Kris Bankston had two primary pitches: A two-seam fastball and curveball.
Before his sophomore year of high school, basketball was a foreign adventure for the man with one of the country's best field goal percentages this season.
Bankston, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock's 6-8 homegrown dunking machine from DeWitt, stood at 5-9 until his sophomore year at Fair High School. A growth spurt of 9 inches between his freshman and sophomore prep years shifted his focus toward his future.
Play less shortstop and focus on pitching, he said he was told.
At 6-6, with an athletic right arm out of a lanky pitching stance to get maximum success, Bankston's build and height mirrored some Major League Baseball success stories.
Was Bankston's high school baseball team any good?
"No," he said. "Most of the people on the team had never played before."
Well, soon thereafter, Bankston would become one of those inexperienced people in an unfamiliar sport.
His height prompted the forward's switch from baseball -- a sport he played as a boy from tee ball through high school -- to basketball, where he now has a future.
Bankston boasts a crazy-high 81.4 percent field goal percentage this season.
But you won't scroll across Bankston's name when researching a list of the nation's most efficient scorers.
Gonzaga junior forward Brandon Clarke is technically first at 68.8 percent. Duke's wunderkind freshman forward Zion Williamson is second at 68.3 percent.
Bankston's number trumps them all by a large margin. Unless he starts making a surplus of shots, his field goal percentage will not register in the NCAA's statistical system.
Bankston has made 92 field goals on 113 attempts this season. An astounding 59 of his makes are dunks. To qualify for the NCAA's minimum statistic eligibility for field goal percentage, a player must average 5.0 made field goals per game.
If not, players who attempt and make few shots would bury the metric's purpose with high, misleading figures.
Bankston would need to have made 130 field goals in UALR's 26 games to qualify, and it's unlikely he'll meet the standard in UALR's final five games.
Bankston's value on the Trojans isn't necessarily his amount of attempts or makes. It's what he does with them. When he registers a shot attempt, even opposing coaches know where it's from.
"Bankston's shooting what percent?" said Arkansas State University Coach Mike Balado days before UALR's 84-83 loss to ASU in the Jack Stephens Center on Feb. 2. "It's all dunks."
It is no secret. Bankston dunks everything.
Lobs are caught for alley-oops. Offensive rebounds are returned as put-back slams. Misses slowly rolling off the rim are reinforced with a clean-up dunk.
"That guy..." said ASU senior guard Ty Cockfield, who's tied for first in the Sun Belt Conference in scoring at 22.0 points per game.
"He won't shoot, but he's rebounding. He's changing the game. He's dunking everything."
Rarely, if ever, will you find the sophomore choosing to shoot a short-range jumper instead of either dunking, shooting a layup or letting the offense continue to flow.
It's not that a jump shot doesn't exist after five career years in basketball. It does. And it even looks good and smooth, UALR Coach Darrell Walker said.
But why should he rely on something that isn't as assured as a dunk?
"I work on my jump shot every day," Bankston said. "I just haven't built up the confidence to actually take jump shots in a game. But I don't really have to."
Jump shots are not needed when Bankston can clean up around the rim as one of the Sun Belt's most exciting dunkers.
"A lot of tip-backs. A lot of catches and finishes. A lot of tip dunks," Walker said. "He does have really good footwork in the post. When he's in the game, we do try to feed him. I have almost forced him into looking to be a scorer as much as I can when he's in the basketball game.
"A guy that shoots that high of a percentage, you've got to give him some touches on the block."
Bankston, who is averaging 8.1 points per game in 20.1 minutes this season, shot 62.3 percent from the field as a freshman under former Coach Wes Flanigan last season.
An increase of nearly 20 percent in his field goal percentage is a product of time helping Bankston continue settling into basketball and his offensive game expanding.
"I'm excited about the improvement that he's made from last year to now. He's looking to score," Walker said. "He's looking to attack the rim. You know he's probably one of the top finishers in all of college basketball. That's saying a lot."
Sports on 02/22/2019