Athlete of the Week | Aurora senior Cooper Carnahan embraces return to basketball

It's been a surprise season at the Greenhouse.

After winning just three games last year, Aurora entered this week with 11.

Cooper Carnahan has been at the center of that turnaround — literally.

The Record-Courier Athlete of the Week is averaging a double-double (15.8 points, 10.8 rebounds) for the upstart Greenmen, including a recent 28-point outing against Highland.

It's all the more remarkable considering Carnahan, a senior, hadn't come out for basketball since his freshman season. He's a varsity newcomer shining on a bright new stage. Moreover, he's doing so at a position he's never played before. When he was a freshman, he was roughly 5-9, so he played guard. By the time his friends convinced him to return to the court, he stood 6-4 and was needed at center.

It was all a shot in the dark, and something his friends convinced him to try after focusing on football the past couple of years at Aurora.

"A lot of the guys on the team were my friends, my buddies, my best friends," Carnahan said. "So they told me, 'Hey, we wouldn't mind having you play. Just come out, you're tall, see how you do,' and then I liked it a little bit."

After a January win at Roosevelt, Carnahan reflected on the experience of playing varsity basketball for the first time — with the fans perched far closer to the student-athletes than they are at Veterans Stadium.

"I love it," Carnahan said. "It's just like everyone's talking to you. You're talking back, but not with your mouth, but with the game, and it's just a whole lot of fun to be out there."

Cooper Carnahan's return to the hardwood

Cody Calhoun will never forget when he first laid eyes on Cooper Carnahan.

It was over the summer and the Aurora coach was just getting to know his new team after spending the past several seasons coaching at Rootstown.

Calhoun recalled his excitement upon watching Carnahan walk into the gym.

"We don't have 6-4 walking around our gym very much," Calhoun said. "The first time, he grabs the ball out of the ball rack, introduces himself to us, shoots about a 30-footer that goes about five feet short, straight out of bounds, and we go, 'Oh no, who is this kid?'"

Fortunately, that first shot proved to be an aberration.

Carnahan might not have been Steph Curry, as that first shot indicated, but he quickly demonstrated clear value for the Greenmen.

"As we started getting up and down a little bit, we're like, 'All right, this kid's going to be a player. If he works hard to get better, he's going to be a player for us,'" Calhoun said. "From there on, I mean literally after the first day, he was 100 percent into what we were doing. He's a great kid, great student with a bright future ahead of him."

Cooper Carnahan's unique skill set

There was a moment in Kent that quite frankly took one's breath away.

The Greenmen were holding onto a one-point lead with roughly three minutes remaining when they plucked out a steal and sent the ball to Carnahan approaching the timeline. He just took off, long legs churning up the floor, before gracefully tossing in a layup.

"I like to have the ball, so it kind of just feels natural going with it," Carnahan said. "I feel like I just got in the zone there in the second half and I felt like I was in control of it for the first time that game and it just felt natural to go up strong there."

Most 6-4 posts don't run the break like that.

But Cooper Carnahan isn't your average 6-4 post. Carnahan's game is naturally varied given his past as a guard.

Indeed, it's his post play that has taken the most work, Calhoun said.

"We've had to work on his footwork a lot," Calhoun said. "Just even drop steps and hook shots, but he's put the time in and he's bought into it. And we're not going to just throw him on the block, but when he gets it down there he's got to be able to go make a move."

While Calhoun sometimes needs Carnahan to be a pure post, the Greenmen have embraced his versatility. Indeed, Carnahan frequently perched on the perimeter during that game at Roosevelt, looking over the defense and sending crisp passes to his teammates.

The duality of his game gives him options.

When he struggled early in the post against the Rough Riders, Carnahan found himself on the break and the perimeter. Calhoun was particularly pleased with his perseverance — an ability to bounce back from tough games and tough halves well beyond his minimal years on the hardwood.

"I think every guy in the locker room believes when Cooper Carnahan gets the ball by the rim, they're OK with him going up strong," Calhoun said. "And for him to bounce back like that after struggling the first half and to make big play after big play down the stretch just speaks to the growth that he's had mentally and physically as a player throughout the year."

This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: Meet Athlete of the Week Cooper Carnahan of Aurora boys basketball