“Watch this. He’s going to block it.”
Marcus Mason was sitting 10 rows above the court at the Auraria Event Center on Saturday night as he watched Derrick White, the player he has helped train since White was in seventh grade, commit a turnover.
The ball ended up in the hands of a Metro State guard, who had what appeared to be a clear path to the basket. White, a CU-Colorado Springs guard, trailed the play by a half-dozen steps.
“He’s going to block it,” Mason repeated.
As the rowdy Metro State crowd prepared to erupt, White leaped from just inside the free-throw line, fully extending his 6-foot-5 frame and swatting the ball away from the unsuspecting Metro State player just before he released it to the rim.
Mason flashed a knowing smile. White had come out of nowhere. But then again, that’s what he’s been doing his entire career.
“He didn’t pass the eye test,” Mason said. “So he got snubbed a little bit.”
White, a former standout at Parker’s Legend High School, is one of the best college basketball players in Colorado, regardless of division.
All he has done in three seasons at CU-Colorado Springs is break the school career and season scoring records, lead the Mountain Lions to their best two seasons in history and put himself in the conversation for Division II national player of the year.
White’s average of 24.5 points per game is fourth-best in Division II this season. He has CU-Colorado Springs eyeing a deep postseason run, beginning Tuesday with an RMAC Shootout home game against Colorado Mesa.
But before all that, White was just hopeful he would get an opportunity to play college basketball anywhere. Outside of a junior college in Wyoming, there originally were no suitors for a player who averaged 17 points during his senior season at Legend.
White wasn’t physically equipped, recruiters said, to play at the next level.
“Everyone who has been around Derrick knew how special he was,” said White’s coach at Legend, Kevin Boley. “It was people who looked from afar who would see that skinny body and just think, ‘There’s no way.’ “
As White watched players he had long competed and thrived against gain recruiting attention, frustration grew.
“I always kind of knew that I could play at the next level, but when everybody starts to doubt you, you kind of get that little bit of doubt in your mind as well,” White said. “So I just tried to stay as confident as I could, and big things started happening.”
Jeff Culver, who had seen White up close when he was the coach at Johnson and Wales in Denver, thought enough of the guard’s skill to take a chance on him. So when Culver was hired in 2012 to take over the struggling CU-Colorado Springs program, he brought the skinny kid from Parker down Interstate 25 with him.
White made an immediate impact, leading the Mountain Lions in scoring in five of their first six games. By the end of the season, he was the RMAC freshman of the year. As a sophomore, he led CU-Colorado Springs to a school-record 21 wins and was runner-up for league player of the year. This season as a junior, White has become an even better player, averaging 7.3 rebounds, 4.9 assists, 2.4 steals and 1.8 blocks while shooting 54 percent from the field and leading the Mountain Lions to a school-record 23 wins.
“He has no weaknesses,” said Mason, a former University of Denver assistant coach who runs the Nothing But Net skills academy in Parker. “So it’s hard to game plan for him because he can make shots, he can get to the rim, he’s an athlete. He has great court vision if he gets double-teamed. So for a coach, it’s really hard to say, ‘We’re just going to do this to stop him.’ “
The buzz that didn’t exist when White was in high school certainly does now. He received overtures from Division I schools last summer to make the jump to major-college basketball.
White, though, is content to keep building. In fact, he’s been the foundation. He was a member of Legend’s first basketball team, and during his senior season the school was only a shot away from the state quarterfinals.
Last season, he led CU-Colorado Springs to its first NCAA Tournament berth. Now, there are more steps to take.
“This is an opportunity that Coach Culver and the coaching staff down here gave me that no other colleges were willing to give,” White said. “I just wanted to stick with it and continue to break records down here and just build something down here.”
Nick Kosmider: 303-954-1516, nkosmider@denverpost.com or
