Whicker: CSUN’s TJ Starks is filling up the basket, reeling in the years

Once upon a time, TJ Starks did the spotlight dance.

“It seems like a long time ago now,” Starks said, laughing.

But the day when Texas A&M came to Charlotte and put a doubt-free, 86-65 whipping on North Carolina was only three years ago.

It was a second-round NCAA Tournament game and it was only the second time the Tar Heels ever lost an NCAA game in North Carolina. Starks was leading the incursion. He scored a game-high 21 points against the defending national champs.

Starks was a freshman then, already coarsened by the semi-weekly Southeastern Conference wars and a state high school championship in Texas. No one could predict what was coming. But it promised to be loud.

It isn’t.

Starks plays for CSUN. His shots are ripping through the nets more often than anyone else’s in the Big West Conference, but do they make a sound? If anything, this is one college basketball player who is OVER the radar.

“It can be very frustrating,” Starks said. “Sometimes you wonder. Am I even being seen? As an older player, I’m pretty conscious of what I need to do for us to have a chance. But it’s tough to average 20 points, I don’t care what level it is. You need motivation, but I know I can play with the best.”

Starks is coming off a four-game spree that might have clinched him the Big West Player of the Year award. In an eight-day span, he scored 31, 28, 27 and 25 points and shot 49.4 percent from the field. He is shooting 40 percent from 3-point range for the season, and he averages nearly six trips to the foul line.

He knew he might thrive in such obscure surroundings. “There might not be as many skilled players in this conference,” Starks said, “but the coaching and the game-planning is very good. You see it in the way they play defense.”

The Matadors are 5-7 in conference play, 9-10 overall. They are a microcosm of the way college basketball has become a gig instead of a mission. They lost Elijah Harkless to Oklahoma and Terrell Gomez to San Diego State, and Lamine Diane, the two-time Big West Player of the Year, entered the draft. He is with Philadelphia’s G-League team.

Their compensation was Starks. Matadors coach Mark Gottfried shudders to think of life without him. He only dreams about life with Starks and everyone else.

“He’s had some terrific games,” Gottfried said. “He’s a great guy who just needs to be more efficient.

“But it’s a time of constant turnover. We’ve got five freshmen and I never got a chance to meet them or shake their hands until they got on campus. It’s difficult for everybody. It’s generally tough to keep a player, especially on this level.”

Starks’ A&M career began to dislodge when Buzz Williams became the new coach last season. Starks said they got along initially. “But eventually his system just wasn’t for me,” Starks said.

All of that became moot when Starks was pulled over, with fewer than two ounces of marijuana in the car. He was suspended and left the program in December of 2019. How silly that seems today, with massive cannabis shops on every other corner. But after the divorce, Starks learned he was a commodity. He leaned toward DePaul, where most of his extended family lived.

Then Mo Williams called. The former NBA guard knew Starks from AAU basketball in Texas. Now he was one of Gottfried’s assistants at CSUN. Williams told Starks he could make him pro-ready. His parents didn’t know what CSUN was. “I had to do a lot of research myself,” TJ said.

They lost the argument, and Starks showed up last January and began practicing.

His plans didn’t even get to the practice floor. In May, Williams became the head coach at Alabama State.

“I felt betrayed,” he said. “I woke up one morning and learned about it on Instagram. He’s got to do what’s best for his career and family.  It just hit hard. I had trusted him, and I committed myself to the process. He’s why I came here.

“And, yeah, my parents got a chance to say they told me so.”

When the empty nights pile up, Starks takes to YouTube. He calls up that March Sunday in 2018, watches the day when he was the best player on a court populated by guys whose uniforms Michael Jordan and Vince Carter used to wear.

“It’s a confidence-builder,” Starks said. “It shows what happens when I don’t think about the game, when I just do what I do.”

Sometimes you can look back. You might regain something.