When Greydan Barnwell was a kid, he and his family took a trip to visit his maternal aunt.
The family had a Nerf basketball hoop that they traveled with, but they put it away when it was time for bed.
That was the wrong decision. But, it also showed the family’s love for basketball.
“He started crying and he wouldn’t go to sleep,” Greydan’s father Michael said. “We finally figured out it’s because we’d hidden the Nerf hoop where he couldn’t see it and once we made it where he could see the Nerf hoop, then he could go to sleep. So he’s always had a natural talent at shooting and basketball.”
But Greydan’s not the only one in the family with a passion for the sport, his younger brother Devan has followed in his brother’s footsteps in the sport. Devan has found a passion for the sport and will not stop working.
Both his brother and his father said they have to stop him sometimes from working and make him take a break.
Greydan and Devan’s love for the sport came from their father. When they were born and started to show an interest in the sport, Michael started living vicariously through them.
Michael set his sons up with trainers and AAU teams in the area to try to cultivate their talent. The Niagara University philosophy professor has done his best to set his kids up for success.
It has worked.
This season, Greydan is averaging 17.6 points, 6.3 rebounds, 5 assists and 2.2 steals per game. In his sophomore season, Devan is averaging 10.5 points, 2 rebounds, 1.8 assists and 2 steals per game.
This year, the duo have helped the Lancers get off to an 11-2 start, while they currently sit in second place in the Niagara Frontier League standings.
All their success would be impossible if they did not work hard. That’s one area of their game that will never be a concern though.
Both Greydan and Devan have a work ethic that has been cultivated by their dad. It comes from their dad’s passion for the sport growing up in North Carolina and going to Wake Forest University for his undergraduate degree.
“I think our work ethic comes from our dad, (he) got us into sports early as a kid and we both just fell in love with it and we wanted to be really good at it,” Greydan said. “Me, myself, I’m a very competitive person so I wanted to be very good at the sport that I played so I trained really hard. … So I mean the work ethic has always been there and I’ve always wanted to be very good.”
The brother’s effort has paid off in personal success.
Earlier this season, when the Lancers played Starpoint on Jan. 3, Greydan became the ninth player in Lancers history to reach the 1,000-point mark.
While he is only at 419 points through his first two years, Devan is hoping to join his brother in the 1,000-point club by the time his career is over. If it’s up to Devan, they will be the first ever set of brothers to reach the century mark in a Lancers uniform.
Greydan and Devan are each other’s biggest cheerleaders on and off the floor. They know when the other needs a hug versus when they need a pep talk. They wake up and go to practice together before school and even before the sun rises.
The brothers, who are separated by two years, have been playing together for their entire lives. They know how each other thinks and what the other is going to do on the floor.
Playing together, Greydan and Devan have developed similar styles on the floor. They both can shoot the ball and set up their teammates. In fact, sometimes Krawczyk has to encourage the brothers to be more selfish and shoot more.
This season, the brothers are both shooting above 40% from the field with the senior shooting 44% from two and three and 87% from the free throw line. Devan is not very far behind his brother, shooting 42% from two, 40% from three and 83% from the stripe.
But, shooting has always been something they have done well. Even when they were kids playing on their Little Tikes hoop, Greydan did not miss. He was consistently a good shooter.
Greydan’s consistency has shown in his stats where over the last three years he has averaged 17.1, 18.0, and 17.6 points per game.
It has not been as easy for Devan but he has put in the work to become a good shooter. Devan puts up hundreds of shots per day and after games he spends time by himself analyzing the game in his head. He goes through what went right and what went wrong and how he can improve.
“Greydan, when he gets hot he can make some tough shots,” Lew-Port head coach Patrick Krawczyk said. “… Devan can hit them from far out, he can shoot pretty far so they gotta guard him out there. So by far shooting is their best quality.”
The brothers’ current success would not be possible without the foundation they built in the park growing up. When they were kids, Greydan would bully his younger brother on the court and tell him to not be soft.
The senior would push the sophomore to beat him in one-on-one games. But it is something Devan admits has paid off as they have gotten older.
“I also think that since we both are in different age brackets, when one of us had found a workout or one of us had a training, normally I could join his or sometimes he could join mine,” Devan said. “So I think it opened up a lot of opportunities for other trainings and meeting other people in the basketball community.”