The Hidden Rise Of Chase McCarty — Attacking His Redshirt Season at Houston, Getting Pro Game Lessons In Russia & Sampson Changing

Some people do No-Shave November or Dry January. Chase McCarty did 1,000 Shot February. The University of Houston’s versatile shooting guard/small forward/potential sometime stretch four committed to making one thousand shots every day of the month last winter. That is one of the ways McCarty challenged himself during his redshirt first season in Kelvin Sampson’s elite UH program. So you’d see McCarty shooting long after practice. Early in the morning. After games on the Fertitta Center court using a shooting machine to rebound for him.

Anything to stay sharp. Anything to improve while he waited for his time, his chance to get on the court.

“For sure, I feel like I got a ton better,” Chase McCarty tells PaperCity. “Just watching and learning in practice. I got a ton better and I’ll be able to show it this next year.”

McCarty’s excitement for this season, the followup to UH’s remarkable run to the national championship game that included wins over four different elite programs (Gonzaga, Purdue, Tennessee and Duke), is palpable. He texted his father Kelly McCarty, a former longtime pro player in Russia and Israel, the other day to report that he finished tied for first on the VersaClimber (one of the devilish workouts that director of sports performance Alan Bishop puts the UH players through during summer training) for the day. Chase McCarty treasures every chance to compete after sitting out last season. And he knows his chance to contribute is here.

Houston returns its long bombing Iceman Emanuel Sharp (40.7 percent shooting from three) and point guard Milos Uzan (42.8 percent from three), but with LJ Cryer and Terrance Arceneaux both gone and a Fantastic Four freshmen class full of athleticism arriving, this new team is going to need much more sure shooting. McCarty fits right in there, making him one of the better bets to be one of the breakout players of the upcoming college basketball season.

At 6-foot-6 with a 7-foot-2 wingspan, Chase McCarty can get his shot off in all kinds of circumstances. The UH coaches picked McCarty to mimic Cooper Flagg on the scout team for several plays in the preparation for the Final Four showdown with Duke for good reason. For one, he’d make it difficult for Houston’s starters to block his shot and approximate the reach of the No. 1 NBA Draft pick to be (McCarty’s wingspan is actually two inches longer than the 6-foot-9 Flagg’s). Then McCarty got tagged with mimicking versatile 6-fo0t-7 Duke freshman star Kon Knueppel, another expected Top 7 NBA pick.

Chase McCarty’s long been a shot maker, used to facing down elite talent. When McCarty’s IMG Academy team played Dylan Harper’s Don Bosco Prep team in the City of Palms Classic during their senior years of high school, McCarty almost matched the expected No. 2 pick in Wednesday’s NBA Draft point for point. He’d finish with 26 points on 9 for 14 shooting from the field (including 5 of 8 from three).

“In high school, he’d have halves where he’d have six threes,” Kelly McCarty tells PaperCity of his son. “He and I would do this routine before every game, just a 3-point shooting routine from probably five spots. Shoot five of six different shots in every spot. He’d have to make them in a row before we’d move on.”

Kelly McCarty is a dad, but he’s not one to blow false smoke. He trains players for a living at his UWIN Training Facility in Huntsville, Alabama. He also an assistant coach in the NBA G League for the Iowa Wolves. This is someone who’s built a life around basketball, someone who tried to steer his son into other sports. Chase McCarty swam competitively until the eighth grade (his older sister Eboni was a second team All-American swimmer at the University of Georgia). Chase McCarty was a local soccer standout too, a goalie known for his booming clearing kicks that he aimed at the other net, all the way down the field. He tried tennis, football, baseball.

“Literally, he played every sport,” Kelly McCarty says. “The reason for that, we put him in everything besides basketball because I wanted him to develop a love of basketball organic. I didn’t want him to feel like because dad did it, he had to do it.”

“His conversation about the game totally changed. The verbiage. terminology he used was totally different. . .The way he talked about the game, the things he was saying I could tell he was changing. That he was developing.” — former pro player Kelly McCarty on his son Chase’s development at Houston

The Redshirt Decision

Chase McCarty wanted to commit to Sampson’s University of Houston program on the first day of his first visit, only his second college visit overall. He went to Ole Miss and then Houston and Chase McCarty’s mind was essentially made up, his future set. Even though his parents convinced him to go on other college visits to be absolutely sure. Chase McCarty never wavered in his love for Houston and its coaches though.

Which made Kelvin Sampson and former UH assistant Quannas White going to the McCartys about Chase redshirting before last season both easier and more difficult.

“We talked to his family last year and I said the best thing for him — in my opinion — is to redshirt,” Kelvin Sampson says. “Sometimes that gets the right response, sometimes it doesn’t. But you can’t be afraid to do the right thing. The right thing for Chase was to redshirt.”

