Caleb Homesley will finish his career as one of the more decorated Liberty basketball players ever.
He needs just 6 more points to become the sixth Flame to ever have at least 1,400 points and 650 rebounds in their careers. He’s hoping to be part of the first ever Liberty team to make consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances. He’s a lock to be a first-team all-ASUN performer for the second consecutive season, and he could become the first Flame to be named conference player of the year since Jessie Sanders in 2011.
But it’s a career that was almost cut short.
In the 10th game of his sophomore season against Princeton, Homesley fell to the floor underneath the basket in the Vines Center, let out a loud shriek, and the Vines Center went eerily silent. Liberty head coach Ritchie McKay quickly rushed to his side to console him.
“When he was on the floor, I didn’t know what to say to him,” McKay recalled earlier this season. “I think I was able to mouth some words that came from God’s Spirit in me.”
It was a torn ACL and MCL in his right knee as Homesley’s season, one that started so promising, came to an abrupt end. He was leading the team in points, rebounds, and assists when he got injured. It took him more than a year to fully recover, and it was his second major knee injury as he also suffered a torn ACL in his left knee during his senior season at Porter Ridge High School in Indian Trail, North Carolina.
“For me, that injury was a blessing now that I look back on it,” Homesley said this week as he looked ahead to senior night this Saturday. “It taught me a lot of things. It taught me how to work harder, how to get in the film room, how to see the court as a coach because i was out for so long.”
He would miss the team’s final 25 games that season. He would return for the season opener of the 2017-18 season, but it took him a while to get back to 100%. Homesley scored just 5 points in his first 4 games and didn’t score in double figures in consecutive games until mid-December. His scoring would drop to 7.8 points per game in the season back from injury, the lowest of his career.
Homesley was recruited by former Liberty head coach Dale Layer, signing with the Flames in November 2014, over offers from the Citadel, Appalachian State, Abilene Christian, Gardner-Webb, High Point, Kent State, and UNC Greensboro. Layer would be fired just four months later.
Ritchie McKay was hired as Layer’s replacement, and the program suffered through some growing pains, losing 13 straight Division I games to open the 2015-16 season. McKay challenged Homesley early on his career as he saw the potential that he had.
“I’ve been proud of a lot of players,” McKay stated a year ago. “I’m not sure I’m more proud of a kid than Caleb Homesley. I told him he wasn’t going to make it here. He was the laziest, softest, non-workingest dude that had that much talent that I had ever seen.”
Now, McKay says his growth as a person, both on and off the floor, should be the standard for future Liberty basketball players to be judged by. On multiple occasions over the past year, McKay has said Homesley is a pro and has the ability to be an NBA player.
“Caleb’s ability to persevere, his growth and maturity on and off the floor, his whole person development, should serve as a model for what we want to occur in our program,” said McKay this week. “Not every young man comes in at the same level of preparedness, not saying he was ill-prepared, yet I think his ownership in trying to be great, trying to do something special, was grand. Because of that, he’s had an impact on our team, our program, this university that can be measurable.”
His story is still unfinished, but what he has already accomplished will forever place Caleb Homesley’s name among Liberty’s best to ever play.
“I’m going to try to stay in the moment and live in this chapter of our lives,” said McKay. “He’s really been a beautiful picture of why you coach.”
