Carter Skaggs enjoys return to Berry Bowl
May 21—His 3-point shooting has taken him around the world but Carter Skaggs was right back at home at the Berry Bowl this past weekend.
The 2015 LHS grad was playing as a member of the Lebanon Leprechauns, a team from The Basketball League, a professional league that began in 2018. The league consists of 38 teams from around the nation. The Leprechauns compete in the Midwest Division.
The City of Logansport hosted two games this weekend at the Berry Bowl. The Leprechauns lost to the Derby City Distillers of Louisville, Kentucky 143-133 Friday before turning around and beating the Glass City Wranglers of Toledo, Ohio 130-115 Saturday.
"I never thought in my wildest dreams I'd be playing two real games again in the Berry Bowl, almost 10 years out of high school," Skaggs said. "So it was an awesome experience."
Skaggs had 15 points on 5 of 12 shooting from 3 with six rebounds Friday night. He had 19 points on 5 of 13 shooting from distance with five rebounds Saturday night.
He was cooking and had 16 points late in the second quarter Saturday night before he injured his ankle. He had three points in limited minutes in the second half.
"I tweaked my ankle pretty good there at the end of the first half. I told them I was good to go. I'll probably be glad tomorrow I didn't try to push it but obviously I wanted to be out there," he said.
The 6-foot-6 guard is averaging 12.5 ppg and shooting 43% from 3 for the Leprechauns this season.
"We've played everywhere from West Virginia to St. Louis, Louisville, Cincinnati, we got to play a couple games in Canada's top league which was really cool. So it's just enjoyable to continue to get to play," Skaggs said.
Skaggs, 28, also taught PE at West Lafayette this spring.
"It's different from the fact that I've got to go work a day job where I'm used to having it be my fulltime job," he said. "So that's been a big change but it's still awesome to get to play and compete even at this level absolutely."
Skaggs said that his father, Pat Skaggs, recently took a job at Attica as the head boys basketball coach. Pat Skaggs last coached at Logansport, where he went 104-34 from 2013-19 and won an outright NCC title in 2017. His win percentage of .754 is the best in program history.
Carter said his dad is retiring from teaching but is restarting his coaching career.
"Right now he is the PE teacher at Tecumseh which feeds into Lafayette Jeff. But he is in his last year, he's going to retire from teaching," he said. "So he won't have to teach. So he took a job there at Attica and I'm going to hopefully teach there, me and Sam are both going to help him out. I'm going to be the boys golf coach.
"My parents live on the south side of Lafayette so it's only 20 minutes from Attica."
Skaggs scored 1,587 points in his high school career — 773 in two years at Pioneer and 814 in two years at Logansport. He made 252 career 3-pointers and graduated seventh all-time in Indiana boys basketball history. He went on to play college basketball at Washington State where he averaged 7.2 ppg and made over 100 3-pointers in two seasons.
He has played professional basketball in Perth, Australia, Kutaisi, Georgia and Montevideo, Uruguay. He's looking to continue his playing career but is also in the midst of transitioning to coaching as well.
"I was in Australia, then I was in Eastern Europe and then I was in South America this summer. So I've been all over," he said. "I was in Uruguay this summer. I want to continue to play if the opportunity presents itself. But that's a great opportunity to have also."