Kelly McCarty and his wife Felicia bought in, helping reshape their son’s thinking around the move.

“I’m a believer in tough love and you work for everything you get,” Kelly McCarty says. “If he wasn’t ready, he wasn’t ready.

“. . . Let me say on the other side as a parent, that’s not an easy thing. That is tough to see your kid want to play and not get to play. But at the same time, I told Chase to look at it as you don’t have to redshirt, you get to redshirt. And I feel like the way he looked at it and approached it — if you look at it like I have to do this, that’s a burden mindset.

“. . . Where if you think of it as you get to, you start seeing the benefit of it. You’re on a Top 5 program in the country. You’re on a national championship contender. You’re being coached by one of the best coaches in college basketball ever. You’re playing against one of the best players every day in practice. You’re with the best strength coach. There’s a whole lot of benefit if you can look at it. If you take your eyes off of how hard it seems.”

Sometimes the best leaps happen in the shadows. Chase McCarty started attacking getting better, tried to turn practices into his games, strove to drive the starters crazy in the night-before-the-game practices with the rest of the scout team. That must-improve mindset has carried over to this summer.

“I want to work on my ball handling and my ability to beat defenders off the dribble,” Chase McCarty says.

Chase McCarty’s been working more with UH assistant coach Kellen Sampson this offseason and summer with guard whisperer Quannas White now the head coach at Louisiana. Sampson sees the jump too.

“Second year guys are sending their summer competing where as first year guys are spending their summer learning,” Kellen Sampson tells PaperCity. “When you can just focus on competing, everything is habitual and instinctual. Now your talent gets a chance to show.

“That’s certainly where (sophomore guard) Mercy (Miller) and Chase are at.”

Kelly McCarty started seeing the differences in his son during the redshirt season. It started with the way Chase talked about basketball. “His conversation about the game totally changed,” Kelly McCarty tells PaperCity. “The verbiage. terminology he used was totally different.

“Now he’s talking about direction, dictating ball screens and offensive rebounding and collapsing the floor. The way he talked about the game, the things he was saying I could tell he was changing. That he was developing. And then when I saw him and he and I worked out right after the season was over, he was just moving different.

“He had a sense of urgency in everything he did. The details mattered. And he wanted to know the why behind things. That let me know how much of a teacher Coach Sampson and his staff is.”

“For sure, I feel like I got a ton better. Just watching and learning in practice. I got a ton better and I’ll be able to show it this next year.” — UH redshirt freshman Chase McCarty

To Russia With Hoops Respect

Chase McCarty is already steeped in a culture of basketball, a worldwide network of hoopers in many ways. During his 14-year professional basketball career, Kelly McCarty crossed paths a number of hoop figures who became invested in his son’s progress. Kelly played against Emanuel Sharp’s dad Derrick in Israel and Derrick Sharp later became one of the first people Kelly called when Chase started getting recruited by Houston. During his long run in Russia, Kelly McCarty played for innovative future Cleveland Cavaliers coach David Blatt and took a young Timofey Mozgov under his wing.

McCarty would take Mozgov, who wasn’t making any money at the time, and a few other Russian teammates to a steakhouse in Moscow and pay for their meals. “They started seeing, ‘OK, this guy is not just another American,’ ” Kelly McCarty says. “He actually cares about us.”

Soon Kelly’s son Chase was regularly rebounding for Mozgov after practices. Now the former NBA center who won an NBA championship with the Cavaliers and had a memorable run with the Lakers is a major Chase McCarty fan, tracking his progress in Sampson’s program.

“If Chase is anywhere on the West Coast, if you look good enough, Mozgov will be there supporting him,” Kelly McCarty laughs.

You can add a former 7-foot-1 former NBA player and Russian National Team standout to the roster of people eager to see what Chase McCarty does at the University of Houston this college hoops season. Chase McCarty’s not just been bidding his time and waiting. He’s been getting better. No one jumped around with more enthusiasm on the bench during every big moment of UH’s run to the national championship game then McCarty, his long frame bopping like a man in a techno club. No one took scout team duties more seriously.

But now McCarty gets his shot.

“We feel the support of the city,” Chase McCarty tells PaperCity. “I can’t wait to get out there, give it my all for the Fertitta, for the family out here. And hopefully get back to the NCAA Championship.”

Chase McCarty’s chance is here, maybe his time too.

No outlet covers UH basketball throughout the entire calendar year with more consistency and focus than PaperCity Houston. For more of Chris Baldwin’s extensive, detailed and unique insider coverage of UH sports — stories you cannot read anywhere else, stay tuned. Follow Baldwin on the platform formerly known as Twitter here.