Canyon Barry was averaging 19.7 points, tops in the Colonial Athletic Conference, last season, when he suffered a season-ending shoulder injury.
Brains, Basketball, Bloodlines: Barry Brings Much to Table
Wednesday, October 5, 2016 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
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The youngest son of NBA legend Rick Barry, by way of College of Charleston, was rated as the No. 1 graduate transfer prospect last spring.
By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The scouting report on Canyon Barry proved accurate. Unsolved Rubik's cubes, indeed, were a pet peeve of the new Florida swingman. He sees one, he needs to fix it.
Such a cube (maybe not so coincidentally) showed up at a recent Gators hoops workout. He grabbed it.
"I haven't done it in a while, so I'm kind of rusty," Barry said as he flipped the three-dimensional puzzle through his hands lickety-split, noting the toy must be new. "It's not really broken in. It's going to cost me some time."
It did. Took him 56.7 seconds.
"Not great," Barry shrugged. "Like I said, kind of rusty."
The puzzle that is the UF basketball team won't be solved nearly as quickly or by just one player. Fact is, the 2016-17 basketball Gators have a pretty talented and balanced roster. Four starters are back, plus another three guys who took turns with the front-line unit when the team went 21-15 last season, tied for eighth place in the Southeastern Conference with a 9-9 mark, and finished the year one game shy of the NIT semifinals. It was in that collection of players — along with second-year UF coach Mike White and his staff — that Barry saw the best fit for his all-around game and all-academic background. In May, the nation's top-ranked graduate-transfer prospect, by way of the College of Charleston, signed to play his fifth and final season at Florida in hopes of helping the Gators to their first NCAA Tournament berth since 2014.
Barry, the 6-foot-6, 215-pounder who picked UF over Miami and Northwestern, figures to be a popular topic for the scribes and paparazzi when the Gators hold their annual media day Thursday afternoon at the basketball complex. On the Q&A front, there will be no shortage of subject matter. His legendary NBA father Rick Barry. His Hall-of-Fame mother Lynn. His four Division I-playing half-brothers. His upbringing in Colorado. His stature as a high school valedictorian. The fact he led the Colonial Athletic Conference in scoring at the time of a season-ending injury last January. His unconventional yet deadly underhanded free-throw shooting. His diverse background in athletics and music. His pursuit of a master's degree in nuclear engineering. Maybe even his affinity for the Rubik's Cube.
"We really liked everything about him," White said.
And vice versa.
"My goal was to go to a place and experience big-time college basketball and have a chance to make the NCAA Tournament. I believe we have a great shot at that here, I really do," Barry said. "Yes, there are definitely expectations for me, coming in as a fifth-year senior; someone touted as the best transfer out there; someone with the reputation as a scorer. But the biggest thing — for me and for every guy on this team — will be putting aside egos and personal goals and coming together. I'm going to do my part."
Basketball in the blood Rick Barry was named one of the 50 greatest player in NBA history.
Barry, out of Colorado Springs, Colo., signed with CofC in 2011, redshirted there as a true freshman, then went on to average 12.8 points in 70 games over the next four years, including 19.7 in his injury-shortened junior year when he shot 34.4 percent from the 3-point line and made 84.5 percent of his free throws.
But Barry's game is about more than numbers. It's also about how he thinks it and how he gets his teammates to think it.
These are nuances he was born with.
"Obviously, he has the basketball bloodlines," his father said.
Rick Barry was MVP of the 1975 NBA Finals, leading Golden State to a world championship and eventually was voted one of the 50 greatest players in league history. Lynn Barry scored 1,500 points and was inducted into the William & Mary Athletic Hall of Fame as both a basketball and track star, becoming the first female in school history to have her jersey number retired. Half-brothers Scooter (Kansas), Jon (Georgia Tech), Brent (Oregon State) and Drew (Georgia Tech) all played D-I and professional basketball, with the middle two being first-round NBA draft picks.
Even with all that, Canyon being destined for the hardwood was never a given. He had the mini-hoop in the driveway. Together, the Barry family would tune the television to NBA games to watch Brent and Drew, with little Canyon wondering why his brothers wouldn't wave to him.
