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Anthony Harris collected a pass from his left behind the 3-point line. Playing in his first collegiate game, he faked right, then drove straight toward the basket. He dribbled three times with his head down and jumped to attempt a floater four feet from the free-throw line. In midair, Harris switched the ball to his left hand, realizing Virginia’s Mamadi Diakite was primed to snatch the ball away. He lifted the ball and guided it toward the basket.

With UNC 10 points behind Virginia with 55 seconds left in the game, Harris’s full-throttle possession was too little too late. But the redshirt freshman only knows one style of play.

“He goes so hard,” Harris’ high school head coach Glenn Farello said. “If you ever watch him play, he’s going out there every play like his hair’s on fire.”

Harris’s aggressive approach to basketball stems from a combination of his father, “Big Ant,” who is also a basketball coach, and the way Farello coaches his Paul VI Catholic (Virginia) varsity team. Harris came to Paul VI with the raw talent and energy of a star. Farello just had to put it all together.

In his junior year, Harris averaged 12.9 points per game en route to a Washington Catholic Athletic Conference title. He was looking to repeat the same success, to finish out his final year in high school on top, to put himself in the best position to fulfill his dream of playing at the collegiate level.

Then injury struck. Harris tore his left ACL just one month into his senior season. The 6-foot-4 guard’s future became unclear. The Virginia native who had offers from six different Atlantic Coast Conference schools now found himself rehabilitating an injury, but still kept the same energy he had on the court. 

“That takes a special mentality, a special person, not only to handle that physically but the mental challenge that it presents,” Farello said.

He wasn’t just missing out on his final year with Paul VI, though. Harris was a member of Team Takeover of the Nike Elite Youth Basketball League, one of the most prestigious, winningest programs in AAU history. His 2018-19 team won the Peach Jam Classic in South Carolina. He played alongside 12 other players, who all now play for Division I programs. 

Their coach was Keith Stevens, who has manned the club since 2008 and was dubbed by The Washington Post as “the new power broker of D.C. area basketball.” Team Takeover has produced such players as Victor Oladipo, Erick Green, SU graduate Jerami Grant and now Harris.

“Like everybody else, he had a part (in creating) the atmosphere that really made us one of the best programs to come through AAU at EYBL,” former teammate EJ Jarvis, who now plays for Yale, said of Harris.

Armando Bacot, who was Harris’ teammate for Team Takeover and now at UNC, won the MVP of the Peach Jam tournament, but Harris averaged 8.2 points per game, stemming from his 43% clip from behind the arc.

Anthony Harris’ AAU team in high school was composed of twelve players. All twelve went on to play for Division I schools in college. Courtesy of UNC Athletics.

Harris does more than cover all 94 feet on defense or push the break on offense. His “hair-on-fire” attitude extends to how he is off the court, a place he finds all too familiar from his injuries. Farello said he cheered on his team just about as hard as he played. 

“He was an energy guy,” Jarvis said. “He got people going when the gym was quiet in practice.”

Despite not playing his senior year, Harris decommitted from Virginia Tech and signed with UNC after touring Chapel Hill in April. He missed the first eight games of his freshman year recovering from his ACL injury, but was cleared to play for the Tar Heels’ Dec. 8 game against Virginia. In his first collegiate game, he went 2-2 from midrange and finished with four points. It was a far cry from his high school career that led to him becoming the fourth-best prospect from Virginia, but he still played at the same high-octane level he’s used to.

“It’s been fun to see him kind of make an impact when so many players are struggling because it’s hard to get a rhythm (during the pandemic),” Farello said.

Harris played 61 minutes in five games his freshman year before tearing his ACL again — this time his right — and for the second consecutive year, his season was abruptly cut short.

Both injuries stunned his teammates. Both times they put their arms around him and embraced him. “Like a community,” Jarvis said. But Jarvis and others saw the social media posts of Harris’ physical therapy and gradually climbed back to full strength, culminating in photos like those posted on his Instagram in July with the hashtag #Back&Better.

Due to the early-season injury, Harris was able to obtain a medical redshirt to retain an extra year of eligibility. This season, he’s played in 10 games with limited minutes, averaging 2.8 points and less than a rebound per game. Head coach Roy Williams is restricting his minutes as he recovers from his second injury.

One word came to mind for Jarvis when he saw Harris’ recovery process. “Resilience … it’s that type of attitude that I think really just pushed him to be better.”

Published on February 28, 2021 at 11:53 pm

Contact Anthony: [email protected] | @anthonyalandt