Every time LSU guard Darrel Mitchell launches a shot with his feet behind the 3-point line, LSU fans hold their breath and wait for the inevitable swish that soon follows.
His teammates do the same. So does coach John Brady. They all expect the ball to go in. The opposing players hope and pray it does not.
These are the expectations of Mitchell when he shoots from behind the arc. As the Southeastern Conference’s leading 3-point shooter at 47 percent in league games and 42 percent overall, they are expectations the sophomore has earned.
Teammate Antonio Hudson joked that when Mitchell lets one go, there is no need to worry about the offensive rebound because there will not be an opportunity.
“Might as well start running to the other end,” Hudson said. “[Mitchell’s] shooting ability is tremendous. That’s just it. Everybody in the stands feels like it’s going in. He gave us a reason to believe him, so why not feel that way?”
Why not? Especially on the friendly court of the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, where Mitchell has hit at a 47 percent 3-point clip, including a scorching 52 percent from downtown in SEC home games.
“At times there is this certain feeling that when I let it go, I know it’s going to go in,” said Mitchell, whose favorite spot is in the corner behind the arc. “And other times, I feel that it might not go in and it still goes in. I don’t know what it is.”
Confidence in himself is Mitchell’s biggest asset according to Brady.
“The most important thing is not what I believe or what his teammates believe, it’s what he believes,” Brady said of Mitchell’s shot. “I’d rather him believe it’s going in.”
On his upper left arm, Mitchell has a tattoo of a panther with the words “Beast Among Men” below it. That is how Mitchell sees himself as a basketball player.
At a listed 5-foot-11, 175 pounds, Mitchell is the smallest player on the LSU men’s basketball team. But in his case size does not matter. He is third on the team in scoring at 11.8 points per game, including 12.8 in SEC games, leads the team with 43 steals and is perhaps the most dangerous offensive player on the floor.
Mitchell credits a lot of his sucess as a basketball player to his father Darrel Mitchell Sr., who was also his high school basketball coach at St. Martinville High School. At St. Martinville, Mitchell led the team to the 2002 4A state championship, averaging 24.6 points per game. That season he was named Mr. Basketball by the Louisiana Sports Writers Association along with Gatorade Player of the Year.
“It all started in high school in my freshman year,” Mitchell said. “I was a whole lot smaller than I am now. I just worked as the years progressed and I got better at it. Being that my father was my coach, we would stay after practice and work on my shooting and I just got better at it. During games, if I did something wrong, my dad would tell me what I needed to do to get better. It helped out that he was there to tell me what I was doing wrong when shooting the ball.”
Mitchell said playing for his father gave him an advantage most players did not have.
“[My father] was able to talk to me in ways that he didn’t talk to other guys,” he said. “He could talk to me on a more personal level, let me know the things I did wrong and made me play a whole lot better.”
Darrel Mitchell Sr. has known for a long time that his son would be a special player.
When Mitchell was in seventh grade, he was moved up to the varsity basketball team when members of the St. Martinville varsity were removed from the team by his father for disciplinary reasons.
“I sat back and watched him in seventh grade with his pants falling off because he was so small, and he didn’t get rattled,” Mitchell Sr. said. “I thought if he continued to get better he would be something really special.”
Darrel Mitchell Sr. can be added to the list of people who believe Darrel will bury his shot most every time.
“I tell you what, it was that way in high school too,” Mitchell Sr. said. “I constantly tell him that no one thinks he’s going miss.”
The younger Mitchell said everyone’s confidence in him and his ability makes him a better player.
“It just makes my confidence a whole lot stronger that every time I shoot the ball, they’re counting on it to go in,” Mitchell said. “It just makes me feel a whole lot better when I shoot it. It makes my confidence a whole lot higher.”
Mitchell is especially big for the Tigers now, who may be without Jaime Lloreda for the remainder of the season. His ability to knock down shots is crucial to the Tigers’ chances of making the NCAA tournament with LSU (17-8, 7-7) having lost its last four SEC games.
“We just have to finish the season strong as a team,” Mitchell said. “Whatever happens, happens. If I have to score more for the team, so be it. [Against Kentucky], we played strong as a team and just fell short. Playing together as a team is what we have to do to finish the season strong.”
And the Tigers are fortunate to have Mitchell at his best right now. Over the last nine games he is averaging 13.8 points and has hit eight of his last 16 3-pointers.
“Darrel needs to take good shots and make those shots in order for us to have a chance to play at our best offensively,” Brady said. “He’s doing a good job of that. I don’t know if he’s the best [3-point shooter] we’ve ever had, but he’s the best we’ve got right now and that’s important.”