ORLANDO, Fla. - Kaleb Korver looked around the gym in Carbondale, Ill., last year, heard the crowd and started to laugh a little bit.

He’d endured a lot of heckles during his career at Pella High School in Iowa and then the past two years at Creighton. That’s what happens when your older brother, Kyle, is in the NBA and the rest of your brothers play basketball too.

There’s the usual taunts about his brothers are better or how his mother, Laine, once scored 74 points in an Iowa high school game. At the end, though, he doesn’t care.

“But all four of them can really shoot it.”

Where Kaleb’s game differs is with what else he does with the ball. He considers himself a pretty good passer and is third on Creighton in steals with four. At 6-foot-5, 190 pounds he’s shown versatility and the ability to play all over the floor.

He’s also particularly proud of his defense, although he knows he’s a better help-side defender than 1-on-1.

In the end, though, it all comes down to shooting.

It might explain why the four Korver brothers, who used to divide themselves into teams of Kyle and Kirk (oldest and youngest) against Klayton and Kaleb for pretty much everything, don’t play 2-on-2 much anymore.

They are all flung across the country - Kyle in the NBA, Klay having finished up a career at Drake, Kaleb at Creighton now and Kirk at UMKC - but when they get together, it’s all about shooting contests.

“Kyle obviously normally wins,” Kaleb said. “One of us might sneak in a win occasionally, not that often.

“We’ve all won at different times but Kyle wins, by far, the majority of the time.”

Where Kaleb and Klay dominate are in cards, as Kaleb said the duo almost always wins.

But Kaleb is in a different position than his brothers when it comes to basketball. He’s the first to go to the same school as an older one. It was a reason he hesitated at first about going to Creighton. Drake had looked at him. So had Northern Iowa and Iowa State.

But at the end he felt most comfortable in the place where he spent four years watching Kyle and countless hours at basketball camps - Creighton.

“I didn’t want to be right behind Kyle,” Kaleb said. “I have an older brother, Klayton, who would have come here right after Kyle left, he would have came here but he didn’t.

“I was seven, eight years off of him. People remember him, there might be some comparisons and all that but I felt I was far enough away from him that it would be an all right situation for me to come in to.”

So far, it’s worked out. Korver will likely be in the starting lineup Thursday when Creighton faces No. 15 Michigan in the first round of the Old Spice Classic in Orlando.
He’s averaging 6 points and 2.3 rebounds a game.

Of course, though, he’s known as the shooter, where he’s making three-pointers at a 40 percent clip.

“He’s another one,” Michigan coach John Beilein said. “Great shooter. Kyle was in a class by himself and thank goodness I didn’t have to play against him the first time.

“Just a great time shooter, great presence out there.”

Michael Rothstein covers University of Michigan basketball for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at (734) 623-2558, by e-mail at michaelrothstein@annarbor.com or follow along on Twitter @mikerothstein.