Retiring No. Jaycee Carroll, Stew Morrill and teammates reflect on one of USU’s best

Statesman: How do you feel about USU retiring Jaycee’s jersey?

Morrill: Well deserved, I mean, leading scorer in school history. Won a ton of games while he was playing just made a lot of sense to me. But you know, I grew up in Utah, so I’m very familiar with all of Utah State’s, or at least most of the Utah State’s basketball history. And the guys that are already have their jerseys retired, and there’s not very many of them, so he’s in a select group. And I was just pleased for him. And anytime you get an individual honor — and I used to always tell our players this — anytime you get an individual honor, it’s a refection of your team too, because all those good things don’t happen if you don’t have good teammates and guys willing to sacrifce to be successful.

Just had a fabulous career. I mean, as good of a pure shooter as I ever coached. And once when he was playing overseas, I heard someone say he’s one of the best shooters, if not the best shooter, in the world. And that’s quite a statement by him for someone to make, but he had an amazing athletic ability.

Statesman: How do you feel about USU retiring Jaycee’s jersey?

Statesman: Why did you choose to play at Utah State?

Carroll: Being a Wyoming kid, the University of Wyoming was probably number one on my list whether I knew it or not, subconsciously. I grew up watching them. Every one of my school teachers graduated from there. My dad graduated from there. I watched Midnight Madness.

Then when we got down to my senior year, I just — I didn’t hear from them very much, and fortunately, my basketball season fnished and spring break came. I didn’t, I hadn’t signed a scholarship or anything, so my family, we took a trip and we visited colleges. We stopped at Idaho State and walked in the offce and said, ‘I’m Jaycee Carroll. I want to play college basketball.’ And they said, ‘Great, go play with our guys right now. They’re playing pickup.’ So I went and played with them. Our next stop was Utah State, said, ‘Hey, come play pickup.’ And I played pickup with them.

And honestly the story is, well, I remember the very frst possession. I came off a down screen, caught the ball, shot a three and made it. You know, my frst experience against Division I college players and just did it, played, had a good time. And the story everybody told is that Brennan Ray went upstairs and told the coaches, ‘Hey, you should, you should get this kid.’ And we left. And we got a phone call and they said, ‘All right, look, we want to offer you a scholarship. We’ve offered it to you and one other person. Whoever says yes frst gets it.’ And so, it took me about an hour and a half. I called and said, ‘Hey, I want to come. I’d love to come.’ And that’s how I came to Utah State. I had seen them at a few of my games. We had talked a little bit, but that’s what, kind of how the offer happened. And then I saw coach (Randy) Rahe a few years later, I said, ‘Hey, who was the other guy?’ He said, ‘There was no one else, there was no one else we offered.’ So kind of an old recruiting trick I guess, but it got me here, and I defnitely don’t regret it.

Q: In your frst year, you kind of hit the ground running. I mean, awesome freshman season. What was that pressure like, and how were you able to manage it?

A: Honestly, I was just young and dumb enough that I didn’t feel the pressure. I just, as I came back from serving a mission, my attitude was if I didn’t go on a mission, this would be my junior year of college. I’m going to act like I’m a junior, I’m going to play like I’m a junior, I’m going to try to play junior year minutes. And that’s just the attitude I took from the very frst workout as a team, and I just kept going. Just kept going. I kind of kept it to myself, and we got to the frst preseason game. My parents are calling me, ‘Hey, should we come up? Should we come to the game? Do you think you’re going to play?’ And in my mind — I hadn’t been told, but I was like, ‘I think I might be starting, like I might be starting.’ So I told them, ‘Yeah, come up.’ And I didn’t tell them anything. Sure enough — started the game, I fnished with 29 points in my frst game. And they’re just like, ‘Well, why didn’t you say something?’ ‘I didn’t know. I didn’t know.’ So it was awesome. But that’s just kind of my attitude. I was going to play as if it was my junior year, and I just, I was just kind of dumb and naive enough that things didn’t worry me. I didn’t feel pressure. I just went out and tried to do what the coaches asked me to do.

Q: What ended up being your favorite memory that season? I mean, the Big West tournament went great.

