His coach said before the season began that Shawn Ray could be CIAA player of the year if he wanted it badly enough.

And so far, at about the midway point of this his senior season, Ray may be on track to do exactly that.

The 6-5 senior captain and go-to guy from Raleigh’s Athens Drive High probably won’t be the conference’s scoring leader, as through Sunday he was ranked 11th in the CIAA at 16.9 points per game.

But Ray, who plays every position except center if Coach Phil Spence needs him there, also is averaging 6.1 rebounds, 4.1 assists and 2.7 steals, good for third in the league in that category. He’s 10th in the conference in blocked shots (0.79 per game), fifth in assist-turnover ratio at 1.9, averaging 2.29 offensive rebounds and is the conference’s leading free-throw shooter at 89.2 percent.

He’s averaging 30.2 minutes per game, but that’s by far the most on a deep Eagles team that has 11 players averaging more than 10 minutes each.

He leads the team in every category except field-goal percentage and blocked shots. And he has been the linchpin of the best Eagles team in Spence’s three seasons as coach. Yes, NCCU is "only" 7-7 going into tonight’s game with Livingstone, but the Eagles have just three games left on the schedule against teams with winning records.

Finally, Shawn Ray and his teammates are having fun playing basketball.

"I’m a little disappointed that we’re only .500 with all the talent we have," Ray said. "But we need to keep getting better as the season goes on, and I think we’re doing that. It’s conference time now, and our first goal is to win the division. I think it’s realistic. We really believe that this is our year, regardless of what happened in December — 2003 should be our semester."

Spence certainly likes to hear Ray talking like that. Before the season started, the coach said he had a bunch of "choirboys," meaning he didn’t have to worry whether they were attending class and what they did after Saturday night games. And Ray, who admitted he had some tough academic times in high school that kept him from being able to play Division I ball and sent him to Voorhees College his freshman season, fits right into that description. He’s always polite and articulate, even on the tough nights.

"On some nights, Shawn is the best player in the CIAA," said Spence, who when he was at East Wake coached against Ray’s teams and brought him to NCCU after the swingman had dropped out of Voorhees to come home and not play college ball. "He’s really talented. He can do so many things on the court.

"Sometimes I just wish he had more of a killer instinct. Sometimes his niceness gets in the way. But he can dribble, defend, assist, score and lead the team by example. I think Shawn very well could be NCCU’s next professional athlete."

Ray said he has been playing basketball ever since he can remember.

He comes from a stable two-parent family. Dad Jimmy works at Northern Hydraulics in Raleigh and mom Cynthia works at Austin Foods where they make Keebler products. His father played basketball at Smithfield-Selma, while older brother Jimmy Jr. was a tight end on the football team at Elizabeth City State.

Jimmy Sr. was coaching a recreation league team of 10- and 11-year-olds when Shawn, then 7, asked his dad if he could play in a game.

"He was like, ‘Huh?’ " Shawn said of his dad.

But his father relented, and Shawn scored 12 points in his first game. He has been scoring ever since.

"Basketball just came naturally to me, I guess," Shawn said.

He played both basketball and football at Athens Drive, showing enough skill to be invited to the state East-West game in both sports and the inaugural North Carolina-South Carolina basketball all-star game.

But since the grades weren’t there, he had to settle for an NAIA school. He played a season at Voorhees under now-Elizabeth City State coach Shawn Walker, then got homesick and went back to Raleigh.

Spence was following the story and called him back off the playground.

Ray was the Eagles’ second best player as a sophomore, as senior Jimmy Boston, the ultimate Division II blue-collar center, was the best.

Last season was supposed to be the big show for Ray, who now wears jersey No. 1 for the Eagles, but NCCU’s 2001-02 season recap should be in the dictionary next to the word "snakebit."

On the morning the Eagles were to open their season against Clark-Atlanta in a multi-team basketball festival at Morehouse, Ray suffered a freak injury that cost him half the season.

"We were going around on a tip drill, and the football player we had on the team, Justin Crawford, had just tipped it before his elbow and my left hand met," Ray said. "Justin said, ‘Are you all right?’ And I said, ‘No, I’m not all right.’ I knew it wasn’t just some little thing. My hand was broken in three places. I don’t know how an elbow did all that, but it did."

The Eagles went 1-9 in Ray’s absence, essentially ruining the season in the first semester. And Spence had a near-fatal stroke, from which he is at least 99 percent recovered, in the middle of the slide.

The two came back on the same night for an emotional 88-81 homecourt win over Bowie State’s best team in school history, and the Eagles went 8-9 the rest of the way.

"Coach and I talked about wanting to come back together," Ray said. "It was scary when he had that stroke, because he couldn’t move and couldn’t really talk right at first. But he was laughing and joking with us. He was still Coach. He wouldn’t let us know how serious it was until he was out of the woods. I guess it was a man thing."

One thing the two Raleigh natives, Ray and Spence, have done consistently together is win in the RBC Center, which again is the site of the CIAA Tournament. NCCU is 4-2 in the building with the two participating, and they have yet to go into a game there as the favorite.

"We just like playing in Raleigh, I guess," Ray said. "Maybe that will be good for us in the tournament."

If the CIAA coaches don’t give Ray a vote as player of the year when the season ends, he would certainly have the support of his teammates.

"Yeah, Shawn is the best player in the conference," said NCCU junior forward Adrian Warren, who played with Ray at Athens Drive. "He’s just a great all-around player. He can pass and shoot. We know when we get in trouble we can go to him."

Added senior swingman Corey Tabron: "Shawn’s just a great player. I’ve known him since we played AAU together in high school, and that was a long time ago."

Ray said his vertical jump has been measured at 38 inches, high enough for teammates to feed him for the "alley-oop" that Spence’s N.C. State teammate David Thompson once made so famous. Although unlike during the Thompson years, the rules allow Ray to dunk.

And he made one play in overtime of the win at Fayetteville State that took a particularly special skill. He already was airborne for a jumper in the lane when it became apparent the Broncos’ Bryan Chapman was high enough to block the shot. So instead of allowing Chapman to tie him up, Ray simply let go of the ball, got the mini-rebound and then followed the shot for a three-point play the old fashioned way.

"That was just instinct," Ray said.

Although he gets plenty of attention for his game, Ray isn’t making the mistake a lot of Division II players make of thinking they should have all their eggs in an NBA basket only to see a pile of broken shells when they get cut from a minor pro team.

Ray will graduate in December with a psychology degree — he dropped his earlier plans to be a sportscaster because he wants to study forensics in the criminal justice system to figure out what makes serial killers tick.

And with a likely semester of eligibility left, Ray is thinking about playing football for the first time in his career. If he does play and gets to be nearly the force on the gridiron that he has been on the hardwood, that should make new NCCU football coach Rod Broadway very happy.