BOISE, Idaho — Carson Towt knew he had to transform his body and his basketball skill set if he wanted to make it as a Division I player.
Ironically, his ticket to entry for most of his youth was shooting — Towt has shot exactly one 3-pointer in his Northern Arizona career — but when he first walked on at NAU, he knew he had to find another niche.
Towt had always been wired for effort. And his ability to see the bounce of the basketball, particularly when the orange sphere careened off the rim, had always put him a step ahead. So he decided he was going to dedicate himself to a skill and a statistic that very few obsess over.
Most modern-day hoopers are on a quest for points and assists, 3-pointers and slam dunks. Not Towt. The high-motor maniac from Gilbert, Arizona has become quite literally the best rebounder in Division I college basketball.
“I knew to get where I wanted to go, I had to become the dirty work guy,” said Towt, who earned second-team All-Big Sky. “There’s definitely a bit of a gift to it, too. I don’t know if you are supposed to be aware of your gifts or maybe you are. But I think I just move a little bit earlier than the opponent.”
Towt enters the Big Sky Conference tournament averaging 12.5 rebounds per game this season. He has already racked up 1,162 rebounds in his career, the second-most in Big Sky history, and if he chooses to play one more season next year at NAU, he’ll need just 151 boards to pass former Weber State jumping jack Joel Bolomboy as the Big Sky’s all-time rebound king.
Towt has had some enormous efforts this season, including notching 19 rebounds against Portland State and Northern Colorado, although a 20-rebound game has eluded him. He had 12 or more rebounds in 15 of NAU’s 18 conference games and has 10 double-doubles in Big Sky games among his 19 double-doubles this season.
“His motor is second to none,” Northern Arizona sixth-year head coach Shane Burcar said. “I mean, no one. I know there’s probably some coach in the Midwest or the Power 4 coach who would think ‘This is just a head coach being a head coach for his guy.’ But he’s leading the country in rebounding. At his size, that’s just tremendous.
“His motor is so crazy, he can play at 38 to 40 minutes every single game and not miss a beat. I don’t know if he’s ever asked to be subbed out, and he never looks like he’s tired. He takes pride in it and he’s an absolute worker.”
Towt is a strapping physical specimen who looks like he could play tight end if he felt like putting on football pads. He is 6-foot-8 and weighs 240 pounds. He used “a body-builder’s mentality” to sculpt his body. This year though, he’s mastered timing, spacial awareness and has fully embraced that rebounding might just be one of his best gifts.
“I think a lot of it is instinctual, but the more that people have kind of let me know about my skills and my gift, it’s made me have more awareness of where my body is in time and space,” Towt mused in the week leading up tot he Big Sky Tournament in Boise. “And I think it is about the release of your physical energy. You can see the trajectory of the arc on a shot pretty clearly, and you can kind of predict where it’s going to go. And you can feel it. That’s my gift.”
Towt goes on to describe studying percentages of where shots miss. He explains why he rebounds by tipping the ball to himself on very many defensive possessions, showing a true in depth thirst for mastery of cleaning the glass.
His physical strength and explosiveness helped him earn playing time right away as a redshirt freshman after spending his first college basketball season either locked in the weight room or trying to maximize his limited opportunities in practice. The following year was his breakout season as he averaged 8.1 points and 8.8 rebounds per game for an upstart Northern Arizona trying to move beyond the Jack Murphy era (just a .344 win percentage between 2012 and 2019.
Two years ago, Towt had his first double-figure scoring average and helped lead NAU on a Cinderella run to the Big Sky Tournament title game, earning All-Tournament honors along the way.
But an injury cost him all of last season, causing him to adjust his training regimen while also motivating him to come back more ferocious than ever.
“In the wind, an oak tree stays straight up and down, but you want to be like bamboo, you want to be able to bend with the wind,” Towt said. “You want to be like water. That’s been a huge focal point of mine since the injury.”
A more loose, more bamboo-like Towt has been a menace to the rest of the conference. Towt has boosted his rebounding average by nearly four boards per contest. He rebounds as aggressively on the offensive end as he does the defensive end, which has also helped him up his scoring average to 13.5 points per game.
