Blood brothers.
Redshirt senior guards Jared Small and Georgie Dancer have spent five years as teammates and won four conference championships together.
The pair played for two years at Fresno Community College (FCC) and quickly became inseparable before transferring to Colorado Mesa University (CMU).
FCC ran a traditional drive and kick offense which took time to adjust to for Small, but Dancer helped to get him comfortable within the offense.
“He would sometimes get discouraged because the coach would tell him ‘Hey don’t shoot this shot, don’t do this.’ He would take it sometimes as the coach is not telling me to do that. I would say, ‘no he is just telling you that if you do this and this first, then that will come.’ So, just him starting to notice things like that, starting to understand really helped,” Dancer said.
I just always tried to stay on top of him about, coach is always on you because he sees the potential that you have and how good you could be. He really started to realize that and come into his own later in that second year [at FCC] and then brought it here to Mesa where now he has just expanded his game so much.”
Dancer grew up playing physical basketball which allowed him to transition into the FCC offense more naturally.
“Coming from where I came from, it’s just hard nose, physical basketball and you can’t get mad like everything is always in the game and you can’t really put your emotions into the game. You just have to let the game go however it’s going to go.” Dancer said.
It’s more than just basketball between the two though; the teammates became brothers.
“The way that we both treat each other off the court, we are blood brothers. Blood couldn’t make us any closer and that is just the biggest thing that I can take away from us meeting each other is the amount of respect we have towards one another,” Dancer said.
They have helped each other adjust to their home states of Calif. and Colo. Dancer is from Modesto, Calif., and was crucial to helping Small adjust to FCC and the state in general.
“I would say in Calif., I taught him that our college was in a rough area, so I just taught him to keep to yourself. Keep your head down and do your work, don’t call attention to yourself, don’t associate yourself with the type of people that are around there, just stay with your teammates. Put our head down, get through school and get to the next level,” Dancer said.
The pair have won two Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Championships and got to the NCAA Tournament last year since coming to CMU.
This season was a little different for the pair as they were the only two seniors on the team and had to take a bigger role leadership wise this year.
“This year, it’s been a lot more like we feel like we must do because last year, we just won every single game like and even if it was like a close game, we just like had confidence that we were going to win. But like we’ve lost some games this year, like more games than last year. And so, it’s felt like we’ve like had to kind of do that more often. You have to decide how you’re going to approach it. Sometimes you kind of must be like hard on them and be say, ‘Hey, come on, come on. Like we got to do this, we got to do that.’ Then, there are other times where it’s like, ‘Hey, guys, like we’re good, all we got to do is keep playing our game, just stay the course,” Small said.
The memories that Small and Dancer will miss the most are not the times with the guys on the court, but the memories created off.
“I don’t even know if I can say my favorite moment here has been basketball. These are some of the coolest guys that I’ve ever been around. Those Saturday nights after the games, just all of us hanging out just shooting the shit in someone’s house, that’s my favorite moment. There have been a couple times this year where it’s been a Saturday and we are just sitting there talking and I find myself going quiet, just looking and listening like ‘dang this is not forever. This is not something that I will be able to do for the rest of my life, like this is actually coming to an end. Just hanging out with the guys, that’s my favorite part,” Small said.
The Maverick’s next game is Saturday, March 12 in the NCAA South Central Regional Quarterfinals against Texas A&M- Kingsville at 6:30 p.m.