But there also were soccer and lacrosse games, tennis matches, water sports and orchestra (Canyon played the euphonium) before the basketball became inevitable.
"We introduced him to a lot of things," Lynn said. "Basketball was something he chose because he loved it."
Despite his family's background, Canyon Barry wasn't just a basketball player while growing up in Colorado Springs.
Both parents remember sitting in the bleachers when Canyon, then a second-grader, played his first YMCA game. He was running up the floor when a teammate passed him the ball. Without taking a dribble, Canyon instantly passed the ball up the court to a teammate.
Rick and Lynn turned to each other. They knew.
He had it.
"At that point, it became a matter of putting in the time and committing to it," Rick said.
Canyon was just 5-8, 98 pounds with big, clumsy feet his freshman year of high school. His body didn't start evening out until junior year, his first season on the varsity squad at Cheyenne High. The team was OK his two years there. Just good enough to make the playoffs and lose early. Barry, though, had plenty of other things going on. He was an Eagle Scout, a state champion in both tennis (doubles) and badminton, triple-jumped on the state-champion track team, played volleyball, did his euphonium thing in the Concert Band and Wind Ensemble, was valedictorian of the Cheyenne Class of '12, and was honored by the state Rotary Club for exceptional character, scholarship, leadership, service and athletic achievement.
Along the way, academics were always a priority. His core group of friends (all of them Rubik's wizards, by the way) affectionately were dubbed "The Nerd Herd" by his mother.
"I bounced around to a lot of things," Barry said. "The one thing I really enjoyed about growing up was not being a single-sport, single-activity kind of kid."
As such, Barry wasn't highly sought as a basketball player, but his renaissance ways weren't the lone culprit. Aside from being a late bloomer (like all his brothers), he played for four coaches in four years. Though he went on to average 17.2 points and 4.8 rebounds as a senior, Colorado and Colorado State never bit. Denver U came around, but not for long. Air Force loved Barry's academic background, but he wasn't interested in doing the military academy thing.
It was through a third party that the family was told to give College of Charleston a look. The Barrys knew nothing about it. Or so they thought.
"You know," the family friend said, "Coach Cremins is there."
That would be Bobby Cremins, the famous and former Georgia Tech coach who turned both Jon and Drew into Yellow Jackets. Rick didn't know Cremins was still coaching. He picked up the phone and called Charleston. The conversation was short and went something like this:
"Bobby, I got another one for you."
"I'll take him, sight unseen."
The family visited. Canyon loved the campus, the city, the college, the coach and signed early. Unfortunately, Cremins resigned following the 2011-12 season due to health reasons.
Late-bloomer
When Barry showed up at CofC in the fall of 2012, there was an all new staff. One of the assistants was Jordan Mincy, now on White's staff at UF.
"I can honestly say, in the short time I've been coaching he's one of the few kids I've ever seen and said, 'Oh man, he's not going to make it,' " Mincy recalled. "I figured he was just there because of his father's name. But then we put him on the scout team, even played him at point guard, and he was unbelievable. The turnaround he made from the beginning of the year to the middle of the year was phenomenal."
What really impressed Mincy was the way Barry saw and thought the game. It all seemed natural to him, yet very simple. Knowing the timing of a screen. Seeing a backside pin-down coming. Letting plays develop. Waiting that extra second to cut to the basket.
"The things you try to teach as a coach, he already knew," Mincy said. "His game is different than these other guys that play now. It's an old-school, old man's kind of game."
The "old man," obviously, had something to do with it.
Said Rick: "Sometimes it's worse to know the game like I know it because you know everything that's going on; right or wrong, offense and defense. But out of all my boys, he's the first who I've actually gotten to play more aggressively. Canyon can really get to the basket, and I'm excited that part of his game is starting to come out. He has the ability to get by people and that makes your team better. If you can drive by people you're going to score, going to see open guys, going to get fouled."
And when he gets fouled, especially the first few times on the SEC road, it's going to be fun.
