Irmo’s Jordan Roper is succeeding on, off the court at Clemson

As a senior guard, Jordan Roper has become a key component to the success of the Clemson men’s basketball team. The road hasn’t been easy, but Roper appears well-positioned to finish his college career strong and for continued success in his life after Clemson, but he has had to overcome adversity along the way.

As a child, Roper first demonstrated his athletic potential on the baseball diamond. According to his father, Eric Roper, Jordan demonstrated the ability to throw a fastball between 80 to 90 miles per hour.

“That boy could throw,” Eric Roper said. “He was really good at baseball – really, really, really good.”

Because of that, many members of the community in Columbia – where Roper grew up – were upset when, at age 12, Jordan fell in love with basketball and gave up baseball.

A four-year varsity player at Irmo High, Roper was an all-state selection in both his junior and senior years as one of South Carolina’s top prep players.

Clemson was the only program from a major conference to offer a scholarship to Roper, who’s considered to be undersized at only 6-feet tall and 165 pounds. Irmo coach Tim Whipple, however, said he “had no doubts” that Roper would go on to succeed for the Tigers.

“What you get with Jordan is a very high basketball IQ, along with a tremendous amount of athletic ability,” Whipple said. “You put those two things together, and you’ve got a Division I, major college type of player.”

Roper was an immediate contributor for Clemson during the 2012-13 season. As a true freshman, Roper started 13 games, played an average of 22.7 minutes per game and scored 7.9 points per game.

Less than two weeks after the end of the season, on March 25, 2013, Roper suffered a health scare that changed his life.

The first sign that something was wrong came after an afternoon tutoring session at Vickery Hall, Clemson’s academic support center for student-athletes.

“I’m leaving tutoring to go back to my room to take a nap, and I drop my phone in Vickery Hall at the front desk,” Roper recalled. “I see the phone on the ground, and I’m trying to pick it up, and I can see myself grabbing it, but I can’t feel it.”

As Roper walked back to his on-campus apartment, he began to hear himself breathing from the side of his mouth. But even as Roper was unable to sleep during his attempt to take a nap, he figured he was just “out of it,” that he needed to fight through it.

Because of that, Roper proceeded to take a statistics exam that evening, and even though he was having trouble articulating his words and felt numb on one side of his body, he did well.

After eating dinner with some friends, Roper drove to Littlejohn Coliseum for a weightlifting session. It was evident to strength and conditioning coach Darric Honnold that something was wrong.

Roper was suffering a minor stroke.

That diagnosis was alarming to Eric Roper, whose father and grandmother both died after suffering strokes. Doctors were unable to determine an exact cause for his son’s stroke, and Jordan himself, fearful that he might be afflicted again, went through a battle with depression.

Physically, though, Roper suffered no permanent side effects. Returning to the basketball court that summer, when Clemson took an overseas trip to play a series of exhibition games in Italy, ultimately proved to be the medicine that put Roper back on track mentally.

“We played this game in Rome, and I dunked on this 7-foot guy in the game, and that was the moment I was like ‘I guess I’m all right,’ ” Roper said.

After his promising freshman season, Roper’s numbers tapered off in his sophomore and junior campaigns. Now a senior, Roper has averaged almost 10 points per game, leads the Tigers in steals and has already recorded a career high in assists.

“His head is up, he sees more, the game has slowed down,” Clemson coach Brad Brownell said. “I don’t know if any of it has anything to do with his health, I don’t know if just being more confident, being further away from his health issue.”

As an intern with Clemson’s athletic communications department last summer, Roper worked with Nik Conklin, the coordinator of digital content for Clemson athletics, to produce a longform video project about himself while also contributing to various other video projects.

Roper, who graduated from Clemson in December with an undergraduate degree in parks, recreation and tourism management, plans to use the skills he learned from that internship to pursue a career in athletic administration.

This story was originally published January 30, 2016 at 6:03 PM with the headline "Irmo’s Jordan Roper is succeeding on, off the court at Clemson."