Out of ‘retirement’ at 25, Camron Justice is producing ‘a season for the aged’ at WKU
When Western Kentucky Hilltoppers guard Camron Justice began his college basketball career, a Democrat sat in the White House and a Beshear was serving as governor of Kentucky.
That may not seem noteworthy — until you realize it was Barack Obama and Steve Beshear.
Justice first played in a college hoops game for Vanderbilt on Nov. 13, 2015.
Over the time Justice has been a college basketball player, Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden have all served as U.S. president; Steve Beshear, Matt Bevin and Andy Beshear have all been governor of Kentucky.
In his seventh year out of high school, Justice — Kentucky’s 2015 Mr. Basketball after a stellar career at Knott County Central — is nearing the end of an unexpected final season of college hoops eligibility that the NCAA granted him this winter.
It has given Justice a chance to find fulfillment rather than end his college hoops experience with a gnawing sense of “what if?”
“It’s been kind of a closure-type thing,” Justice says. “It’s been good.”
A long, winding path
The name “Camron Justice” has been at the forefront of basketball in Kentucky for more than a decade.
In the 2012 Kentucky Boys’ Sweet Sixteen in Rupp Arena, Justice started for Knott County Central as a freshman. It was the first of four straight state tourney appearances for Justice and KCC.
.JPG "141117HSPREVIEW_mc058(2).JPG")
Justice began his college career playing for Kevin Stallings at Vanderbilt in 2015-16, appearing in 26 games and averaging 3.4 points. However, a sports hernia operation helped sabotage Justice’s sophomore season. He decided to transfer from then-new Vandy Coach Bryce Drew’s program after only seven games in 2016-17.
Next school up for Justice was IUPUI (Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis), where his high school teammate, Evan Hall, was playing.
Justice sat out the 2017-18 season as a transfer, then had a breakout campaign in 2018-19, averaging 18.6 points.
With an IUPUI degree in hand and a season of eligibility remaining, Justice became a hot commodity on the graduate-transfer market.
Western Kentucky Coach Rick Stansbury lured Justice back to his home state.
Paired in Bowling Green with fellow Kentucky Mr. Basketball winners Carson Williams (2016) and Taveion Hollingsworth (2017), Justice found ample frustration. He broke his nose for a second time before the 2019-20 season. He then battled pain in his back throughout the year.
Capping off a challenging season, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic ended the college hoops campaign without resolution by canceling the postseason.
“Being an athlete, at the end of the season, you either win a championship or you get beat out of the championship — but at least you know,” Justice says. “But we didn’t really get to play and figure any of that out.”
After averaging 10.1 points for WKU in a season filled with adversity, Justice thought he was done with college basketball.
A reprieve from the NCAA
During the 2020-21 college hoops season, Justice worked a job in plumbing sales in Huntington, W.Va.
That taste of the real world caused Justice to reach out to Stansbury seeking help breaking into college coaching. Before this season, Western brought Justice back as a graduate assistant, albeit one whose primary task was helping Hilltoppers’ players in the academic realm.
Back in Bowling Green, Justice played some pickup hoops with the Hilltoppers players.
With the year off having given Justice’s body time to heal, word went up the WKU chain of command that the 6-foot-3, 185-pound guard still had it. That revived the idea of seeking a medical hardship waiver from the NCAA for Justice’s second season at Vanderbilt (the sports hernia season).
“I’d be lying if I said I felt like I was going to get that,” Justice says.
However, the diligence with which the NCAA worked through Justice’s case eventually gave his family hope.
“It was (the NCAA saying) ‘We need this.’ We’d get them that, then (the NCAA would say) ‘We need this.’ And we’d get that,” says Raymond Justice, the former Belfry High School boys’ basketball coach and Camron’s father. “Finally, I said to Cam, ‘My gosh, I think these people are really considering letting you play.’”
On Friday, Nov. 12, the WKU men’s basketball team was in Asheville, N.C., to play Minnesota. Camron Justice had yet to hear word from the NCAA on his waiver request and had stayed behind in Bowling Green for a personal reason.
He was working out and didn’t notice his cell phone blowing up.
“I was about to get my fiancee at the time and head home. We were getting married that weekend,” Justice says. “I get out of that workout and I had 15 or 20 calls from (Stansbury) and everybody on the (coaching) staff ... trying to get a hold of me to tell me I was eligible.”
The next day, Saturday, Justice and his fiancee, former University of Tennessee cheerleader Kaylee Justice, were wed.
“We had already talked, I was already here in a (coaching) position, so it wasn’t like we were going to be able to take a honeymoon during the season,” Camron Justice says.
So on Sunday morning, the couple got up and drove to Asheville, where Cam Justice scored three points for Western in 17 minutes of playing time in a 75-64 loss to South Carolina.
As a 25-year-old college basketball “old man,” Justice has enjoyed one of his healthiest seasons. The guard his teammates call “Vet” is averaging 14.9 points, 3.4 rebounds, 3.3 assists and 1.6 steals for WKU (18-12, 10-7).
Justice has had some “memories of a lifetime” moments for Western this season. He scored 25 points in WKU’s 82-72 win over Louisville in E.A. Diddle Arena in December. On Wednesday night, he dropped 27 points at Marshall in an 86-72 Hilltoppers victory.
“I think this year is the best thing that has happened to Cam,” says Raymond Justice. “I think he was a little down (over the way his career “ended” in 2019-20). This season, I think psychologically, has really made him feel fulfilled.”
Whatever happens for Western Kentucky in the postseason, the college basketball career of Camron Justice — which has, literally, now lasted almost as long as The Seven Years War — finally seems headed to a satisfying ending.
“I am just grateful,” Camron Justice says, “I got this chance to play the game again.”
