South Jersey basketball: LEAP Academy's Brazil Harvey-Carr closing in on 2,000 points

Brazil Harvey-Carr’s always been a scorer.

Even when she first started playing basketball at 5 years old, and she was throwing up granny-style 3-pointers in her cousin’s backyard or the LEAP Academy Elementary School playground in Camden, Harvey-Carr routinely found the bottom of the net.

She’s only gotten more proficient as she’s aged.

The 17-year-old is averaging 28.8 points and 17.5 rebounds as the Lions have jumped out to a 6-2 start to the season. If she continues that production, she’ll become the 28th girl in South Jersey history to tally 2,000 career points later this year.

“That’s a lot of points,” smiled Harvey-Carr, who’s scored 1,823 entering Wednesday.

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But that’s been the goal since she netted her 1,000th point as a sophomore.

At first, Brazil wanted to match her older sister Brandi, who went on to play collegiately at DePaul and Pittsburgh and was the first player in LEAP history to hit that plateau.

Brazil was so good, so young, however, that she had to change her mindset.

“I didn’t expect to be this good, but I’m happy,” she said.

Her head coach Ted Evans isn’t surprised at all.

He first saw Brazil on the LEAP Academy courts when her grandmother was picking up Brandi from middle school.

“I had a varsity team and her sister wasn’t even there yet,” Evans said. “I remember Brazil being 5 years old throwing shots up outside on the playground. … I knew then.”

It didn’t hurt she came from a talented family.

Her dad Ronald Carr played for Camden High and so did three of her older cousins – Rasool, Nasir and Nasim Hinson.

The Hinsons, also Harvey-Carr’s neighbors, had a hoop in their backyard, and that’s where she spent a lot of her childhood.

“Back then I wasn’t really as good,” Harvey-Carr recalled. “I used to watch them a lot. They played AAU before I played AAU. I learned from them a lot, they were very competitive, we used to play basketball every day after school and they evolved into great players.”

So did she.

“She does things I’ve never seen on a court,” Evans said. “Just her moves, when she penetrates inside, her fakes and the slides to the left and right, you just don’t see it. You don’t see it in a boys’ game, let alone a girls’ game. She plays a boy’s game in a girl’s world.”

Yet it’s not her scoring that gets her the most excited.

“She gets more out of giving the ball to one of the players that’s not a scorer,” Evans said. “She gets more out of that than scoring because scoring, she can do it anytime she wants, but she’s delighted when our players are scoring, and it’s has pretty cool for a coach to have someone that unselfish.”

Most of the time.

There are moments Evans gets frustrated with Harvey-Carr because she’s too pass-happy.

“A lot of our players are new to the game and have never played before and they’re playing varsity, that’s not normal in basketball,” he said. “You don’t have kids that never played on a court starting varsity, but that’s what we have because we’re so, so small, so when she’s passing that’s great, I want to get them worked into the game, but I want to win the game too.”

Harvey-Carr has scored more than 60 percent of her team’s points this year (230 of 380) despite constant double and triple teams.

Her performance with the Lions, plus her work with the New York Gauchos in AAU ball, netted her numerous collegiate offers. She accepted a full ride to Rhode Island last September.

“I want to go into the field of kinesiology and physical education,” she said. “From there I want to teach little kids then go into coaching.”

That’s still months away though.

For now, Harvey-Carr is focused on the present and helping her team to its fourth straight playoff appearance.

And when 2,000 rolls around, she’ll be ready, unlike when she was closing in on 1,000.

“It was crazy,” she said. “I only needed six points and I was so nervous to score those six points, and I score more than six points every game. … Now I know that it’s game on and I can do it now.”

Josh Friedman; @JFriedman57; (856) 486-2431; jfriedman2@gannettnj.com

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