The first offseason recruit for the men’s basketball team at Hawaii Hilo will transform the shape of the backcourt regardless of who else may join the roster, and he comes with a distant touch of ohana.
Ryley Callaghan, a 6-foot-1 junior-to-be from Peninsula Community College, was named the 2015-16 MVP in the North Division of the Northwest Athletic Conference, the sprawling, 35-school junior college league that lists teams in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and British Columbia. He officially signed papers and passed administrative protocol to get his name on the Vulcans roster readier in the week.
Callaghan, a high school coach’s son from Port Orchard (South Kitsap High School), Wa., will give some necessary size to the backcourt that coach GE Coleman’s team sorely lacked last season. Starting guards Van Lockett (5-10) and Jordan Russell (5-9), comprised the smallest set of their kind in the Pacific West Conference a year ago.
“It’s one of the things we need to give us a better chance at competing, especially at the defensive end,” Coleman said Friday. “We battled as hard or harder than anyone in our conference last year but being at a size disadvantage always takes it toll, eventually.”
As it turns out, there is a direct connection to the Big Island through Mitch Freeman, Callaghan’s coach at Peninsula. Freeman is married to the former Nicole Shigeoka of Hilo.
“We will get over, maybe in August to see some family and I can get one last chance to see Ryley before he takes this next step,” Freeman said. “GE got a good one, we’re going to miss him a ton, that’s for sure.”
Callaghan comes off a Peninsula team in Washington that won the North Division with an 11-3 record and finished 18-11 overall after a sluggish 7-7, then was upset in its first conference tournament game. Throughout the season, Callaghan averaged 17.5 points per game, shot 38 percent from beyond the 3-point arc and converted 87 percent of his free throws, leading the division in free throws made (109-for-125).
“He took a chance with us,” Freeman said. “He had a bunch of D-IIIand NAIA offers and I was just getting started here, but he’s a coach’s son, he took a chance and it worked out for both of us, you could say.
“Ryley definitely has a point guard mentality, he thinks like a coach out there, analytical, smart, but I’ll you what, when we could free him up on the wing? He was one of our better shooters.”
Freeman said Callaghan “understands change of speed, change of direction at a high tempo, he can run things for you,” and that, “he has real leadership skills, he’s always had that.”
Freeman said Callaghan carried “a 3.5-plus GPA,” in the classroom and was the Pirates’ captain both years at Peninsula.
Coleman said he expects to get confirmation on other recruits as paperwork gets filed and approved and added that Callaghan “will be the shortest player we sign, we’ll be a different kind of team next year.”
