Tyrone Shelley goes up for a slam in a game in mid-January 2010. — Earnie Grafton / Union-Tribune
There aren’t too many high school basketball players who are unstoppable. Tyrone Shelley is one of them. When my high school, Clairemont, played them, it created a buzz around school. Students knew who he was. Our school was an average team who could hang with most teams, but playing against Crawford, we were fairly certain of two things, that Shelley would put up great numbers and that we didn’t stand much of a chance. They beat us by about 30 and he scored about 30.
When Shelley left Crawford he was San Diego’s all time leading scorer with 2,962 including a record 76 point game. He finished as the eighth best player in the state according to rivals.com behind NBA players James Harden and Austin Daye.
Shelley had scholarship offers to schools like Arizona, Arizona St., Connecticut, UCLA and Washington, he choose to go to Pepperdine. “I was around people that wanted to be around me so with Malcolm (Thomas) and Tyler (Tucker) it made the move a little easier,” said Shelley. He would lead the team in scoring and was fourth in the conference with 15.1 points per game and scored more then 20 points nine different times. After his freshman year, Shelley would transfer to San Diego State. He really liked the coaches and the environment.
After sitting out a required year, Shelley stepped on the floor for the 2009-2010 basketball season. Three games stood out most in Shelley’s mind. The first game was against a Fresno St. team led by current NBA superstar Paul George. Shelley scored 17 points, including the clinching free throws with 2.9 seconds left in the Aztecs 62-58 victory.
The second game was against Northern Arizona where Shelley scored 17 points in just 19 minutes off the bench. He was 8-10 shooting and he had a team high of four steals in the 89-41 win.
The third game that stuck out was the game against the University of San Diego. He contributed in every category possible. He went 4-4 from the free throw line, scored ten points, had six rebounds, three assists, three steals and three blocks while committing only one turnover in the Aztecs 69-62 overtime victory.
However, injuries kept Shelley off of the floor. It would lead to him transferring away from San Diego State. He still had two years of eligibility left so he transferred to NAIA Georgetown College in Kentucky.
“NAIA was different, alot of hard practices and long nights and early mornings on the east coast,” said Shelley. He was able to adjust well to that though and put up great numbers. He was all conference on a team that went to the NAIA Final Four and finished 32-5.
Now he is back in San Diego.
“I’m having fun and hanging out until I get back in the game of basketball,” said Shelley. He will be getting his diploma and he will start playing basketball again soon.
Sports in the eyes of Tom 