Mason Gillis missed his senior year but still had enough time to prove he was a fit for Purdue
NEW CASTLE, Ind. — Mason Gillis’ senior season at New Castle High School was taken away from him in stages.
The trouble began at the end of the forward’s junior year when New Castle beat Marion in the regional finals of Indiana’s Class 3A state tournament, but Gillis tweaked his right knee taking a charge and then slipping on the sweat that had gathered on the floor when he tried to get up.
Advertisement
He played through New Castle’s win in that game and loss to Culver in semi-state without incident but then twisted his knee in his first travel game of the spring when he came down from shooting a floater. He had surgery on April 27, 2018, to clean up his meniscus with the presumption that he’d be back on his feet and rehabbing soon. He was, but he apparently got back too fast. His knee hadn’t healed the way it was supposed to, which led to swelling. That led to a second opinion from Dr. Timothy Kremchek, the medical director for the Cincinnati Reds and a renowned orthopedic surgeon, who determined that a lateral release of the kneecap and microfracture surgery were necessary.
And that right there was all it took. Gillis missed out on a chance to push Center Grove’s Trayce Jackson-Davis for Indiana’s Mr. Basketball honors and to help a New Castle team that ended up losing in its sectional final. He still hadn’t been cleared to play five-on-five in time for the Indiana-Kentucky All-Star series, in which he was still included as an honorary Indiana All-Star.
“It’s definitely been a roller coaster ever since the beginning,” Gillis said. “The first time I had surgery it was kind of OK. The second time it was kind of like a stab in the heart. Nobody wants another surgery and I wanted to get back on the court as soon as possible.”
He’s getting closer now, though, and when he does get to play a game again it will be with a Big Ten stalwart coming off an Elite Eight, despite the fact Gillis missed all of that season and his final summer of travel ball. He committed to Purdue a year ago, in between surgeries, and Matt Painter was sold on him by that point because of just how fast Gillis went from relying on size to becoming what Painter wanted him to be — a skilled inside-outside player.
Advertisement
“It’s a night-and-day difference,” New Castle coach Daniel Cox said. “He progressed every single year and I have no doubt that he’ll surprise a lot of people.”
Gillis grew up playing just about everything, because there wasn’t a sport he didn’t have the genes for.
His father, Bill Gillis, was a 6-foot-7 center at Ball State in the early ’90s. His mother, Tammy McCall, was a cross country runner at Ball State, and his sister Lauryn played volleyball at Wisconsin before transferring to South Carolina for graduate school where she will play beach volleyball.
So Gillis had all kinds of size and skill and stamina, allowing him to not only play basketball but also football, soccer and baseball. Baseball was actually his first love and the one that briefly made him famous. At just 10 years old, he started in center field on the New Castle Little League team otherwise made up of 11- and 12-year-olds and sent the squad to the Little League World Series with a walk-off single in the Great Lakes regional final.
Baseball always came easy, but then so did basketball because he was generally the biggest player on any court in town. Into high school he was still playing both, but that was when he started to burn out on the former and see that the latter might actually be his best bet to play at the next level.
“I wanted to work out so much more for basketball than I did baseball,” Gillis said. “I felt like I was taking time away from getting better at basketball playing baseball. I just wanted to put that away so I could be the best I could be at basketball.”
He was pretty good to start with that just because he could overpower everyone else he was usually playing with. However, he was 6-foot-7, so it was obvious that wouldn’t last forever.
As a freshman, he was one of New Castle’s biggest players, so he spent almost all of his time in the post. However, a number of not only New Castle coaches but also college coaches who were recruiting him, including Painter, made it clear he had to improve his perimeter skills if he expected to play at the next level, because 6-7 guys don’t play center in the Big Ten. So Gillis took it to heart.
Advertisement
“Looking back at it I wish I got to do more perimeter things and learn a jumper at that age, learn how to dribble and be low with the ball, just guard stuff like that,” Gillis said. “I was always the bigger guy. I was always kind of stuck in the post and guarding the bigger guys and stuff like that. Getting older in today’s game, you can’t just be a big guy in the post and not be able to do everything. Every day since freshman year, even whenever I had my surgeries, I’d be doing two-ball handling every single day. Even when I couldn’t go to the gym all the time, I would wake up all the time and dribble with plastic bags. Just working on fundamentals, form and set shots and regular spot open shots, one-dribble pull-ups, just simple fundamental things like that.”
Until that point, Gillis hadn’t spent much time watching basketball, at least with a discernible eye. But at that point he started watching old YouTube clips of Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant and fixated especially on Kawhi Leonard.
Gillis appreciated the strides Leonard made in his offensive game because he wasn’t that polished of an offensive player at San Diego State. He also appreciated his demeanor, including the fact Leonard doesn’t say much. Gillis is very intelligent and handles interviews like a much older man. He is extremely comfortable in conversation. But there’s also a stoicism to him and he appreciates players like Leonard who avoid drama.
