If he can score like Trae Young, why is Stuart Cramer’s Will Kelly underappreciated?

It’s not hard to find Will Kelly when you get to the gym and are looking at the basketball team from Stuart Cramer High School warm up.

The team, from Belmont, wears purple uniforms. Kelly loves his bright green Kobe Bryant Nikes.

“That’s my special shoe,” Kelly said. “They stand out big time.”

And when the game starts, it’s even easier to tell who Will Kelly is — with or without the neon shoes. He stands out big time, too.

In the past two weeks, there haven’t been too many high school players in America as hot as he is. Two weeks ago, Kelly scored 130 points in three games, including 50 points, 10 rebounds, four assists and four steals in an 85-67 win over Hunter Huss.

This week, for an encore, Kelly scored 126 points in three games, including Friday night, when he had 43 points, six rebounds and four assists against Kings Mountain.

Kelly is like ... Trae Young?

A self-styled “sneaker head” with 115 pairs in his closet, Kelly has a gift for scoring. He’s big enough, at 6-foot-3, to drive it and he can shoot it from way, way out.

“I can’t put me in one category,” he said, “If you take away my 3-ball, I’ve got options. If I drive to the hole, I have more options....I’ve always been good at attacking the (basket) and once I started getting that real nice jumper, it’s been lethal. It’s pick your poison.”

Yes, that sounds a little cocky, but Kelly talks about his game the way you talk about picking the fish or chicken dish with your waiter.

And his coach, and other coaches, tend to agree about his talent.

“Listen, Will Kelly can score in crazy, crazy numbers,” said Westminster Catawba head coach Ed Addie. “You know who he reminds me of? (Atlanta Hawks NBA star) Trae Young. That’s who he plays like. He score the way Trae does — shoot all over the place and get to the basket.”

This year, North Carolina boasts the nation’s top three scorers: In Waynesville, Haywood Christian’s Caleb Senyo leads the country at 37.5 points per game. No. 2 is Xavier Whitaker of Rocky Mount’s New Life Christian at 36.3; and No. 3 is Kings Mountain’s Zeke Cannedy at 35.7.

Where are the colleges?

Kelly, a 6-foot-3 senior guard, is rising up the charts quickly, now up to No. 40 in America. He’s also helped his team to a 16-5 start. The college coaches, however, aren’t knocking down his door yet.

Kelly, averaging 28.6 points and 8.3 rebounds with a 4.0 GPA, said he has offers from Division III Johnson and Wales, Division II Lees-McCrae and Columbia International, an NAIA school.

Is he under-recruited?

“Absolutely. One hundred percent,” Stuart Cramer coach Brad Sloan said.

Sloan believes the biggest reason Kelly hasn’t snagged multiple Division I offers is because coaches are a turned off by the number of schools he’s played at.

“I think a lot of coaches just look at some of the movement he’s had as a negative,” Sloan said, “and if they give us time to explain the situation, there’s nothing negative to it.”

A different path

Kelly started his career at Belmont’s South Point High School, Sloan said, before his family moved into an apartment in the Stuart Cramer zone. So Kelly played his freshman year at South Point, his sophomore year at Stuart Cramer. When COVID-19 hit and it appeared public schools might not play, Kelly’s family decided to move to private Gaston Christian, which was promising a basketball season.

Kelly, a junior, helped Gaston Christian reach an improbable state title game in which he scored 22 points, though his team lost to Asheville Christian and Florida State recruit DeAnte Green.

For his senior season, Kelly transferred to Westminster Catawba to join a team that would include Virginia Tech recruit MJ Collins, a 6-5 wing, forming an elite backcourt. But according to Sloan, Westminster Catawba, a S.C. private school, didn’t give Kelly credit for all the classes he took at Gaston Christian.

“The schedule they provided him,” Sloan said, “he was going to school all day and taking classes at night (online) to make up for hours not given to him.”

Ed Addie, the Westminster coach, said there two classes in question. Addie said one of them was included in Kelly’s schedule and the other was not being offered in school but he could take it online, and suggested Kelly use his study hall to do so.

Ultimately, Kelly decided — after a short time making the near hour-long commute from Belmont to Rock Hill every day — that he would come home and finish his senior year in his purple uniform and green shoes.

Bright future

It seems to have been a win-win for everybody.

“He’s got a 4.06 GPA and he’s probably made three Bs in his life,” Sloan said. “He’s a very mature young man and a good student and I tell coaches this story all the time: When COVID hit and everyone went virtual, he had a team sports PE class and I happened to be good friends with the teacher. He texted me and said out of 30 guys, Will was the only one to do his online assignment. It’s a PE class and kids are blowing it off. Will is still doing his work. That’s indicative of the type of player and person he is.”

Sloan said more D1 and D2 coaches are beginning to show interest and he thinks that will only keep up, particularly if Kelly — the No. 2 public school scorer in North Carolina — keeps up his torrid pace.

And he’s got no plans to stop.

“I’m locked in,” he said. “I want to get us to a playoff and I felt like this was the best time of year to try to do that. The first game when I had 40 (points) this year, I was letting it fly and everything was looking good, and after that, the rim has just been huge. Man, I just don’t want this to end.”

NC’s Top Scorers

Here are the top 10 boys and girls scorers, by average, in North Carolina

BOYS SCORING

GIRLS SCORING

- Source: MaxPreps (through games of Friday, Feb. 4)

Langston Wertz Jr.

The Charlotte Observer

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Langston Wertz Jr. is an award-winning sports journalist who has worked at the Observer since 1988. He’s covered everything from Final Fours and NFL to video games and Britney Spears. Wertz -- a West Charlotte High and UNC grad -- is the rare person who can answer “Charlotte,” when you ask, “What city are you from.” Support my work with a digital subscription