The revival of Anderson boys basketball during the three years Donnie Bowling has been at the helm has come as a result of a near perfect mix of home-grown talent and players who have moved in, with their coach orchestrating it all from the sidelines and in the locker room.
Not wanting to miss his sophomore year in Chicago because the state of Illinois was canceling basketball in the winter of 2020-21, Ahmere Carson and his family began looking for a place to play.
“Coach Bowling knew my father, so he said he needed some players,” Carson said. “My sophomore year in Chicago, we didn’t have basketball. It was shut off because of COVID. Indiana was one of the states that was going to play, and I didn’t want to sit out. So I said, ‘I might as well go down there and play.’”
And the rest is history.
“When I first got here, I bonded really quickly with the team, and that was huge,” he said. “It was a good team. Everyone plays together and no arguing.”
Since Carson’s arrival in 2020, the Indians have posted a 51-21 record, which included Madison County titles in 2022 and 2023, a North Central Conference championship in 2022 and back-to-back 20-win seasons with the Illinois native helping lead the way. He led the county in scoring for the second straight season at 21.5 points per game while averaging 5.6 assists, 4.7 rebounds and 3.6 steals and has earned THB Sports’ Boys Basketball Athlete of the Year award.
“There’s a lot of good players in Madison County,” Carson said. “The county was fun. There’s a lot of good competition.”
During his senior season, Carson added the revered career 1,000-point milestone to his dossier. In a 73-70 win at Fishers, he cleared that hurdle with a long-range 3-point bomb that came to be a staple of his offensive arsenal. He became the 14th player in Anderson High School history to reach the mark and closed out his career at 1,142 points, good for 12th place in program history.
It was the second straight season an Indian player got there as Ty Wills did so a year ago and was the 2022 THB Sports Boys Basketball Athlete of the Year.
After scoring just 93 points as a freshman on the south side of Chicago and playing 10 games as a sophomore in Anderson, Carson takes added pride in reaching the mark in just over two full seasons.
“That was one of the checkmarks I wanted to get before the season was over,” he said. “That’s a big accomplishment getting in in two-and-a-half years. I saw (Kokomo junior) Flory (Bidunga) got it in two-and-a-half, too. So that’s big.”
His 28-point game at Fishers was just one of a number of highlights from the season for Carson.
After a sluggish start, he scored 34 points in a season-opening win over Pendleton Heights, he averaged 23 points in Anderson’s three Madison County tournament wins, he scored 25 in a rout of Marion and he scored 22 in Bowling’s 100th career win. After the season, he was named All-State by the Indiana Basketball Coaches Association and was honored as part of Hoosier Basketball Magazine’s Top 60 Senior Workout.
But for Carson, the high point of the year had nothing to do with anything that happened on the court.
“Just being a team leader and us growing as a team, on and off the court,” he said. “No basketball, that was the highlight for the team this season.”
Carson hopes to make a decision about his future in the coming weeks. He has opportunities at the junior college, D-I and D-II levels, and he is also weighing a possible year at prep school to improve physically and refine his game. He is also undecided on a course of study but plans to keep it close to sports.