Carter came close to CIAU glory Brandon University alumni series: Through the decades By: Thomas Friesen Posted: 11:05 PM CST Thursday, Dec. 17, 2020 Last Modified: 11:14 PM CST Thursday, Dec. 17, 2020

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/12/2020 (1935 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Maurice Carter came to Brandon seeking a second chance and sporting all the confidence in the world.

The way he sees it, there’d be a fifth Canadian Interuniversity Athletic Union banner hanging in the Healthy Living Centre today if he dressed that 1996-97 season for the defending champion Bobcats men’s basketball team.

“I know for a fact, 100 per cent, if I would have played we would have been back-to-back,” Carter told the Sun via phone interview from Chicago.

“They had a real good team and what I could produce was what they really needed … they ended up losing in the final four.

“One thing coach didn’t do was treat me different. He told everyone, man this guy is special … just because I’m sitting him out don’t mean he should be sitting out. He’s a very special guy.”

The path that led Carter to spend three seasons in Brandon, where he was twice named a Great Plains Athletic Conference second-team all-star, certainly explains how he learned to strongly believe in himself.

Carter grew up in Chicago, playing basketball on the streets with no shortage of guys ready to dish out some hardcourt lessons.

“Every day you gotta match up against somebody who can play,” Carter said.

“It’s phenomenal. I’m talking gyms, parks, tournaments, the big leagues here … every time you suit up open gym, there’s somebody that can play.

“… If you got the best of me today you better get ready for me tomorrow and the day after that. I’m going to get my licks.”

The Windy City native’s dad, Will Chapman, spent five years with the Harlem Globetrotters. Carter says, however, that he got his attitude from his mom. Like the classic parental line about walking five miles to and from school, uphill both ways, she instilled a strong work ethic in Carter.

“My mom had an attitude that she’d never quit no matter how the situation looked,” Carter said.

“She had to walk to work, which was 15 miles … that mentality, I picked up from her.

“She worked at the factory out here. If she walked that far, and I’d say to myself, ‘If she doing that to make sure my brothers and sisters are straight, there’s no excuse for me not to be great.’”

Carter spent his junior and senior years of high school in South Carolina, playing football and baseball as well. He said he won state championships in both and opted to pursue basketball because it was his weakest of the three. So he headed back to Chicago and attended Kennedy-King Community College before transferring to Arizona State University in 1994.

That proved to be, at least, bad timing. Sun Devils Stevin Smith and Isaac Burton were later arrested for point-shaving during the 1993-94 NCAA season. It was Smith’s last year, but Carter joined Burton’s team and was forced out during the fallout. Carter told the Sun he had nothing to do with the issue, adding his family filed a lawsuit and he signed a non-disclosure agreement preventing him from commenting further.

Carter was out of post-secondary basketball for a year and weighing his options. He contemplated trying his hand overseas and played at a showcase, where Brandon head coach Jerry Hemmings spotted him and brought him in to redshirt the 1996-97 campaign.

The Bobcats won the GPAC title that year, and beat Toronto in the CIAU quarterfinal before dropping a 20-point decision to the national champion Victoria Vikings. While Carter sat out as the third American alongside Demetrius Floyd and Donald Phillips, he enjoyed the first year.

“I’m used to a diverse background but I actually thought there wasn’t going to be no Blacks at all there,” Carter said. “That’s what I had in my head. But after I got with coach, coach told me ‘You’re going to love it here. This is the friendliest place ever, it’s a basketball town and everybody’s gonna know who you are.’

“He hit that one on the head.”

Carter stayed and averaged 14.3 points per game, finishing second in Canada in three-point shooting at 56.1 per cent in 1997-98. He earned a GPAC second-team all-star, as did teammate Mark Passley while Richard Lovelace made the first team and Shawn Gray was named a second-team all-Canadian.

The Bobcats bowed out in their first game at nationals, again to Victoria, and wound up losing the consolation final to Acadia.

Brandon came back stronger, repeating with a 12-3 record in conference play and defending the league title. BU boasted three GPAC first-team all-stars while Carter was one of two second-teamers. He upped his scoring output to 16.6 ppg.

The Bobcats got over the opening hurdle at nationals, but tripped up, surrendering a seven-point halftime lead to go down 79-74 to Alberta in the semifinals in Halifax.

Carter had a team-high 19 points in the loss.

“It was a little bit defeating to me because I wanted to really win,” Carter said. “We ran up against Alberta and I felt like we were way better than them but some of the guys didn’t show up to play that game.”

Carter had a year of eligibility left and could have stayed on to team up with all-Canadian Earnest Bell on a team that wound up reaching the national final, but signed a semiprofessional deal with the Rochester Skeeters of the Continental Basketball Association.

He quite enjoyed his three years in the Wheat City. While he jokes about his initial displeasure when landed in Winnipeg only for Hemmings to pick him up and take him more than 200 kilometres west, he appreciated the chance to focus on basketball in a smaller city.

“It was a blast. It was off the chain. I loved it. I played and did real well, we was winning, we was ranked, we couldn’t get to number one, always number two or number three … but we stayed pretty good,” Carter said.

“I didn’t know what to expect when I first got there. I was figuring, ‘Well, Canada might be a little slower than American basketball. But then again, you had a couple of guys I went to camp with … that was from Toronto, and they were pretty doggone good.’”

“It helped me get back to loving the game of basketball,” he added. “It gave me a second chance in a whole different place where no one knew me, I didn’t know them. I was able to basically get my edge back, learn different people and be happy.”

Little did he know he’d face a similar move a year-and-a-half later. In the fall of 2000, Carter landed his first European contract in Ireland. After four solid games with St. Vincent’s in Dublin, the top team in the Irish Super League, he was traded to Limerick, near the bottom of the table.

“They’re like ‘You’re a hell of a player but you’re not what we’re looking for … we want to develop our young guys and with you here you’re going to take the shine from them,” Carter said. “I ended up going to (Limerick), they picked me up, they got a game that night but I couldn’t play. I’m watching them and when I tell you they was terrible, man they was terrible.

“They lost by 40 and was happy they only lost by 40.”

The following season, led by American Cleotis Brown, who was named the league’s player of the year, Limerick won its first-ever national cup. But Carter’s decision to stay paid off in more ways than one, as the team managed to get him an Irish passport and get him qualified as a European. From there he was able to enjoy a 14-year pro career including stops in Belgium, Portland, Iceland, Israel and Spain.

“That trade … set my life up for what it is now,” Carter said. “I appreciate God and give all praise to him, I had a great season there in (Limerick) and it opened up the floodgates for me.”

Carter came home and actually returned to Canada to play for the National Basketball League’s Halifax Rainmen. But it was short-lived as he quit after the first game, putting an end to his playing days.

“I had a moment like ‘This is it, man. This is it for me … I gotta go,’” Carter said, in the same province he took his final shot as a student-athlete.

“How ironic.”

Carter transitioned to ownership, taking the reins of the semipro American Basketball Association’s Chicago Fury in 2014.

The league has 88 teams in six regions, and the Fury went 18-2 last season, sitting atop the North Central before COVID-19 caused the season to stop early.

The 2020-21 season just opened Dec. 12 in St. Louis, and Carter enjoys the challenge of keeping a team organized and making sure everyone is treated right, like he was at BU.

“Brandon kind of helped me humble myself a lot, to know that you can be up here today and down here tomorrow,” Carter said.

“It’s small but it was fun. Guys like Shawn Gray, Greg Walker and Mark Passley, they made it fun for me.”

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