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GOLD AND BLACK ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 28, ISSUE 2 51 team co-captain P.J. Thompson said. "He shows it some- times, but I think that's part of growing up. You know you're a guard and you can't act like that on the court. He knows that, because you'll talk to him and he says, 'I know I have to be better,' and he may go do it again next week, but it's all coming from the right place." That place, teammates and coaches say: Edwards' competitiveness. He admits it can get the best of him now and again. "I believe it's all about focusing on going in to a game trying to understand that when I'm at my best mentally, and I'm in the moment mentally, that we play best as a team," Edwards said. "That's one thing you try to remem- ber and focus on, plus the fact that I really want to win, and for us to win, I need to do this or do that, so I try to think about things that way. "To give my team the best chance, I need to do things a certain way." With that lesson seemingly behind him, how close is Edwards to that level those around him see him inevita- bly reaching? Answers to that question seem to always come back to the term "little things." "I think he has two or three things he needs to figure out," Vincent Edwards said, "and when he does, he'll be one of the best players in college basketball skill-wise and athletic-wise. However you want to put it, he is right there." Painter cites the same focus Carsen Edwards himself points to, and how it relates to details such as defensive attentiveness and the decisions he makes while walking that fine line between aggressiveness and recklessness. "A lot of the time, guys with a lot of skill aren't de- tail-oriented. They will play hard and come at you, but they don't do all the little things to help themselves," Painter said. "That's our job as coaches, to help him un- derstand those things. But at the same time he's the only one who can truly answer that question of how close he is. He is going to be a really good player, but can he be great? Can he be a late leader? Can he do all the little things to help us? Tom Campbell Teammate Dakota Mathias labels Carsen Edwards a "certified scorer." He proved that often over the summer.