“He’s a tremendous rebounder, hustles really well, goes after it and you have to be very disciplined to rebound the ball,” Portland State head coach Jase Coburn said. “It’s one thing to come up with big rebounds every once in awhile. But he goes after the ball all the time
“He’s very disciplined going after the ball. He’s a tremendous player. He’s a very talented player who plays his ass off every night.”
And to think, the once-skinny kid from Gilbert didn’t have any options coming out of high school and had to dedicate himself “to doing the dirty work” to fulfill his Division I dreams.
“My high school head coach, he’s the one who sparked me to develop the motor behind the (rebounding) skill,” Towt said. “He told me, ‘Dude, I think you’re a college player, if you can develop a motor. You’re in shape, and you have the ability to use it.
“When I was younger, I was just a shooter, which is really interesting. Then I decided my whole game would flip. Then I doubled down. I doubled down on the little things. ‘’
As a freshman at NAU, Towt got by almost exclusively by playing hard. By his sophomore year, he’d developed his skill to the point where NAU could run offense through him in the high post. The first thing every head coach we asked about Towt talked about was his energy and his pursuit of rebounds. The second thing was his passing.
“Here’s the kicker with him: he’s got awesome hands. He’s a really good passer and a really good finisher around the rim, and he plays so hard, great competitor and rebounds like the top guy in the country,” Sac State head coach Michael Czepil said. “But the fact that he has elite hands around the basket is what sets him apart. He’s a really impactful player.”
By 2023, Towt’s “bodybuilding obsession” gave him the strength to end the season playing his best basketball. He helped lead NAU to an upset win of regular-season champion and top-seeded Eastern Washington. The Lumberjacks made it to the conference title game for the first time since 2008 and Towt landed on the All-Tournament.
During a year away because of injury, Towt has maintained his musculature while getting into peak physical condition, allowing him to play a career-high 34 minutes a game this winter . More minutes mean more chances, which mean more rebounds for Towt.
“I think the way he takes care of his body and himself and his mind, he’s prepared to play those minutes,” Burcar said. “He was in foul trouble a lot early in his career and he has not been this year. I just think his conditioning and the way he takes care of himself has increased his minutes. And at the same token, he just so physically strong and quick, and he can guard every position, which means he never has to come off the floor.
Earlier this season, Towt was ejected from a home game against Weber State, playing only eight minutes and notching only one rebound. He had averaged 15.6 rebounds per game the previous six games before that ejection. He’s had at least seven rebounds in every game after, including reaching double figures seven times.
Burcar made sure to mention that Towt’s rebounding average would be even higher if he didn’t have the Weber game as his outlier.
Burcar says NBA scouts have been by to see him. Because he redshirted in 2020 and missed last year with an injury, he is still listed as a redshirt junior on the NAU roster. He could come back next season. Or he could take his chances at the next level.
He’s certainly the longest of long shots to make the NBA. But Burcar thinks he’ll be able to make money playing basketball as soon as he’d like to for as long as he’d like.
‘I would say it could go anywhere from playing overseas and him getting into a high-level league even if that might take him a year or two to do that,” Burcar said. “Or I think someone could take a chance on him (in the NBA) because he’s such an elite rebounder and he’s an elite passer. Those two skills separate him for the next level, where he could maybe go to the G League and get a cup of coffee there. Then all of a sudden, it’s early in the season. It’s like, holy cow, who’s this Towt kid. And if you have a scout who believes in him and can get in there and get him to where he can really flourish, I do think the G league’s a real possibility.
“Someone like him who takes care of himself, he’s no problems off the court, I think he has an opportunity to play professionally for a long time.”
Before any of that though, Towt has several major Big Sky records in his sights. He hopes to forge another tournament run. NAU is 4-3 in tournament play during Towt’s career and he gets a chance to add to that mark Saturday against Eastern Washington. The winner will advance to play second-seeded Montana.
“There’s an experience factor and we have some guys who have won at this tournament,” Towt said. “I do believe we are the best team in the conference. The year we made a run, that was not a miracle. That was us finding our stride at the right time after a regular-season that saw us lose at the buzzer six or seven times. I say this humbly but I believe we are the best team in the conference. The encouraging part is that we are that team still, we will just have to win an extra game.
“The message is we know how good we are. Now we have to go prove that.”
