Omaha, Neb. — It might not have much bearing on Friday’s battle on the court, but Clemson forward Elijah Thomas and Kansas guard Marcus Garrett have crossed paths plenty of times in the past.
While the two are not likely to face each other directly at CenturyLink Center during Friday’s Sweet 16 battle between the Jayhawks and Tigers, the Texas natives on Thursday engaged in a playful memory battle during media day festivities inside each team’s locker room.
“Oh yeah,” said Dallas native Thomas, when asked if he knew Garrett. “Marcus Garrett is like my little bro. He’s from the same neighborhood I’m from. We played against each other in (AAU). If you all ever interview him, you all have to ask him about how my biddy basketball team used to put beat-downs on him like it was nothing. I’m talking about 40 pieces, 50 pieces. We used to smack Garrett and them around.”
While Garrett, who also grew up in Dallas, admitted to taking the losses, he wanted to clarify a couple of key things about Thomas’ claims.
For one, those victories always came with Garrett and his friends playing up a couple of grade levels against bigger, stronger teams that Thomas played for. For two, Thomas did not exactly correctly recall the final scores.
“They did beat us by 30 one game because one of our players didn’t show up,” Garrett admitted. “But, nah, not 50. They weren’t even scoring 50 points.”
Beyond that, Garrett said things might have been different if Thomas’ team had not tried to hard to take Garrett out of the games completely.
“I mean, they used to run a Box and 1 on me the whole game,” Garrett said. “Every time we played them. That team was much older and bigger than my team. We actually used to beat every team but them. They were just much older and they used to trap me the whole game.”
Fast-forward all these years later to today, where the two Dallas products from the same neighborhood are, at least momentarily sharing one of the biggest stages in college basketball and it was clear that the moment meant something to each of them, particularly Thomas.
“That’s my little bro. I love him to death,” Thomas added. “I’m really good friends with his family. His mom, his dad, I’ve known them for a long time so, just seeing him here, it’s pretty cool. It’s real cool.”