At 89.98 percent, Rick Barry ranks fourth in NBA history in free-throw percentage — only Steve Nash, Mark Price and Stephen Curry rate better — and he shot them in the so-called "Granny Style." As in two hands, underhanded. For years, Barry tried to convince his sons to do it his way. Brent tried it for a while, but went back.
Scooter said it best: "Hey Dad, it's hard enough to be your son, much less have to shoot underhanded free throws."
Heading into his junior year of high school, Canyon committed to making the switch. He got weird looks. He got catcalls. Once, after missing a pair he was serenaded with a chant of, "YOU'RE A-DOP-TED!"
"Actually, that was pretty funny," Lynn admitted.
Another time, Barry knocked down a couple free throws and began jogging back on defense. One of the official asked him, "Who do you think you are, Rick Barry?"
The kid's comeback: "No, but he's my dad and he's sitting up there right now."
His father gave Canyon the underhanded training at an early age, but it wasn't until junior year of high school that he went so-called "Granny Style" full time.
Barry was a plus-70-percent conventional free-throw shooter and hovered around the same digits for a few years — 72.9 underhanded his first two seasons at CofC — before making the jump to 84.5 his third season. The Gators, who as a team ranked 12th in the SEC last season at 64.7 percent, will welcome such efficiency however it's delivered.
"I'm sure I'll hear it when we play Duke at Madison Square Garden or when we go to Kentucky and some of those other places, but silencing the crowd is part of the fun of college basketball," Barry said. "They can't really say anything if you're making them."
One more year
Three games into his junior season at CofC, Barry was averaging 28 points. He had 19 in an upset of LSU and eventual No. 1 overall NBA pick Ben Simmons. When he hit five 3s against Campbell just before Christmas it marked the third time he'd hit 30, but he dislocated his shoulder late in the game when his arm got intangled with an opponent's while playing defense. For the next two games, Barry tried to play through the pain, but it was too much. He needed surgery that ended his season and, as it turned out, his Charleston career.
Knowing he was going to transfer, all that was left was finishing the work toward his degree in physics and minor in math. Barry graduated with a 4.0 grade-point average. His final-semester senior project involved working with a nanomaterial called graphene. An article in College of Charleston Magazine described the work like this:
"We used atomic-force microscopy and nano-identification to characterize the material's properties, such as stiffness. We started by using DVD burner reduction to convert graphene oxide to graphene, which is pretty hands-on work in the lab."
So, grasping the Gators' motion offense concepts shouldn't be a problem.
Barry was leaning UF from the outset of his search, but truly fell for the place when got to see the nuclear reactor — the only university reactor in the state — in the UF Neutronics Lab.
"He's different, man," Mincy said.
So is his game.
Barry will be in the mix to start at the small forward spot. \
So is his game.
"I think he's going to be a good player," senior forward Justin Leon said. "He can really shoot it and pass it. He already has a lot of experience, which is something we needed, and he just knows how to play out there. He's going to be a leader for us."
Florida's first official practice of the preseason was Monday. The Gators went a brutal 2 1/2 hours, with heavy emphasis on running. When it came time for the scrimmage portions, Barry missed a bevy of open shots. Too many. He looked to Mincy a couple times for support; maybe even a touch of sympathy.
Mincy wasn't playing.
"Hey man, this ain't mid-major no more," Mincy snapped. "You're in the SEC now. You're a hired gun. Make a shot!"
On Tuesday, Barry did. He did a little bit of everything. Pretty well, in fact.
"I know I can help the team in a variety of ways, whether it's scoring or rebounding or passing or leading or just cheering," Barry said. "But more than anything, I just want to win. That's why I came here."
The first regular-season game is still nearly six weeks away. Barry wants to immerse himself in what may (or may not be) his final season playing a game he loves. If pro basketball doesn't happen, Barry figures to have some options to fall back on.
But for now, he just wants 2016-17 to be a season like none he's ever had.
"He's really intelligent, really knows the game," Mincy said. "Won't take him long to pick up on the speed of the game, size of these guys and figure things out."
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