A: Yeah, that’d be my favorite memory. Had a game where I made a bunch of 3-pointers, six or seven 3-pointers. And I tied Cardell Butler, his personal record at the time. He always said, ‘Don’t beat my record. Don’t beat my personal record.’ And I tied it that year. And yeah, that’s kind of cool. But the culmination was the Big West tournament. Pacifc was ranked when we played them. We had to beat a very good Northridge team and had a good tournament. And we got to the championship game, and we put in a few new plays that just ft right into what I was doing, and I played well — was the tournament MVP, the frst freshman in history I think.

Again, just being dumb and naive. I remember that the TV did an interview with me and they said ‘You’re going dancing,’ and it didn’t register. I’m not a dumb guy, but the stakes of winning to get into the NCAA Tournament like hadn’t registered with me. So I was like ‘Oh man, we gotta get in.’ So when they’re telling me ‘He’s going dancing. Can you show me your best dance?’ I was just dumb. I was confused, like ‘What’s this guy talking about?’ I was so confused, and I didn’t realize how big of a deal the tournament was. So when we came back and we watched it as a team, you know, the Selection Sunday, that’s when it really start- ed to click. So again, I guess I just was unaware enough that pressures and things — I was just playing basketball.

Q: Who was the best competition you played against in college and why?

A: When we moved into the WAC, the WAC was a conference. I mean, essentially they were getting three or four teams in the NCAA tournament. It was a big deal to be there — a lot of them now are in the current Mountain West. But Hawaii was very good, Nevada was very good, Fresno — there were a lot of very good teams in the conference, so that move was spectacular.

So there’s great competition. Nevada had the three-time conference MVP Nick Fazekas and Marcelus Kemp, Ramon Sessions. Boise State was a big team and that was great. Now we went to the NCAA tournament, and those were great teams. We played Arizona my freshman year, coached by hall-of-famer Lute Olson. They had Salim Stoudamire, Channing Frye, Hassan Adams, among others, and we gave them a run for their money. We played great. We end up losing, and then my next year, we played Washington, University of Washington, in the NCAA Tournament, and I had to guard Brandon Roy. Sadly, a lot of people today, young people, they don’t know who Brandon Roy was because his career was so short due to injury, but he was an amazing basketball player. His moment in the NBA shone very brightly for a brief time. And I had to guard him and that was my sophomore year and I took things — I said, ‘He just made the right decision all the time.’ And he had some offensive things he did. I said ‘I’m going to learn how to do that.’ So I spent the summer putting in Brandon Roy stuff that I had to try and defend.

Q: What is your favorite memory from playing in the Spectrum?

A: There’s a lot of memories. The ones that really stick out — the night that I broke the scoring record. I was never a very animated player, never got too high, never got too low. Part of me now looks back and wishes I would have enjoyed moments a little more. I would’ve had a little more fun with the fans, would have interacted with fans a little more, but it just wasn’t me, and it’s my dad’s fault because he always just said, ‘Hey son, be humble.’ And so I always, it was like interacting with fans that’s getting out of where the humbleness lays. But the longer I went off my career, the more I was like, ‘Hey, this is a fun experience, I really enjoy this.’ So I enjoyed all the awesome things the fans would do. The student section was awesome. It’s second to none. As I played professionally, I played with teammates — I had teammates that have played at Duke and other major, major universities — I said, ‘Look, it’s cool what you’ve got, but it’s not any better than what we had at Utah State. Utah State is one of the top venues to play college basketball.’ And I still feel that way. So apart from the awesome moments, a couple of game-winners or record-breaking nights, just the overall being in the Spectrum every night. Honestly, my freshman year, driving to the Spectrum with Tai Wesley in the passenger seat yelling out the window as loud as he could, ‘It’s game day! It’s game day!’ — some of my favorite memories.

Q: How does it feel to have your jersey retired by Utah State?

