East Chicago Central’s Dominique Murphy didn’t want to be a starter last year.
Just two weeks into his freshman season, the 6-foot-5 guard/forward was told by coach Grayling Gordon that he’d be in the starting five after initially coming off the bench.
“I was just nervous,” Murphy said.
But one pass was all he needed to feel comfortable.
“Some people need to score,” he said. “But if I can just touch the ball, then I’m good.”
Murphy has been pretty good since then. He averaged 14.8 points and 6.5 rebounds, both team highs, during his freshman season, and he has only increased his production. He scored 26, 28, 25 and 20 points for the Cardinals (1-4) in their first four games and leads them with 21.2 points and 8.2 rebounds per game.
From the get-go, however, Murphy has been doing more than filling the stat sheet.
“He became one of the leaders on the team,” Gordon said. “Even though he was a freshman, we named him a captain. You could see the improvement he’d made.”
Murphy, who progressed to high-level AAU teams by the time he was in fifth grade, rode the momentum from his freshman season into another busy schedule with D1 Indiana. He said the competition he faced required him to work on other parts of his game.
“My jump shot, my athleticism, my handling — I played on a big-time AAU circuit where I had to work on that type of stuff, not just being one-dimensional,” he said.
Gordon said Murphy is far from a finished product, though, and there will be moments when Murphy’s youth will be on display, as it was during East Chicago Central’s 80-61 loss at home against Chesterton on Tuesday night.
Murphy was limited to just seven points as the Trojans blanketed him with defenders. But Gordon didn’t sound worried after the game, instead believing the lessons learned that night will lead to better results in the future.
“When you’re good, you’re anxious,” Gordon said. “But when you’re really good, you’re patient. Right now, he’s good. But we want him to be really good. So he’ll have to learn some patience.”
Murphy was just as undaunted as his coach after the loss to Chesterton.
“I’m glad it was early in the season so I could get this experience now,” he said.
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Once Murphy learns how to handle whatever opposing defenses will throw his way, senior guard Julian Henderson said he thinks it will help make the rest of the team better too.
“His shot creation was already pretty good, but I think it can get even better,” Henderson said. “That takes a lot of pressure off of the team because we know he can score at any time.”
The points should keep coming for Murphy, who said he wants to help the Cardinals finish with more than the 10 wins they had last season. His primary way of steering the team in that direction is by lighting up scoreboards across Northwest Indiana.
“With me scoring, that just comes from me trying to help the team,” he said. “I want to win as much as I can.”
Dave Melton is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.