NBLC Alumni: Carl English
6'4
Guard
From St. John's, Newfoundland
đTenure: 2017-2020
2018 MVP
2018 Canadian of the Year
1x All-NBLC
1x All-Canadian
Few people in the NBL Canada have as much name recognition as Carl English, who lit up the courts in his last years as a basketball professional.
The St Johnâs native moved to Ontario as a teenager to advance his basketball career. From there, he started playing in America with a touring Canadian exhibition team. It was there where he caught the eye of a number of NCAA Division 1 teams and eventually opted to join the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors.
In four seasons with Hawaii, English played in two NCAA championships, became the tenth player to score 1000 points and broke the team's record for most three pointers made in a single season. His 162 career threes are the second most in Rainbow Warriors history, and he is also the team's seventh-highest overall scorer. He finished his time in Hawaii averaging 19.6 points and 5.4 rebounds in his senior year.
From there, English went on to a wide-reaching professional career that began in the NBA D-League, as well as try-outs with the Indiana Pacers and Seattle Supersonics, and took him to Italy, Croatia, Greece, Puerto Rico and Germany. His time in Spain, though, is most notable: English suited up for six Liga ACB teams, among them Baskonia, with whom he won the 2010 league championship and with another, Estudiantes, he was the league's top scorer.
For years, he was a big part of the Canadian national team, competing in four FIBA Americas Championships and reaching the final qualifying tournament for the 2008 Summer Olympics. He was also part of the 2015 Pan Am Games team that won a historic overtime victory in the competition's semi-finals against the USA. They would have to settle for the silver medal, though, losing to Brazil in the final.
In 2017, he returned to his homeland and joined the newly-formed St. John's Edge. The standout in a highly impressive debut season for the Edge, English dropped double-digits in all but one game on the season, including six occasions where he broke the thirty-point barrier and the league record for most point scored in a single game, with 58. At the season's end he became the first Canadian league MVP.
He followed this up with a second productive season in St. John's, where he also became team manager in addition to starting shooting guard. Averaging 14.5 points and 4.6 rebounds and reached the NBLC Finals, playing in three of the four games where the Edge were swept by the Moncton Magic. His barnstorming debut season made such an impression on the league in such a short space of time, enough to make English a selection for the NBLC's tenth anniversary team.
