Cam Spencer has always been a tone-setter

As the night wore on, a Cam Spencer technical felt inevitable.

The UConn guard, who always seems to keep his emotions at the brim, was making his mark on the Huskies’ eventual win over North Carolina at Madison Square Garden in December… and he was talking. Oh, he was talking.

His 16 first-half points helped UConn take a 44-39 lead into the locker room that night, and with it came a legendary reaction GIF and some verbal jarring with All-American candidate Armando Bacot.

Bacot’s the one who got the first-half tech, but Spencer got his just three minutes into the second half after nailing a three and continuing to chirp.

Not that UConn fans mind. The ever-unhinged online fanbase has embraced Spencer as their own, despite him being relatively new to Storrs.

“He plays basketball like I coach it,’’ head coach Dan Hurley said after the North Carolina game. “He’s loony competitive, but in a very positive way.”

That loony competitiveness helps, and so does his 45 percent shooting from three, paired with a playmaking ability that is even better than advertised. Spencer currently leads the Huskies with 15.4 points per game and has scored 12 or more points in all but three games this season.

While Donovan Clingan has been out injured, Spencer’s averaging 17 points per game and continuing to boost team morale with hustle plays and fiery intensity.

UNC’s Bacot didn’t take quite as kindly to Spencer’s intensity, telling reporters postgame, “he was saying things he wouldn’t say to me if we were in the park or something.”

Geo Baker, whose time at Rutgers only barely overlapped with Spencer’s – they never played together – weighed in on Twitter, saying what UConn fans were thinking: that Spencer will say anything, anywhere, to anyone.

Spencer’s former coaches and teammates agree with Baker: That’s just who he is. His addition to this year’s UConn team is a big reason why the Huskies are 14-2 and tied for first in the Big East despite dealing with injuries to two of their best players.

The Perfect Gentleman

Spencer’s college career began in the Patriot League with a Loyola (MD) program that hasn’t had a winning season since 2012-13.

A native of Davidsonville, Maryland, Spencer followed his brother, who played lacrosse for the Greyhounds, to Baltimore in 2019.

Head men’s basketball coach Tavaras Hardy first saw Spencer on the summer circuit. While injuries in high school kept Spencer’s recruitment from truly taking off, Hardy was one of the few Division I coaches who saw something in the eventual UConn marksman.

“A lot of people at our level didn’t think he was necessarily good enough,” Hardy said, referring to other mid-major coaches. “I gave him a stronger look…and saw some of the things that other people wouldn’t have seen because they weren’t looking at his heart.”

The coach saw heart, yes, but not the fire that UConn fans have come to expect. Not yet.

“Cam [was] a perfect gentleman when it comes to how he conducted himself through the recruiting process,” Hardy said. “I didn’t see that fire he has until later on in the process, probably after he committed… That’s when I really started to notice, ‘OK, this dude’s got something different about him.’”

He first noticed it while watching Spencer in the bleachers as his brother played lacrosse, living and dying with every moment. The intensity later manifested itself in his high school games.

When Spencer arrived at Loyola, he quickly built the reputation of a gym rat, leading by example before he even played a collegiate game.

Golden Dike, now a fifth-year senior for the Greyhounds, arrived in Baltimore with Spencer during the summer of 2019. They were teammates for three years. Dike, who came to the United States from Spain, admired Spencer’s work ethic on the court, rarely seeing his friend out partying and often finding him in the gym.

The pair would still unwind, playing Fortnite and Call of Duty together, but on the court, Spencer has always been laser-focused on being the best player he could be.

Dike watched his former teammate in the North Carolina game, saying he was unsurprised by his friend’s intensity.

“When people talk trash with him, he’s not gonna back down,” Dike said. “With Cam, you can’t really mess around with him, because if he gets going, he’s gonna score points and he’s gonna play well for his teammates. He’s like that.”

Spencer certainly made the most of his time as a freshman, scoring in double figures in 13 of the 22 games he played and hitting 44% of his threes.

