Marcus Paige builds a legacy at North Carolina

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - History surrounds Marcus Paige as he sits near the court at the Dean Smith Center.

National championship banners, jerseys honored and numbers retired hang from the rafters at North Carolina's basketball arena. Paige's now-famed No. 5 jersey one day will join the likes of Jordan, Worthy, Hansbrough and Daugherty. That thought initially gives the Linn-Mar graduate pause as he looks around.

'I don't think that part has hit me yet, and I don't think it really will until I come back and see my jersey or my number up there,” Paige told The Gazette on Tuesday. 'That's going to be pretty special for me. To be able to leave a mark in that way is pretty special to me, and I'm going to enjoy that.”

Paige, a preseason All-American, elevated his North Carolina legacy and will see his jersey in the background by virtue of his second-team All-American award last year. If he's the national player of the year, the Tar Heels will retire his number with a blue border. The standards of excellence for a basketball dynasty like North Carolina are high.

'I'm trying to spend the rest of my career validating that through team success and more individual success,” Paige said. 'I want to feel like I belong by the time I'm done playing here, and I look back at what I did through my college career. A lot of those guys up there are also part of Final Fours and championships, ACC championships and national titles. I feel like I need to win some of those type of things in order to validate me being up there.”

Few athletes from Iowa have earned the college recognition afforded Paige, and perhaps none embrace his humility. He articulates every thought with simple eloquence. He also recognizes from where he came, which is what makes Wednesday's game against Iowa so special.

On courts throughout Cedar Rapids, Paige grew up competing against current Hawkeyes Josh Oglesby and Jarrod Uthoff. Paige also played alongside Mike Gesell and Adam Woodbury as part of their AAU Martin Brothers' squad. Through their five years' worth of trips across the country, Woodbury, Gesell and Paige talked of attending the same school. They all discussed Iowa.

Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery arrived in Iowa City late in their sophomore seasons. Gesell and Woodbury signed with the Hawkeyes Although Paige chose North Carolina, he was impressed with McCaffery.

'He worked extremely hard on all three of us,” Paige said. 'He was at every single AAU game that we played, that he was allowed to be at. Numerous open gyms to see me. That kind of hard work has shown in the way that the program has improved. It was tough because we had never gotten to see what he had done before I made a decision. Now I can look back, even though I'm a junior and I have picked my school already, and see that he's laid the foundation for his program and you can tell he's going to have some success.”

Paige's success was evident at Linn-Mar, where he was named the state's Mr. Basketball as a senior and set the Metro area career scoring record with 1,700 points. He averaged 28.4 points, 4.0 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 2.7 steals with a 4.07 GPA. Linn-Mar won the Class 4A state title Paige's junior year.

North Carolina Coach Roy Williams first became aware of Paige's skills at an AAU tournament in Orlando. Then he watched Paige play at Linn-Mar.

'He had the total package,” Williams said. 'He's a wonderful student. He's a wonderful leader. That was at the end of his (junior) year. They won the state championship that year with a bunch of seniors and him but I really thought he was the leader of the team. But it was all about the team. It wasn't anything about him; it was all about how he was doing. The leadership, the savvy, I loved that part of it. When I got to see him with his high school team, it just jumped out even more.”

Paige, a left-handed shooter, has done the same at North Carolina. He was tabbed as the ACC's preseason player of the year and leads the No. 12 Tar Heels with 15.2 points. He's second in assists with 3.5 a game. He plays both point and off the ball. He gets his teammates involved but also scores when necessary.

'He's a very smooth player,” Gesell said. 'He's a guy that can go out and get his, but he can get his within the offense. He's not a guy who's going to go out and jack shots to score 20, 25. He's a guy that's going to take his opportunities and get other players involved at the same time he looks to get himself involved.”

That's what Paige wants others to see from his game. That's what he expects from himself.

'It's my team this year,” he said. 'I need to learn how to get guys touches and get them in the right offense as well. I think I've just grown up as a person and a basketball player a lot.”

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