Greene senior Dan Carlin will not wow you with gaudy statistics in the box score. A look down the line at his scoring totals, and you see a lot of 13s, 14s, 15s, and 16s. To the math geeks out there, his standard of deviation is small. For a basketball coach, that is simply the epitome of consistency.
Greene’s basketball team is in the hunt for its first Midstate Athletic Conference division title. Heading into the weekend, the Trojans are tied with Walton and Sidney for the top spot. The playoff race will sort itself out over the next few days, but it is safe to conclude Greene would not be in this position with Carlin’s multi-layered contributions.
“He does all the little things that you don’t see in the box score,” said Greene head coach Jeff Paske. “He’ll get us a big rebound or steal, draw a charge, score a big basket, and he also leads our team in assists.”
The Trojans are built on balanced scoring and a team concept where any one of its players could be the star on any given night. On a team that has plenty of versatility, Carlin is Mr. Versatility, and he is this week’s Smith Ford LLC/Evening Sun Athlete of the Week.
“It was the same type of thing on the football field,” Paske said of Carlin. “He would run the ball, catch a pass, block or even throw a pass. He’s a talented athlete and our most consistent player.”
By the numbers, Carlin averages 12 points a game, 4.0 rebounds, 3.5 assists, 1.8 steals, and leads his team in two-point field goals and charges drawn. Perhaps the most consequential statistic is his total minutes played. Before Wednesday night’s contest against Walton, Carlin averaged 27.5 minutes per game, or nearly four minutes a game more than any other player on the 12-6 Trojans. Typically, the most valuable players log the most minutes, and by that standard, Carlin is eminently valuable.
“He worked hard on his game in the offseason,” Paske said. “He’s a level-headed kid with a great attitude, and he’s really worked at it. We’re getting the ball to him in good places this season, and he’s finishing strong.”
Carlin, as one of the team’s senior captains, laid the groundwork for this season early on. He stepped in to take one of his several charges, and the play fired up his team. “That play kind of set the tone for our team,” Paske said. “When a captain does that, other kids take notice, and see that his effort is there. He had a lot of friends that graduated last year, but he’s grown with these guys and he likes them all a lot.”
And the formula for winning is not new to this group of Trojans. Many played on the sectional finalist football team – including Carlin – and a winning soccer team that is consistently in the division title hunt. This is a group that knows how to win, and more significantly, expects to win. “Dan and the rest of the team have tasted success, and it has carried over to the winter,” Paske said. “I wasn’t sure what we were going to get from Dan this year. He’s a great athlete and I thought it would show at some time. This year it’s really worked out, and he’s come through for us.”