A: It’s incredible. It’s icing on the cake, it’s the cherry on the top, whatever you want to say. It’s awesome. As a young kid playing basketball, you know, I want to hit game-winning shots. I want championships. I want this, I want that. I want to be my jersey in the rafters and to have that opportunity, it’s cool. When Jerry Bovee reached out and made the call, I was at a loss for words, honestly. I didn’t really know what to say or how to react. Again, I’m not a too-high or too-low guy, and it was emotional. It’s cool. Every time — any gym I go to, I look up there and see who was there, what they did. And now to be one of those guys that other people can walk in and see it and go, ‘Who is this guy?’ And then have it kind of more of a lasting legacy — it’s awesome. So I’m very grateful, very humbled by it.

Q: Is there anything else you want to say to your fans?

A: Yeah — frst of all, thanks for all the love and support throughout the years. It’s been awesome. You know, talking about fans, it’s funny — a lot of the fans that watched me play, it’s their kids that I see now, and they say, ‘Hey,’ and they’ve never seen me play, and their comments are, ‘Hey, my mom and dad said you were really good at basketball once.’ So that’s kind of where I am now.

So to the fans, to the Aggies, thank you. Thank you for so, so much. It’s awesome to be part of the Aggie family.

Nelson: Well deserved. I’m one of those people that thinks that shouldn’t happen very often, and fortunately at Utah State, it hasn’t. That’s not a common thing. It’s not something — in my mind — that should be done regularly. It takes extraordinary players and performances to be able to garner that kind of recognition, and Jaycee is well deserving of it for what he accomplished in his career at Utah State and even after Utah State. He is in the elite group, and he belongs in the company of people with their jerseys retired.

Q: What was your favorite on-court memory with Jaycee?

A: I remember the Big West Championship game against Pacifc. That felt like we ran the same play 40 times in a row, where I got the ball at the elbow and then did a dribble handoff to Jaycee and kept handing him the ball. And good things would happen every time I did. So I remember that, and then I played with Jaycee in Spain. I played with him for a year, and I played against him for a couple years. And I have some really, really fun memories, just battling in practice with him, or playing in games with him or against him. I have a lot of them, but from a college standpoint, I think that’s probably the Big West Championship. He ended up being the MVP of the tournament, and I remember that game pretty well.

Statesman: Did you think he would be as good as he was?

Wesley: Absolutely not. When I frst met Jaycee, he came up to me, and it was in Mountain View Towers. And he walked up to me. He was wearing a visor — upside down, backwards, sticking up in the front — cargo shorts, and I said, ‘Are you for reals? You’re on the basketball team?’ And then we went and played pickup at a church, and he was unreal. And I thought, ‘OK, this kid is the real deal.’

Q: How do you feel about USU retiring Jaycee’s number?

A: I feel great about it. I think it’s amazing. I think it’s well deserved. You know, Jaycee Carroll is a legend in the history of Aggie Basketball. He’s the leading point-getter. And so I feel so proud of him, even though, you know, who am I to be proud of him? But I’m excited for him, and I think it’s so well deserved.

Statesman: What was your favorite off-court memory with Jaycee?

Neil: Favorite, maybe more infamous, but I was kind of known as maybe the best conditioned guy on the team. And so every year before the season, we’d do a two-mile run at the beginning of conditioning and then a one-mile run, and I would always beat everybody pretty good. And my senior year, we started off with a two-mile run, and I beat everybody pretty good. Jaycee was just a little bit behind. But at the end of conditioning, we did the one-mile run, and I was winning the whole time until, like, the last 200 meters. Apparently Jaycee was just behind me the whole time, and then he sprinted by me for the last 200 meters, and I couldn’t keep up. And he actually won the mile in the conditioning my senior year. I was super annoyed that this freshman kid right off his mission was in better shape than I was after just one preseason of conditioning, so I had to give him a hard time about that. But I still joke about it with him today, actually, because I’m still super annoyed that my senior year, he beat me in the mile. That’s the one that comes to mind. I guess that was still in practice, but off the court.

Statesman: What was your frst impression of Jaycee?

Wilkinson: That Jaycee was a hard worker. So when I got up here in the summertime between 2007-2008 and I started working out with Jaycee, and he was dedicated and was in the gym every day, getting shots up, working on his game, and that kind of helped me to understand what needed to be done to be successful at Utah State.

For a documentary and more of the interviews, visit usu.statesman.com/jayceecarroll

By Jake Ellis

Photo illustration by Bailey Rigby