Swish.

Swish.

Swish.

Clank. 

On the first miss, his demeanor changed. His shoulders slumped, he shook his head. He stared at the rim for a few fleeting seconds. Henry missed three of his final four warm-up shots before the drill ended, and only attempted three shots in 16 minutes of game action. 

It has been a learning process this season for the 6-foot-6 Henry — one game up, one game down for a player who didn’t expect to play more than a complementary role this season. 

Junior guard Joshua Langford went down with a stress fracture in his foot Dec. 29, 2018 against Northern Illinois. Redshirt junior forward Kyle Ahrens has been in and out of the lineup with back issues the entire season.

So, the burden of the minutes at the small forward position rest on Henry’s broad shoulders. 

“(Michigan State coach Tom Izzo) knows I’m very capable of playing at this level, and playing right away and right now, it’s just a matter of how fast,” Henry said after practice a few weeks ago.

The coaches regard Henry as a promising defender, but opponents refuse to respect his range from outside, rendering him an offensive liability at times. He is shooting 28.6 percent from three-point range this season, and hasn’t made one since Jan. 17 at Nebraska.

“I know I can do it,” Henry said. “I do it in practice, I do it when I work out before practice or after practice, even shooting here. It’s not like I’m a bad shooter, it’s just finding the confidence in myself.” 

His older teammates understand that inward battle between confidence and fear.

“It’s easy to get down on yourself when you have a couple bad games,” senior forward Kenny Goins said of Henry. “Especially being younger, with that much responsibility in your head, it’s real easy to start doubting yourself.”

“We can see it in him a little bit now. The best way for him to correct it is for us to be his supporting cast, and keep telling him every day, ‘Look, you’ve done this already. It’s not like you haven’t performed and shown what you can do in the Big Ten and outside. So you just gotta keep trusting in yourself just as much as we trust in you.’ I think he’ll come through.”

Henry is a hard worker, taking extra shots after practice most days. He wants to follow the example of Goins, who made just four threes in the first three years of his MSU career, but hit three on Sunday alone. 

“I think he’s got a real good-looking jump shot,- jump straight up, jump straight down, a good goose neck on it. The power comes from his legs, because he’s a hell of an athlete,” Goins said. “I really just think it comes from his confidence. When you’re that young, it’s real easy for your confidence to slip and you go on this real, real steep downhill slope.”

Henry’s lack of confidence in his shot can sometimes manifest itself in other areas. Last week against Ohio State, he made defensive mistakes and was limited to only 10 minutes.

“Aaron has been playing pretty good lately. We’re just trying to push Aaron past the deer in the headlights look and sometimes that happens,” Izzo said the next day. “What happens if a guy is not playing good and he’s trying to do what he can do, that’s one thing. If he’s not playing good and not seeing it then the bench is a good place to see things from. It’s a very good view, you got 20-20, it’s perfect.” 

Henry, who played in the post at Indianapolis’ Ben Davis High School, is considered by many to be the best athlete on the team, boasting a 40-inch vertical leap. He said, at the Big Ten level, defenders are good enough to take away your preferred method of scoring, despite athletic advantages.

“I just think that’s how my game is based on, slashing to the rim and getting as close to the rim as possible, creating for others and for myself,” Henry said. “I gotta find out as the game progresses and as I get older that there are people my size who can stop that and I gotta play better on the perimeter. It’s not a problem for me to do that, it’s just again, how fast can I adjust to the speed of the game.”

Henry admitted he thinks too much on the court. When teams sag off him, it not only frustrates him, but messes with his head.

“It’s playing almost a mind game with you, like they’re telling you that you can’t shoot, but you’re telling yourself you can shoot. I’ll get past it,” he said.

With junior point guard Cassius Winston increasingly the focal point of the offense, Henry isn’t going to touch the ball much. Assistant coach Dane Fife said the key is developing such a rhythm that when he does get it, he knows what to do with it.

“It’s a lonely spot when you catch it and you’re wide open, but you’re not feeling the shot,” Fife said. “You don’t feel good about it, and I think that’s part of Aaron’s head spinning. How do you not see that you’re open there and you’re not prepared to shoot it? But I get it.” 

Fife likened Henry’s struggles this season to his own freshman season at Indiana, in 1998-99. 

“I think a lot of freshmen today don’t understand the game without the ball. A  lot of it is just learning to play without the ball, and impact the game that way,” Fife said. “There’s only a select few who are so talented or so tall that they can dominate the game with the ball. A lot of scoring happens without the ball. You set your cut up, you go rebound it, get a foul, you run your lane.”

Winston said he has confidence in Henry’s ability to shoot.

“I tell him all the time, ‘You take that shot. We see your work, we see the time you put in, we’ve seen you hit that shot over and over again. Just take that shot. You don’t have to shoot six of them like I do, but you can shoot two,’” Winston said. “Just keep them honest, and you see a couple go in, next thing you know, he’s gonna be knocking them down.”

Henry is also adjusting to the pace of play at the Big Ten level, where taking plays off gets punished. Fife shared a story from practice about that learning curve.

“We’re running a transition drill. On the second-to-last one, coach Izzo saw him not going as hard, and coach jumped him. ‘Aaron, you’re not going hard, what’s the matter? You tired?’ Aaron says no, so I went over to Aaron, I said, ‘You’ve earned the right to be tired. Just tell coach you were tired.’ He was exhausted on the play,” Fife said. 

In MSU’s 67-59 road victory over Wisconsin on Feb. 12, Henry played his best basketball of the season. 

He scored eight points and made two important plays down the stretch. First, leading by one with 2:30 left, he took a pass from Winston, dribbled to his preferred spot near the free throw line, and confidently knocked in a jump shot. Then late in the shot clock with 36 seconds remaining and a three-point lead, he dribbled to the same spot, sucked the defense in, and dished to Goins for the game-clinching three-pointer.

“I always can gain more from each game,” he said. “Not just the failures, but success as well. I know what I gotta do to win, and I know what I gotta do to make sure we’re always in the right position.”

Coaches believe that Henry will become an impactful player down the road. Balancing his introspectiveness and his confidence will determine the player he becomes. 

“It’s not the easiest thing to do,” Henry said.