Staff file photo / Cleveland's Ish Sanders practices with the rest of the Blue Raiders boys' basketball team on Jan. 21, 2010.EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the fifth story in a series on the top local high school boys' basketball players of the past decade.
Late in his freshman college basketball season at NCAA Division II program Carson-Newman, former Cleveland standout Ish Sanders scored 51 points in a win over rival Mars Hill in February 2011.
That, along with a 22-point performance a few nights later against Newberry, earned him South Atlantic Conference player of the week honors.
But as Sanders revealed Thursday, it was a week that almost didn't happen.
Freshman college seasons are tough. Players come in mindful of their own résumés, not always taking into consideration that each of their teammates has put together quite the list of accomplishments prior to college as well. Everybody wants to be the star immediately, and Sanders - who holds the Cleveland High School boys' basketball record for points in a career with 2,120 - was no exception.
"I was about to quit. I was about to leave," Sanders said. "From the outside looking in, it looks like the success came quick, but for me, it was tough because you go to college as the best player on your team, but you get there and everybody else was, too, so they have the same mentality as you.
"So it took a couple of months to really break out, which seemed like a year to me."
During that time Sanders spent a lot of time in his dorm room, crying and talking to friends and family about his desire to come home.
He did have some good moments early, but it took a while. Eight games into his career, he had averaged seven points per game, and after 15 games the average was just 9.7. But over the final 12 contests of his freshman season, Sanders started to figure things out, averaging 18.2 points while making at least three 3-pointers in eight of those games.
The 51 points was a school record until Charles Clark broke it twice, most recently with 54 in a win over Coker in 2017. The 11 3-pointers Sanders made that night are still the standard.
Scoring has always been in his skill set, and since high school he has thrived in that manner. He finished his career at Carson-Newman with 1,922 points, fifth in program history, and 343 3-pointers, first in both program and conference history.
He has maintained his productivity while playing professionally in Australia, where Sanders has averaged at least 25 points per game each of the past five seasons while playing for the Sunbury Jets.
His recruiting never took off at Cleveland like he assumed it would, which led to some frustration, but in a way that led to him sliding into a perfect situation at Carson-Newman - which led to some great moments, such as graduating in August 2017 with a bachelor's degree in human services.
"It was frustrating at times, but in the end, after getting to be with my teammates, I knew I was where I was supposed to be," he said. "It wasn't about playing a lot or scoring a lot, it was the atmosphere and the family time and the team.
"I was not upset, and I'm still not to this day that (Carson-Newman) is where I chose to go."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3.
READ MORE OF THE SERIES
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McCallie's Jorden Williams made good use of time at Sewanee
Central's Ryan Montgomery gained confidence over course of Lee Flames career