Texas A&M guard Jace Carter helped get the Aggies into the second round of the NCAA Tournament with a win over Yale in Denver on Thursday, but it hasn’t been an easy season.
Following the victory, Carter said he’d received death threats and racial slurs on social media.
In an interview with KBTX-TV, Carter called it “a long year.”
“It’s been crazy,” Carter said. “[I’ve] been getting death threats, people calling me racial slurs [and] all types of stuff because I’m missing free throws, missing shots.”
He’s been able to persevere and scored 10 points in nine minutes off the bench in the first-round victory.
“I’m just happy I could help us win,” Carter said. “It’s hard, especially when it’s coming from your own fan base… It does get challenging at times, but at the end of the day, I’m comfortable with who I am as a man [and] who I am as a basketball player.”
But the senior added that not everyone can take it.
“If you’re a little kid and not mentally strong, it can mess you up,” Carter said. “But I feel like I try to approach it like a grown man.”
Carter’s head coach at Texas A&M, Buzz Williams, said he’s addressed this issue with his players.
“It’s been a topic that has been more prevalent than ever in my career,” Williams told reporters. “But I have spent more time with our players on their reaction of others than I ever have. I think that’s probably what comes with this now, the opinion of others seems to influence so much of decision-making.”
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And he made it clear it’s impacted more than just Carter this season.
“I’ve tried to handle that right with Jace’s dad [and] Jace’s mom,’’ Williams said. “Just so that you don’t think that it’s [only] Jace, that conversation has happened with multiple players within our organization multiple times… That’s why I’ve kind of quit social media. Just because of the things that were coming towards me. It’s just dangerous.”
Williams knows, though, that it’s not that simple for his players.
“I think when you’re 22 and you’ve grown up with a screen, you can’t tell ’em, ‘Don’t look,’” said Williams, whose team faced Michigan on Saturday. “But you have to try to find ways to educate them on how to handle it. I think the thing that bothers our group, and all groups, is when it’s coming from what they think are on the inside. I think that’s where their heart posture changes, like, ‘I thought they were cheering for us.’ … I think because we’ve tried to handle it in a very open way, our guys feel comfortable talking to me about it. I just transparently in the conversation try to discern what I believe is right, if my children were saying it to me.”
