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28 ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 25, ISSUE 3 f nects with anything but splashing nylon when it works. It's a shot he can shoot with equal success as a stand-still shooter; coming off screens, a science he's advanced in; fading away; dribbling into his shot; and all forms of jumper in between, from mid-range and especially long range. There's little discernible dif- ference in his success rates between two- and three- point shots. "You have to put the ball over your head, over the right eye," Cline said, "and when you shoot it you have to make sure it's a nice flick of the wrist, and you have to make sure you know it's going in every time and you never think you're going to miss a shot before you shoot it. Extend the arm and extend the wrist and be confident with it." Preparedness is crucial to Cline also. Playing at Carmel and for his father in AAU much of his summer-ball career, Cline learned how to function with screens and has grown savvy beyond his years doing so. On the catch, he prefers to step into a pass moving left to right, seeming particularly comfortable cutting to the top of the arc off simple down or flare screens. "I feel like my shot preparation is pretty good," Cline said, "the way I catch it and how ready I am to shoot it." Cline's execution, generally speaking, is outstand- ing. When it's not — which is rare — he usually knows why. "Normally I don't get my legs into it," Cline said. "It's almost always short, so that's one thing I've put an emphasis on, a shot can never be short for me. If I'm going to miss it's going to be long. Not left or right, it will be long." Cline's come a long way, from runt as a fresh- man — "We didn't even know if we could bring him up to J.V.," Heady said — to one-dimen- sional stand-in-the-corner spot-up shooter as a sophomore, to multi-dimensional shooter/scorer/ ball-handler as an upperclassmen, a Mr. Bas- ketball front-runner who shot 43 percent from three-point range as a junior and 41-plus percent on this spring and summer's highly competitive adidas Gauntlet circuit. "I think in the past couple of years he has got- ten (his shot) up a little bit higher and has tweaked a couple of things to simplify shots," said Heady, who's needed Cline to bring the ball up the floor as the Grey- hounds' point guard last season and thus far this sea- son. "He catches it and then he's right into his shot. He gets it away pretty quick. There's not a lot of wasted movement in his motion and I think that's why he's so effective. "And being 6-5 and having a high-arc shot makes him hard to guard. In the past few months he has re- ally gotten better at driving the ball and being able to create his own shot. That makes him really tough to deal with." Boilermaker coach Matt Painter called Cline "the best shooter in the Midwest" when he signed him in November, suggesting he holds the potential to be a rare "50-percent three-point shooter." Purdue's had one of those, by the way, in its history, Jaraan Cornell in '98. The Boilermaker program stockpiled skill in recent years, hording shooters in hopes of turning a weak- ness from past seasons into a decided strength. Flamethrowers, they're often referred to informally. Cline is certainly that. "Ryan works extremely hard and in my opinion, he's one of the best high school shooters I've ever seen," said LaSalle Thompson, a former Indiana high school star and Ball State standout who's been training play- ers in Indy and coaching AAU for years now. "His abil- ity to shoot the basketball, I've seen a lot of kids over the years, especially the last 20-25 years, and I'd rank him the best shooter in Indiana high school basketball I've seen." j