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E-TC’s Eli Nordine becoming complete player, scores 25 points in victory over Chassell

E-TC’s Eli Nordine rises up for a layup during his team’s 77-48 win over Chassell Wednesday in Chassell. (Bryce Derouin/ Daily Mining Gazette)

CHASSELL — Eli Nordine doesn’t look like a basketball player. He’s 5-foot-6 and a half without shoes and 5-7 with shoes. He’s got a mop of curly brown hair and perfectly straight teeth. When he’s not on the court, he sports thin-framed specs, and on the court he opts for thick black-goggles instead of contacts. 

No, Nordine isn’t what you think of when you think basketball, but make no mistake. Eli Nordine is a basketball player — and a good one at that. So if people want to doubt him, that’s fine. But it would certainly be a bad idea. 

“I’m pretty sure when I’m walking around in the city or something, people don’t think I can play ball, but I can,” he said.

He’s proved it time and time again: Recently he dropped six 3-pointers against Watersmeet. He went off late in the game in E-TC’s loss to Dollar Bay, posting 13 second-half points. And Nordine did it again Wednesday against Chassell, scoring 25 points in a 77-48 road victory. 

Nordine has gained a reputation for being a 3-point threat, and each time he caught the ball against Chassell, someone would call out “shooter, shooter” and throw a hand in his face. 

The junior guard did do some damage from beyond the arc — hitting three 3-pointers — but the bulk of his scoring came in the mid-range, something he has been working at.  

“He has continued to grow as an intelligent player,” coach Brad Besonen said. “He has gone from, I would say especially in the last month and a half, he has started to go from a shooter to a scorer. Like tonight he really used his lift fake and the clear dribble. He had guys jumping all over the place in the second half.”

All it took for Nordine to blow by his defenders, was a little upward twitch of his head and a single dribble. Then, he’d stop on a dime, feather the ball through the net and add two more points to the E-TC total.

“He is good at it, and it is a perfect weapon because he is too little. If he gets by a defender with a shot fake, he has to either shoot the pull-up or hit the floater,” Besonen said. “He is good at his floater too, but he has become really confident with that pull-up. He gets away from his defender, but he doesn’t get too deep that the help gets to him, so that is another weapon we can score with.”

This is Nordine’s third year starting varsity for E-TC, and his game has changed drastically over the last three seasons. Opponents may yell “shooter” when he catches the ball, but now Nordine has a complete game. 

Putting the pieces together has been a process — one that started with a 3-year-old boy shooting on a tiny plastic hoop in a garage. Nordine first learned the proper shooting form from his dad on that tiny hoop. He practiced until he perfected the motion, gradually moving up until he could shoot on a 10-foot rim. 

But Nordine was small, so becoming a shooting threat took time. Instead, he started as a pass-first point guard and spent elementary school and junior high creating for his teammates. Then, when he hit eighth grade, Nordine was finally strong enough to shoot the long ball, so he transitioned into a role as a 3-point shooter. 

But it wasn’t until this season that he started putting everything together. Now, Nordine will knock down the 3 if it’s there, or he will drive past his defender for a pull-up. If that isn’t an option, Nordine reverts to his junior high ways, finding an open teammate on the perimeter, or threading a pass to a cutter in the lane. 

For Besonen and E-TC, Nordine is a luxury to have on the court. The second-year captain acts as E-TC’s floor leader, calling out plays and identifying defenses. Nordine says he tries to be “a coach on the court, like Jason Kidd.”

And when his team is in trouble, Nordine is there to calm things down. Besonen doesn’t like to play the junior at point, preferring to run him off screens and position him as a scoring threat, but sometimes it is necessary. 

“We had kind of a rough patch in the first half, getting loose with the ball, but we were able to put him at the point and that kind of calmed everything down,” Besonen said. “He was moving guys around with his eyes, playing that point guard role that we need him to against some teams.”

Nordine’s complete game wouldn’t be quite as complete without one crucial element: confidence. 

Has it always been there? 

“No,” Besonen said, barely getting the word out before laughing. He’s grown into it, Besonen said after years of playing against bigger, stronger opponents. Like everything else, Nordine’s confidence developed over time.

He may not look like a basketball player, but he certainly acts like it.

Nordine carries himself with the kind of swagger you only see in talented athletes. He’s the kind of player to hold a follow through after hitting a big shot. The kind that will give a sly smile to the official, but never say a word when he doesn’t like a call. And most importantly, he’s the kind that will knock down the 3, or the mid-range 2, or whatever else the Panthers need, whenever they need it. 

And why wouldn’t he be confident? Because it may have taken a few years to get here, but now, Eli Nordine has arrived.

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