The label is tweener. The recruiting services and NBA scouts throw it around with impunity in their attempts to separate five-star meat from two- and three-star gristle, lotto picks from journeymen and Turkish leaguers. Calhouns, Boeheims, and Jay Wrights use it to give a kid a soft demur, a “We like you, but…..,” the old wait and see.

Sometimes, however, there is a James Johnson or an Ed DeChellis, those who are discerning enough to see past the facile labels into the soul of ballplayer. And the riches they find there? Well, they are rare and special indeed.

One of the several pleasures of purist basketball fandom is watching players and teams who defy the easy categorizations of the meat market approach to the game and succeed, indeed flourish, where so many saw sure failure. It is watching 6′7″ Carl Landry put 24 points over NBA-minted behemoth Greg Oden in last year’s Big Ten tournament. It is 6′6″ Roger Powell outplaying many a taller foe en route to the title game in 2005. It is the footwork, head and ball fakes, and pure basketball smarts of 6′7″ Greg Brunner during his four productive years in the conference trenches. It is the stellar careers of players like Reggie Evans, Jarrett Stephens, and Jamelle Cornley.

And until last week’s abrupt and unfair ending it was the four year feast of observing a 6′5″ Nittany Lion blow up previous conceptions of Big Ten power forward with pure desire, explosive athleticism, and a set of shoulders that would’ve made Atlas envious. Thanks to the wisdom of Ed DeChellis and his staff and the underestimation of others, Penn State and fans of Big Ten basketball got three and a half seasons of label defying excellence from Geary Claxton.

From his first season in Happy Valley in 2004-05, an All-Big Ten Freshman campaign in which he played 32 minutes per game and wasted no time in filling Penn State boxscores with the dependability of a veteran to last week which found him in the midst of yet another yeoman campaign of near double-double averages against players a head taller, Geary Claxton has been a Hoopraker favorite.

Even last year as much of the country and an unfortunate number of Big Ten referees went into gape-mouthed paralysis over Oden, Hoopraker saw through the hype and gave Claxton his just due. For a player who was all but disdained by the putative basketball experts four years ago, Geary had rounded into one of the nation’s finest players. For one interested in numerical evidence, proof of his worth and the ignorance of those who couldn’t get beyond his height can be mined here.

Sadly, after one awkward landing, a season that was shaping up to be a fitting coup de grace for the program that saw his potential where others saw only lack, we are left wanting more. For the discerning basketball fan who is interested less in the blather and disinformation that steers us towards the predictable, short lists of “diaper dandies,” and the NBA-bound, Geary Claxton is a refreshing rejoinder and a cause for rejoice.

Watching a player like him, a player still flying well clear of the hype machine despite overarching excellence is like having a guilty secret. It is to harbor a one-up on the chattering class that sees little more than the obvious. Seeing such a player toil and excel night in and night out for four years is what still gives amateur athletics its potential to inspire, its reason to believe. Geary Claxton has been to wise basketball fans what a rare recording is to a jazz enthusiast: a connoisseur’s treat.

Posted by DJ Elsass on Monday, January 21st, 2008 at 11:45 pm.