Lawrence High’s Dorian Green, right, gets a step on Shawnee Mission Northwest’s Ryan Arel in this Dec. 19, 2008, file photo at Lawrence High. Green has been nearly impossible to guard this season, averaging 27 points a game for the 4-2 Lions.

Through six games this season, Lawrence High senior Dorian Green has shown us — and lamenting opponents — the total package.

He’s scored in transition, drained shots off the dribble and swished many of his spot-up and step-back opportunities.

In addition, Green has finished in traffic around the rim and hit fade-aways over one, two, sometimes even three defenders who otherwise seemed to be in prime position to challenge his shot.

In a nutshell, Green, who enters January averaging 27 points per game, has been unstoppable.

That’s not to say his opponents have not tried. In fact, the six teams LHS has faced this season have tried just about everything when it comes to guarding Green. One thing they’ve learned is that, so far, nothing has worked.

“We held him to 39 points, or whatever it was, and I say that with a healthy dose of sarcasm,” said Blue Valley coach Chris Hansen, one of just two coaches to taste victory against Green this season. “I think he believes he’s going to make everything.”

Green’s performance against Blue Valley rates as his best of the season. He finished 14-of-29 from the field, 4-of-12 from three-point land and scored 37 points. That included a 19-point third quarter, in which Green caught fire and nearly led the Lions to victory.

In that game, Hansen instructed his players to force Green to shoot contested shots. That, he said, was better than letting him blow by them on drives to the basket. For the most part, the strategy worked, as Green found tough sledding every time he reached the paint.

The problem for Blue Valley was that Green hit most of those contested shots, particularly in that explosive third quarter.

“We were definitely questioning our strategy in the third quarter,” Hansen said. “But there are very few high school players who can consistently hit contested jumpers like he did. As ridiculous as it sounds, for the majority of the game, I thought we defended him as well as you can.”

In a season-opening victory against Washburn Rural, Junior Blues coach Craig Cox had a different gameplan altogether.

“We went into it with the idea of making it as difficult as possible for him to get the basketball,” Cox said. “We even went as far as to try to keep him from getting the inbounds pass. We wanted to try to keep it out of his hands. That’s a lot easier said than done.”

After a slow start, Green got hot midway through the game, showing off his range and his ability to get to the free throw line. He finished with 22 points. It would have been more had he not shot 54 percent from the free throw line.

“He hit some step-back threes where he drove you off with one dribble and just buried it,” Cox said. “You just tip your cap at that point because you don’t see high school guys do that stuff. I think our first response after he hit those was that those are the kinds of things that are going to happen when he gets his hands on the ball.”

Two weeks later, during the Lions’ home victory against Shawnee Mission Northwest in the Sunflower League opener, SMNW coach Ben Meseke tried a little bit of everything on defense. To no avail. Green finished with 34 points against the Cougars, leaving Meseke to shake his head.

“We tried straight man for a while, we tried helping, we even tried a little diamond-and-one. Nothing worked,” Meseke said. “There were a couple of times where he hit shots and I stood up and applauded, too. I was not expecting what I saw that night.”

Lawrence High coach Chris Davis has built his entire offense around it. In fact, Davis has so much confidence in Green’s abilities that he spent the offseason designing an attack that would put the other four LHS players on the court in position to take advantage of the attention Green commands.

“To be really honest, to lay everything out there, our offense is predicated on it,” Davis said. “We assume at some point they’re going to have to put more than one guy on Dorian to stop him. And for everything that comes, we have a counter set up that gives someone else a chance to step up and make plays.”

It’s that concept, not just the play of their standout guard, that has led the Lions to a 4-2 start.

Of course, there was the game against Free State in which Green scored 11 of his 26 points in the fourth quarter and overtime, including a game-tying three-pointer with 12 seconds remaining. On that night, Green’s teammates were more than happy to get out of the way when the game was on the line.

Free State coach Chuck Law, who handed senior Connor Monarez the daunting defensive assignment, said he thought Monarez guarded Green as tough as possible throughout the night. But even that did not work. After a nine-point first half, Green finished with 26, including the biggest shot of the night.

After the game-tying triple, there was no talk, no excessive celebrating, not so much as a hint of Green growing cocky. That’s another part of his game opposing coaches have noticed.

“He’s competitive, but at the same time he’s a class act,” Cox said. “There wasn’t anything showboat-wise or anything like that. He handled himself in an impressive manner and it’s one of those things where someday, we’ll probably say, ‘Hey, we got to play against him.'”