely on: master and commander Rodney Carney.
“That’s the best we’ve played all year,” said Calipari of his team’s 105-65 drubbing of the Green Wave. “They never had a chance.”
Not the way Rodney Carney played for Memphis, a perfect 10-0 in C-USA and 24-2 overall. The Tigers’ losses are to Duke and Texas, both contenders for No. 1 seeds in the national tournament.
It took 2:28 for him to concoct a jaw-dropping play. Memphis point guard Darius Washington drove to the goal, drawing Carney’s defender to him. He passed to an unbridled Carney, who knifed through the Tulane zone and spacewalked from a mile away.
He tomahawked it through the rim.
Later in the half, as is with most great players, he was in the right place at the right time. Washington stole the ball from Ryan Williams of Tulane at halfcourt; it bulleted to Carney’s hands. He bounced it to his running mate Washington on the fast break. Washington tapped it back to the sender, and again, Carney spacewalked a kilometer.
He rattled the rim, thundered down to the hard court.
Carney showed he belonged in the same breath as J.J. Redick and Adam Morrison. He has been left out of the conversation because he doesn’t play the minutes Redick and Morrison do in a game or score as many points as college basketball’s two darlings.
“Gonzaga and Duke are built so that they need them to score a ton of points. But with me, my team’s so deep, I don’t need to play 30, 35 minutes to win. I can play 25, maybe 20, and we’ll still win,” said Carney.
And win big. “We’re different players, on different teams, in different situations.”
But it all goes back to depth, for coach and star.
“We’re chasing greatness. I’m not looking for the best start, I’m looking for the best finish,” Calipari said.
The lauded defensive prowess of Carney, from an eyeshot, doesn’t really dazzlingly stand out when cast against the defense the cast around him is able to play.
“We’re so talented, so deep, we may not have even scratched the surface of how much we can get done, what we’re capable of,” Carney said.
The Tigers’ depth, Calipari said, can carry them past a lot of adversity in March.
“We got a good chance of cracking the Final Four.”
And when the others miss a beat or ice up a little, Calipari knows he can hike Carney’s minutes and let the human highlight reel do what he does – whether its decimating the morale of a team trying to stay in the game or pulling defeat from the jaws in grand style.
Ramon Vargas can be reached at [email protected].