The project to make Gillis a play-making forward began there. Cox started looking for ways to move Gillis out of the paint when he could and giving him opportunities to play facing the basket more, letting him handle the ball and expand the range on his shot.
“His freshman year, we really wanted to focus on playing within the paint, stepping inside the paint, doing what he does well, getting acclimated to the game,” Cox said. “Every year he took steps forward. As a sophomore, he took steps out and he ended up shooting 30 3s. He could step out a little bit, pick up the bounce. Between sophomore and junior year, it was a huge leap. He could really step out, play one-on-one with guys and create.”
What made him such a force, though, was that he didn’t abandon the paint entirely. He would take bigger defenders outside and beat them that way, but he would still post up when called for and was dominant on the glass.
“One thing I always told him through the whole process was don’t lose sight of who you are,” Cox said. “I always thought of him as a guy like Paul Milsap or Draymond Green. They’re skilled, but they never lose sight of who they are. They kick tail. So, I want you to grab 20 rebounds a game. You get a mismatch, I want you to dominate that mismatch. It’s not, ‘I’m a guard now, I’m a wing, I’m gonna dribble and shoot.’ If you’ve got a mismatch, you gotta take him on the block, you gotta abuse him a little bit. Yes, I want you to go out there and shoot 3s and handle the ball. But you gotta take names out there and punish people down on the block. He did a good job of balancing that out.”
Advertisement
Gillis was on pace for a historic high school career when it prematurely ended. After averaging a double-double as a sophomore with 14.1 points and 10.4 rebounds per game, he was even more dominant as a junior with 21.6 points and 12.2 rebounds per game to go with 2.3 assists. He made 32 of his 71 3-pointers (45 percent) after hitting 7 of 21 his previous year. He finished with 1,251 career points and 829 rebounds, and if he would have played his senior year, he would almost certainly have become the first New Castle player since former Indiana All-American Kent Benson to finish with 1,000 points and 1,000 rebounds.
“I can only imagine what he would have been as a senior,” Cox said. “That stings for him a little bit.”
It would sting a lot more if he hadn’t signed with Purdue. By the time Gillis had his surgery, Painter had already seen enough to know he could fit his system.
“My biggest thing with coach Painter is that he always told me what he thought of me,” Gillis said. “At one point, he truly believed I needed to get my skill level up. All summer, I kept working on that and working on that. Our relationship grew and everything and he started to realize that I only really started in ninth grade and where I was at that time to where he offered me. I think that year and a half to two years really impressed him.”
And now that he’s in camp at Purdue and returning to health, Gillis can work on his next steps.
The news release announcing the signing of Purdue’s 2019 class includes a quote from Painter saying that Gillis can play anything from the two to the four, which seems like a bit of a reach.
It’s hard to imagine Gillis ever having to be the Boilermakers’ shooting guard, especially considering that he’s entering school with guards Isaiah Thompson and Brandon Newman and that the Boilermakers already have two more guards locked up for 2020 in Jaden Ivey and Ethan Morton, plus Nojel Eastern, Jahaad Proctor, Eric Hunter Jr. and Sasha Stefanovic already on the roster. The Boilermakers can be positionally fluid, but they have and will have enough shooting guard options that Gillis will most likely never be in that spot — so he will almost certainly be operating as a forward, whether at the small or power spot, and his job will involve some work in the post.
Advertisement
But Gillis realizes he will have to do some things that shooting guards do, and more importantly, he’ll find himself in position to defend some shooting guards, so being able to guard on the perimeter is the biggest adjustment he needs to make.
“I’m a bigger person, but I’m not a slow person,” Gillis said. “I’m obviously not as quick as Isaiah Thompson, but I can move and I’m long and I can figure out how to stay in front of a player if he’s a little bit quicker than me.”
It was more difficult for Gillis to earn experience defending guards and wings than it was to step out of the post on offense. When New Castle was facing bigger post players, they had little choice but to use Gillis against them, because they didn’t have other options as big.
“That will be a little bit of a learning curve for him,” Cox said. “But he did guard wings and he can move his feet. That’s a big thing is keeping guys in front of you. But he’s got too much in the tank not to figure it out. If anyone’s going to be good it’s going to be Mason, and if anyone’s going to come back better than he was when he got injured, it will be Mason.”
Gillis feels more confident in that as well as he returns to full strength, and after the strides he made in the two years before his injury, he believes he can quickly become whatever it is Purdue asks him to be.
“I think I did catch some people by surprise,” Gillis said. “At one point, I couldn’t handle the ball or should at all. They didn’t see the slow progression. I want to keep shocking people. I’ve had people say it’s crazy how far I’ve improved. I just want to keep working hard and keep being quiet about it.”
(Photo of Mason Gillis: Dustin Dopirak / The Athletic)
