EAST LANSING – Coen Carr believed he could fly. And then he did.
Baskets have been quaking in his wake since.
“The first time I dunked?” the Michigan State basketball junior said Monday, March 16, repeating the question asked of him shortly after a practice filled with rim attacks inside the Spartans’ practice facility. A few months after exploding a backboard in his hometown.
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That prompted Carr to drive down memory lane and deliver his recollection of his origin story as maybe the best dunker in all of basketball right now – better than almost every NBA player, many feel, even as a 21-year-old college player heading into his third NCAA Tournament appearance.
Michigan State forward Coen Carr (55) dunks against UCLA during the first half of Big Ten tournament quarterfinal at United Center in Chicago on Friday, March 13, 2026.
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The Atlanta native’s debut dunk happened when he was 14, before he was about to enter ninth grade. Carr went nearly a year trying to throw one down when he was a 6-foot eighth grader but couldn’t. Then one day that summer, while playing fullcourt with his middle school teammate after their season and school ended, the adrenaline kicked in and the burst arrived.
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“I got it finally,” he said. “That was a great day for me. … It wasn’t a game or nothing. It was just an open run. I didn’t dunk in a game until ninth grade started.”
Asked if he felt “the world change that day,” Carr’s comedic side kicked in as he deadpanned: “Yeah, for sure. It was over, it was over. Everybody probably felt it. Even if they didn’t know who I was, they probably felt it, for sure.”
Still, it was the first of many to come. And his peers took notice as well, once he hit the AAU circuit and started developing into a four-star recruit who ultimately joined Tom Izzo and MSU’s 2023 class – along with current teammate Jeremy Fears Jr.
Fears remembered being in Carr’s home state of Georgia when he first discovered what the college basketball world would learn soon enough when their teams faced each other during a 17-U tournament while both were 16-year-olds playing up a level.
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“He got a steal and windmilled. And I was like, what just happened?” Fears said after practice Monday. “I was 16, too, so that was insane. He took off and windmilled above the rim in AAU. A back jam. It was crazy.
“That was probably the first time I’d seen him dunk. After that, I started seeing him blowing up.”
Carr enters No. 11 MSU’s first-round NCAA Tournament game with North Dakota State on Thursday (4:05 p.m., TNT) on an upward trajectory beyond just throwing down highlight reel dunks.
Now a 6-foot-6 swingman, Carr is beginning to use his pogo-stick leaping ability to high-point offensive and defensive rebounds as well as blocking shots with ferocity – something he said he enjoys even more than dunking (if you can believe that).
Michigan State forward Coen Carr (55) blocks a layup from Ole Miss forward Jaemyn Brakefield (4) during the second half of the Sweet 16 round of NCAA tournament at State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Ga. on Friday, March 28, 2025.
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“I like blocking (shots),” he said. “It’s just the challenge of going up for somebody and we’re both going up at the same time and I just get the block. Probably because it doesn’t happen as often. But a block, right now in my career, a block definitely feels better.”
Carr is third on the Spartans in both scoring, at 11.6 points per game, and rebounding, at 5.4 per, while his 25 total blocked shots are second. Carr’s shooting also has improved throughout his three seasons, now making 50.6% overall and 26.9% from 3-point range (albeit dipping to 62% at the free-throw line after making 70.1% from the stripe a year ago).
Some of that downturn comes from Carr being a near-essential component on the court for the majority of the game. Only Fears (32.2) averages more minutes per game than Carr’s 29.
However, most people still point out his dunking prowess. And they should, because it is equal parts surreal and shocking to see some of the things Carr’s body can do. Forget about even trying to compare his athletic ability to normal people – it’s hard to even do that with his peers.
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Trying to identify with written words — or even by sifting through his voluminous highlight reel — which of his dunks is his best also is a pointless effort. You’d need more subgenres than an indie record store to catalog them, from alley-oops to breakaways to one-handed tomahawks to two-handed baseline drives to … you get the idea.
Michigan State forward Coen Carr (55) dunks against Rutgers forward Chris Nwuli (11) during the second half at Breslin Center in East Lansing on Thursday, March 5, 2026.
It is to the point during MSU’s practices that the absurd is now commonplace, and practice almost always keeps going after the thundercrack of the rim being punished as the basket hanging from the roof of the Berkowitz Center shakes and sways like a hurricane hit. Yet even his teammates and Izzo still shake their head in amazement when they see something new or an even more insane dunk by Carr.
“It’s kind of normal,” Fears said of Carr’s dunking exploits during practice. “But in the game, for sure. You got that energy, that fire. Then you get hyped, everybody gets hyped in the game. But now in practice, it’s like, ‘Oh, it’s Coen again, doing some crazy dunk that no one in the gym can do.’”
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Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State basketball’s Coen Carr may be basketball’s best dunker