Then, injury struck again. During the COVID-altered 2020-21 season in which Patriot League teams only played conference games, Spencer did not make his season debut until Feb. 27. When he finally did, he found himself with the opportunity to lead the Greyhounds to the NCAA Tournament.

After Loyola dispatched of Army and Navy in back-to-back Patriot League Tournament road games, the Greyhounds traveled to Hamilton, New York to play Colgate for the conference title.

Hardy remembers that bus ride north. In an effort to distract his team – to take the edge off the pressures ahead of them – he decided to show a movie. At least his players would have a brief escape from the stress surrounding the biggest game of their lives.

“[Spencer] wanted nothing to do with that movie,” Hardy recalled. “He watched Colgate film from the start of that seven-hour bus ride all the way through. He was locked in.”

As it turns out, Loyola lost that game and went 8-10 in conference play the next year, losing in the first round of the league tournament to Boston University. While Spencer averaged a career-best 18.9 points per game as a junior, he had still never reached the March Madness stage.

So, after playing three years in the Patriot League and proving he could compete in Division I, Spencer decided to take on a bigger challenge. He soon found his home in New Brunswick under the guidance of former UConn Husky Steve Pikiell.

A Bigger Stage

Those qualities that first endeared Spencer to Dike seemed to carry over to Rutgers. He averaged 13.2 points per game and shot 43% from three in his lone Big Ten season, this time surrounded by the likes of Cliff Omoruyi, Paul Mulcahy, and current Oklahoma City Blue guard Caleb McConnell.

Spencer had such an impact on McConnell in their one year as teammates that the G League guard called it an honor to even speak about his friend for this story.

As for the intensity that Spencer has been bringing to the national stage? It’s nothing new.

“I call him Killer Cam for a reason,” McConnell said. “He’s not gonna back down from nobody. If he feels like he’s being disrespected or if he feels like someone’s trying to push him over, I feel like that just sparks him. That just ignites something in him to bring that killer back.”

As much as fans might love (or hate) that from Spencer, it doesn’t come from a place of disrespect toward his opponents. As McConnell explained, it’s Spencer expecting the best out of himself.

“This kid holds himself to a high standard and he doesn’t let himself drop,” McConnell said. “I’ll keep saying it. Cam is a special guy. A special kid.” 

“Special” may be subjective, but UConn fans have seen plenty of evidence to support McConnell’s claim.

Take Friday night when UConn was in a battle with Butler on the road in the closing minutes. The Huskies had erased a seven-point halftime deficit but couldn’t quite shake the Bulldogs, up by four with just over a minute to go.

Hassan Diarra missed a stepback three. A Butler rebound would have given them a chance to close the gap to two – or one, the Bulldogs seemed to hit clutch three after clutch three. Instead, Spencer flew in from out of nowhere for the offensive rebound and called timeout before he could fall out of bounds.

19 seconds of game time later, he hit the dagger three to put UConn up seven with 44 seconds left. The Huskies went on to win 88-81.

Spencer was just 1-6 from three to that point, not that it mattered. His confidence, skill, and swagger make him sure the next shot is going in. Four days later he went 3-of-5 from three with six rebounds, four assists, and a team-high 19 points.

Looking back, it was difficult for Hardy to come to terms with Spencer eventually transferring up, but as a former Big Ten player himself, he ultimately understood. Yes, Rutgers gave Spencer more visibility and greater resources all around. It also gave him a higher level of competition, which Spencer craves.

After a year in the Big Ten, Spencer is suiting up for the defending national champions and playing a key role for them. By the end of the year, Spencer will have exhausted his college eligibility. While he will certainly look to play professionally somewhere, it’s unclear if the NBA is in his future. Regardless, Dike thinks his former teammate is set up for success.

“If the NBA doesn’t work for him,” he said, “he’s going to be one of the best players in the Euro League in the coming years.”