A quick Happy Birthday shout out to Friar great LaDontae Henton, who turned twenty-five today. No, I will not be wishing every Friar player a happy birthday on this blog but Henton deserves some recognition here. LaDontae came to PC my senior year and his impact on the court towards rebuilding the program cannot be understated. Henton and Ryan Gomes are the only two Friars to score over 2,000 points and grab 1,000 rebounds in their PC careers, but its more than just the stats its also the moments that we remember. There are two Henton moments that stand out the most to me. The first being that jumper he hit with 45 seconds left in the 2014 Big East Championship game. The Friars clinging to a two point lead vs Creighton, “Buckets”, as they called him, hit a jumper from the left corner with 8 seconds left on the shot clock. I was in the building when he hoisted that shot and I remember yelling “NOOO!!!” when it left his hands. He drilled it. That shot took, for a lack of a better word, STONES. The second moment came in his senior campaign when he and Notre Dame’s Jerian Grant went shot for shot against each other at Mohegan Sun. Henton put the team on his back that afternoon leading the Friars to a victory. Of all of that though I think my favorite aspect of Henton’s game was that this dude got “Man Boards”. What is a “Man Board” you ask? It’s when you go up for a rebound with the full intent of grabbing that rebound and no one is going to prevent you from doing so. I think Henton must have led the Big East in “Man Boards” throughout his career. People around Friartown described Henton as a “junkyard dog” and that couldn’t be more spot-on. All the things that Coach Cooley preaches to the program grit, toughness, that “Heart and Soul”, Henton embodied all of that. It is no coincidence that LaDontae was Ed’s first recruit at PC.
-Surette