Coen Carr has never needed much help making a highlight reel. The senior forward is one of the most explosive athletes in college basketball, the kind of player who could probably walk into an NBA Dunk Contest tomorrow and hold his own. But the bigger story now is what he’s doing beyond the rim.
Carr has spent years trying to move past the simple “dunker” label, and the signs of that work are starting to show. His three-point volume has climbed every season - he didn’t take a single three as a freshman, then got all the way to 76 attempts as a junior - and while the percentage dipped a bit from his sophomore year to his junior season, the willingness has been there. He’s no longer passing up open looks.
The jumper, though, still had some rough edges.
That may be changing.
A new batch of offseason highlights made the rounds, and the mechanical progress is hard to miss. Carr’s release looks smoother, quicker, and more natural than it did before.
He’s bringing the ball up the floor, pulling up from the top of the key, and firing with a hand in his face. The confidence is obvious.
coen carr jumper it’s on pic.twitter.com/lZf2Er4LvK
- william (@willy__smith) July 24, 2026
It’s still practice footage, and every offseason video deserves a little skepticism. But this one suggests real growth. Carr looks more comfortable shooting on the move, and the jumper no longer looks like an afterthought.
That matters because his game is starting to stretch in every direction. A couple of offseasons ago, there wasn’t much reason to think Carr would become a true three-level scorer, or even a reliable two-level one. Now he’s beginning to look like a player who can hurt defenses from mid-range, from deep, and off the dribble when defenders close out too hard.
That’s what makes him such a problem. He can knock down the mid-range shot more comfortably than he could as a freshman or sophomore, he’s become a real threat from three, and once defenders start reacting to that, he has the burst to blow by them. The package is getting bigger.
It’s easy to overdo the offseason hype every year, but Carr feels like a player who is close to breaking through on a bigger stage. If this growth carries over, he has legitimate All-Big Ten first-team potential.
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