The gym grew quiet as the last couple of fans made their way out of the McDermott Center after the University of the Incarnate Word men's basketball team suffered a heartbreaking 72-66 loss to Northwestern State last Wednesday. 
 
Moments later, echoes of a bouncing ball in the hallway leading to the UIW locker room preceded the appearance of freshman center Marcus Larsson, who made his way onto the court in a slow but direct manner. Fifteen feet away from the basket, Larsson turned around, popped his headphones in, and began shooting free throws. 
 
On paper, the Oslo, Norway, native had just played the best game of his young career, tallying season highs with 14 points, nine rebounds and four blocks. He could've gone home knowing he did his part in keeping the Cardinals competitive against the Demons. 
 
He had other plans.
 
"I feel like I owe that to the team to go out and shoot," the 6-10 post said after the loss. "We lost by six points. I believe I was 4-9 from the free-throw line. That's five points there, and then I had the stupid technical foul."
 
The Demons came away with just one point off of the technical foul, but it sparked a modest 5-0 run that doubled Northwestern State's lead from five to 10 with just under six minutes left in the game. 
 
With a chance to cut the Demons' lead to four with a minute and a half remaining, Larsson stepped to the free-throw line devoid of confidence after starting the game 3-7 (42.8 percent) from the charity stripe.
 
"The last two free throws, I was mad that I got to the line," Larsson said. "I didn't want to shoot free throws. I wasn't playing with the confidence that I wanted to."
 
The freshman went 1-2 to push his game total to 4-9, or 44.4 percent. The Cardinals made a late push to get within three points of the Demons with 25 seconds left, but that was as close as they'd get to completing what would've been a 23-point comeback. 
 
It was an untimely loss for a team desperate for a victory, and Larsson felt largely responsible for squandering the team's opportunity to get back in the win column. 
 
Shortly after Larsson plugged in his headphones, a few of his teammates made their way out to the bleachers for some post-game socializing while the big man started sinking free throws in succession. There's no denying the pressure level was a lot lower with only his teammates watching passively from the sidelines, but after taking him nine attempts to miss five shots from the foul line during the game, it took him 46 attempts to miss one after the loss. 
 
"It frustrates me," he said. "It doesn't frustrate me to make 45 in a row, 'cause I've done that a lot of times - it's just the aspect that I can't do what I do in practice and do that in games, too. 'Cause I know for a fact that I'm good enough. I know for a fact I can hit all my free throws."
 


Coming from a country known more for producing Olympic cross-country skiing gold medalists than Division I basketball players, Larsson's path to San Antonio was anything but straightforward. At six years old, he started playing soccer and continued up until he turned 13, when he failed to make the cut at his new club. 
 
That was when Larsson decided to give basketball a try, which was met with apprehension from his father, Lars, who played professionally in his home country of Sweden. 
 
"When I told him I wanted to play basketball, he said 'No,'" Larsson said. "He said basketball is one of the smallest sports in Norway, you don't want to play that here. You need to get out of Norway, and there's a slim chance to even come to the States and get a scholarship."
 
Naturally, Larsson wasn't receptive to that advice and convinced his father to give him a chance to play the game. There were two clubs in Larsson's hometown—Ullern, a perennial Nordic championship contender and Persbråten, which existed primarily as an opportunity to socialize and have fun. Larsson's dad called Ullern and asked if his son could try out for the team.
 
"They said, 'We don't take kids like your son,'" Larsson said. "And my dad said, 'What kind of kids?' And they said, "Kids that don't know how to play basketball.'"
 
That remark didn't sit well with Lars, who signed his son up to play for Persbråten immediately afterward and began to fully support his ambitions of earning a basketball scholarship. Larsson stayed with the club from age 13 to 17, and a 7-inch growth spurt in between transformed the shifty point guard into a skilled stretch forward. 
 
"The (Persbråten) coach really saw something special in me," Larsson said. "He saw that I was hard-working, he saw that I was a talent. So he basically took me under his wing and we worked a lot on guard stuff."
 
By the time Larsson turned 17, he was emerging as one of the top young prospects in the area. His time at Persbråten needed to come to a close if he wanted to gain substantial attention on a national scale, so he gave Ullern another call.
 
"They took me this time," he said. "And when we told the story (of when they rejected me), they were like, 'No, we never said that.' Nobody would ackowledge that they came with that stupid comment."
 
Not long after he joined Ullern, a Greek scout came across Larsson and, recognizing his potential, reached out to Cardinals coach Carson Cunningham, who then invited Larsson to be a member of his first recruiting class at UIW. 
 
"I said 'I would love to, but right now I'm injured, so I don't feel like the best thing for me is to go over there," Larsson said. "I wanted to have four good years and then get out, I didn't want to redshirt. I was honest with him, I said 'I would love to stay in touch with you and it's my goal to come over there, so maybe we can do it next year."
 
Larsson had other enticing scholarship offers in the meantime, but he stuck with his decision to come to UIW a year later because of his relationship with Cunningham.
 
"He kept in touch with me, he basically sent me messages every week just to see how I was doing," Larsson said. "It really felt like he had a plan for me."
 

 
Larsson's career at UIW got off to a mildly inauspicious start, having to miss a couple of months and then falling behind blossoming freshman Vincent Miszkiewicz and returning sophomore Bryce Davis on the depth chart. The low point for the freshman was the Portland game, when he only saw a few seconds of playing time. 
 
"I was like, 'what am I doing with my life?'" Larsson said. "'Should I even be here, should I just quit basketball?' You get those thoughts every year. I try to not think about that too much."
 
Larsson stayed patient and continued to refine his game, and more opportunities to play started to follow. Since UIW began conference play in late December, the center became the second-leading scorer on the team, averaging 12.8 points and 6.3 rebounds in 24.3 minutes of action per game. 
 
After his 14-point performance in the loss against Northwestern State, Larsson had to wait three days before he got his shot at redeeming himself at the free throw line. UIW's next opponent, New Orleans, was coming off a win against Central Arkansas and brought with it a physical brand of basketball. He'd get his chances at the line. 
 
"I stayed after practice both on Friday and Saturday morning," Larsson said. "My focus in warm-ups were basically free throws. I knew that teams probably didn't mind sending me to the line and I really wanted to make them pay for it."
 
Larsson got his first opportunity midway through the first half, and just as he did three days prior, he sank both free throws with ease. As the half wound to a close, he had four more attempts and four more makes, none of his shots even touching the rim on the way in. 
 
The second half came around, and Larsson made three out of his final four attempts, finishing the afternoon 9-10 from the line. The freshman's stat-line showed 19 points, seven rebounds, two assists and a block in a breakout performance that was instrumental in securing UIW's win. 
 
"The game yesterday was really a team victory," Larsson said. "We trusted the game plan and followed it to the dot. I do feel my teammates have more trust in me. My points would never come without my teammates. On this team, I really don't need to create that much for myself as the guards find me well on pick-and-roll and on high-lows. All credit to especially Drew (Lutz) and D.J. (Murray Jr.), who put their trust in me and make the game easier for the whole team."
 
With their first conference win in hand, the Cardinals seem to have found a formula that leads to success. Larsson's emergence creates major matchup problems for opponents and takes some of the pressure off of the team's talented young guards, who have been disproportionately responsible for the majority of UIW's points for a good portion of the season. 
 
In spite of Ullern's initial scouting report, it turns out Larsson can, in fact, play basketball. And he has a chance to play a vital role in a strong young core capable of helping UIW reach the postseason for the first time in the school's Division I history.