Wake Forest Athletics
100% COTTEN: GETTING TO THE POINT
10/27/2005 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Oct. 27, 2005
History has a way of repeating itself. And as Wake Forest celebrates 100 years of playing college basketball, senior guard Justin Gray has come full circle. Gray used to be a point guard. Then he wasn't. And now he is again.
With the start of the Deacs' 100th season as close as the three-point line must seem to Wake's senior from Charlotte, Gray will be the one out front with the ball in his hands as Wake Forest begins another assault on the ACC. And that's just fine with him.
"I'm happy," says Gray with a grin. "I've been asking for this opportunity for a long time - since I came here to Wake. Coach [Prosser] recruited me as a point guard, but the last two years my role has been as a shooting guard."
And a very good two guard he's been.
Gray has been All-ACC in each of the last two seasons. For his career his scoring average is just less than sixteen points a game, and he's dished out 241 assists - a stat that will be scrutinized more closely now that he's at the point. But Gray doesn't feel that his new job will necessarily be to find a happy medium between that of being primarily a scorer and the other of being the one who distributes the ball.
"My role is to win," Gray says - grin now gone from his face. "Coach is going to give me the ball before the game and tell me to handle it. If I have to pass, I'll pass. If I have to score, I'll score. Whatever it takes, that's what I'm going to try to do."
Gray doesn't have to step too far back in time to find his former self. He was a point guard for three seasons in high school at West Charlotte before playing the same position at powerhouse Oak Hill Academy. As a freshman at Wake Forest, he was the point guard understudy of Taron Downey. But then phenom Chris Paul arrived in town, and Gray got his new assignment: shoot it.
And he did, very well - at an all-league level in arguably the country's best basketball conference. Gray will enter his senior season as one of only seven Deacons ever to score 1,300 points, hand out 200 assists and accumulate 100 steals. But where he wants to stand out this season will be harder to measure, almost impossible for most of us to quantify.
"Most of all I'm just going to try to be a leader," Gray admits. "I need to be a guy that the rest of my teammates can get confidence from."
And there'll be plenty of Deacs, six to be exact, who have never bounced a ball as a Deacon in a game who will be looking for some direction. Normally it takes time for chemistry to develop on a team where there are so many new faces. Listening to Gray, one wonders if it will take this Wake Forest team long at all.
"It feels like I've been around these guys for a year already," says Gray. "With the summer, the guys get to come in, and we get used to them. You get to know what guys do. Our freshman group is really good, and we can't wait to get started."
Basketball getting started. A packed Joel Coliseum. Tie-Dye Nation. Isn't that the point?
