‘He’s fun to watch.’ Can Great Falls’ Kelton Talford become Winthrop’s next hoops star?
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the last time Great Falls High School won a state championship in boys’ basketball. Its last title of the sort came in the 2011-12 season.
When Kelton Talford rises up for a dunk, his long, curly brown hair normally glides above the rim.
He doesn’t need two hands. Or space in front of him. A running start helps, but he doesn’t need that, either.
Those who have watched him play know that. And much of the crowd at the Catawba Ridge High School gym on Jan. 6 had watched Talford play for years. The Great Falls fans who made the 38-mile drive from their town to Fort Mill, S.C., lined the back row, dotted the visitor-side bleachers and settled in for another glimpse at this special team.
These fans knew what to expect from Talford, the 6-7 forward who committed to Winthrop in August. He’s Great Falls’ leading scorer and rebounder. He dunks a lot. In every game he’s played in his senior season, he’s won. He’s averaging 16.6 points per game this month after spending a chunk of the beginning of the season sidelined, wearing a boot due to an undisclosed injury.
He’s the headliner on the team poised to make its first run at a state championship since 2012.
“He’s fun to watch, man,” said Jimmy Duncan, who coached Talford at Great Falls prior to accepting the athletic director position at Northwestern this year.
The Kelton Talford show began in the second quarter of that January game at Catawba Ridge. He was noticeably gassed — a symptom of his team’s run-hard-press-harder philosophy — but after jarring the ball loose from a ball handler and seeing his teammate collect the ball, Talford ran to his team’s basket. His chest heaved up and down as he chased down the outlet pass tossed in front of him.
Talford didn’t get the ball until right at the 3-point line. He took one dribble. Two Catawba Ridge defenders closed in on him, but by the time they’d caught up, it was too late. Talford was already stretching toward the ceiling, as long as his gangling frame would let him, and all the Catawba Ridge defenders could do was watch him soar and flush the ball through the hoop.
“I bobbled it a lil’ bit,” Talford told The Herald of the dunk postgame with a big smile.
After the dunk, Catawba Ridge head coach Brett Childers called a timeout. It was as if he was waiting for the roaring crowd — the one that had traveled from so far away to see moments like that one, from a player like Talford — to quiet down.
“He’s a special player...” Great Falls head coach Alex Fair said of Talford after the game.
“There are so many things he does well, and ultimately, he’s a great teammate, too.”
Jimmy Duncan: Kelton Talford is ‘selfless’
Talford smiles a lot. He can’t sit still. His head pokes above the rest of his classmates in the Great Falls High School hallway. He’s beloved by the community, the fans and parents who make trips to watch him play. He has a thick Southern accent, and he eats sausage biscuits for breakfast and looks at you like you’re crazy if you ask him why.
On the court, he’s the same guy, still getting looked up to. As a sophomore, Talford averaged 18 points, 13 rebounds and two blocks per game, according to Duncan. As a junior, he averaged 20, 14 and two. It’s clear his teammates like playing with him. His coaches, including Duncan, describe him as “selfless.”
Duncan recalled the game when Talford scored his 1,000th point.
“We did not celebrate it,” Duncan said. “We had him and his dad in there, and he — Kelton — told us he didn’t want to celebrate it because he didn’t want to disrupt any team chemistry. I mean, this is a kid in a day and time that is all about trophies, awards and recognition — and he decided, ‘I don’t want to do that for me because I think that will hurt the team.’
“That’s the kind of kid he is.”
Winthrop’s Pat Kelsey: ‘Runs like a deer’
The first thing Winthrop head coach Pat Kelsey noticed about his future big man, he said, was his “motor.”
“I really think that’s something you either have or you don’t,” Kelsey said. “It’s just like being 6-10 or 6-9, just like having a certain vertical leap, just like having a gift to be able to shoot the ball — an elite motor is a gift…
“He runs like a deer, you know what I mean? He plays hard. He’s got a nose for the ball. I think he’s a perfect fit.”
It’s probably too early to draw comparisons between Winthrop players of the past and this Great Falls forward of the present. It’s easy to see some of Big South Player of the Year, Xavier Cooks — who graduated from Winthrop in 2018 — in Talford.
After all, they’re about the same size. They could play the same position. Cooks had more of an outside game by the time he left Winthrop than when he arrived. The same thing, in theory, could happen to Talford.
But at the same time, it’s worth noting that comparisons like this, between players with similar physical attributes, get made often. Take 5-8 Winthrop freshman point guard Russell Jones, who has predictably been compared to Keon Johnson, one of the best Winthrop players to ever come through the Eagles’ program.
Kelsey recognizes this and said Talford will have to carve out his own place at Winthrop.
“He’ll help and contribute right away,” Kelsey said, “just because of his length and his athleticism and motor.”
The road to the next state championship
If Great Falls’ season is as special as it could be — Talford won’t be the only reason why. The Red Devils (15-3, 2-0 region) returned most of their players from last year’s team, which lost to High Point Academy in the 1A state final four. The program is looking for its ninth state championship.
“It was frustrating,” Kelton said of his early-season injury. “But I knew my teammates would hold it down when I wasn’t there. Just being there to support them. I knew they would win regardless.”
Talford has justification for his faith in his teammates — especially senior point guard DJ Adams. Last year, Duncan recalled, when Talford went down in a national tournament in Kentucky, Adams “had the best three games of his life.”
“We’re playing teams from across the country,” Duncan said. “We’re playing crazy good teams… The second game we play, we’re playing the Kentucky state champions from the year before. And in Kentucky, only one team wins the state championship. Everybody goes into a pot. It doesn’t matter if you have 100 kids or 5,000.
“I think he dropped like 45 points, man. It was amazing.”
The Red Devils, with Talford and Adams healthy, are fun to watch and dangerous to play. Earlier this season, against Lewisville, Great Falls head basketball coach Alex Fair praised Adams for being a good teammate. Fair did the same of Talford after the Jan. 6 game against Catawba Ridge — when Talford commanded enough attention so that every pass he made had a purpose.
“We got to win our region, that’s No. 1,” Talford said. “Then we got to go to the playoffs, do what we gotta do, and get all the way to the top.”
After the game at Catawba Ridge was over on Jan. 6, Talford walked through the empty gym to his team’s bus.
The visiting crowd had already cleared out of the parking lot. They were on their way home. They’d come and seen what they’d wanted to see, which included a 17-point, high-flying performance from Talford — the big man who may soon become a star at Winthrop, in a town not too far from where he originally became one.
This story was originally published January 24, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "‘He’s fun to watch.’ Can Great Falls’ Kelton Talford become Winthrop’s next hoops star?."
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