Northside’s Buck Harris waiting for his true point guard to emerge

If there’s one thing that Northside boys basketball coach Buck Harris has made known, it’s that playing point guard under him is hard.

Lots of people throw around “point guard,” but not many truly know what that means.

There’s “guards” and then there’s “point guards.” Those lines can be blurred, especially in high school when they all do truly seem the same, but it’s not for Harris, who has high expectations for his point guards.

“They got to be an extension of me. I need them to be a coach on the floor. They got to be a leader,” Harris said. “I tell them all the time, point guards got to be a-holes. But I don’t have [that] I have nice kids. I don’t have a kid that can go to somebody and say man we got to get this rebound and lead from that standpoint.”

That doesn’t mean the players he has don’t exhibit any of the qualities he needs.

“Eventually I’ll get there, I’ll get that type of kid. But they have to be vocal…they got to be Ford tough. I got some kids that are Ford tough, but the other stuff’s got to come,” Harris said.

One player Harris has entrusted with a lot of ball handling duties in junior Donovon Lockett.

Lockett is 5-foot-8 with a smaller build but is quick and is a more secure ball handler than a lot of high school guards.

He does pretty well under pressure and is able to dribble out of trouble. He can also push the pace without losing control. He’s not particularly vocal, but like Harris said, the other qualities have to come for players like Lockett.

“Donovon, he’s a gamer,” Harris said. “He’s just struggled early because he was lacking some confidence. This summer he proved to me that’s he’s capable of carrying a team, he has to just get more locked in. More focused on being a point guard and knowing how to be a distributor, but he can guard. He can get to the basket, shoot, I have full confidence in him.”

“He hadn’t been good early on in the season, but I’ve been showing him that I have confidence in him…and letting him know that I believe in him. He’s gonna be good for us,” Harris said.