For completely different reasons, the two UH-Hilo basketball programs had very similar trajectories a year ago that both men’s coach GE Coleman and women’s coach David Kaneshiro sincerely hope is in the past, all but forgotten.
For completely different reasons, the two UH-Hilo basketball programs had very similar trajectories a year ago that both men’s coach GE Coleman and women’s coach David Kaneshiro sincerely hope is in the past, all but forgotten.
That proximity to the playoffs will no doubt be on the minds of those returning when the two teams officially open practice Saturday night in the campus gym following the volleyball match.
Each coach will use the fact that their team came up one game short of the playoffs as a motivational tool for the new season.
“It’s not something we talk about on a daily basis,” Kaneshiro said, “but it’s been mentioned, everyone is aware of it; the bigger point that we do talk about all the time is the day-to-day stuff, the hard work, the effort; that’s what will make the difference and we sort of discovered it near the end of the season.”
Kaneshiro had a team that was unfamiliar with each other, the roster filled with incoming players who had real ability such as freshmen Kim Schmelz (12 points per game, 82 percent free throw shooter), and Patience Taylor, a 6-foot post who grew into her role as the season progressed. Those two freshmen joined transfers like Vanessa Mancera (Started 20 games, solidified the backcourt) and Pilialoha Kailiawa, another 6-foot post from Ka’u, though a transfer from an Oregon community college, to give the Vulcans some talent. The drawback was the bulk of the roster had never played together. In this case, it didn’t happen overnight.
They started out 3-10, but finished with a 7-5 run that nearly got them to the playoffs.
“The first month didn’t look anything like the last month (of the season),” Kaneshiro said. “It took time for roles to get straightened out, for everyone to realize the level of intensity we needed to take to practice every day. Once we started having good practices we started winning more games.”
Coleman’s team was derailed early by the loss of its best returning player — 6-8 Tre Johnson a likely conference player of the year candidate — to an overseas professional contract, then another player quit, then Darius Johnson-Wilson, the other post player remaining on the roster, missed the season with a meniscus tear.
Had Johnson stayed, had Johnson-Wilson been healthy and if Salim Gloyd (PacWest newcomer of the year, led conference in scoring at 22.9 and was fifth in rebounds at 6.8), had been cleared academically earlier — he wasn’t able to play until January — that would have been a dangerous playoff team.
Expecting to be just that, Coleman loaded up the schedule with tough preseason games but the team he expected wasn’t available. The Vulcans started 0-9 and finished 9-15, 9-11 in the conference, heading into the second half of the season’s last game with a chance to get to the playoffs.
“Never been prouder of the fight that team showed,” Coleman said this week. “It would have been easy to fold it up and go home but they just kept working harder. Of course, let’s be honest, Salim was huge for us, but without the work they put in without him, we wouldn’t have finished as close as we did.”
Now he starts over with a thicker deck of playing cards, so to speak to join senior Parker Farris (16 ppg, led PWC with 3.2 3-pointers per game, shot 87 percent from the line), and the emotional engine house of the team, Randan Berinobis, a defensive specialist who rebounds and leads the team by far in taking charges. Additionally, Ryan Reyes is back after a broken jaw kept him off the court much of the first half of the season.
Beyond that, Coleman had his best recruiting haul so far, heading into his fourth season. Junior transfer (Peninsula Community College) Ryley Callaghan, 6-feet tall, will run the offense at point guard and be bigger than anyone who played in the backcourt a year ago. Brian Ishola is 6-6 Division I transfer from North Dakota State who will give matchup fits on the wing to opponents. Eric Wattree, a 6-3 freshman wing who played with Callaghan at South Kitsap High School (Washington), might be the most talented player on the roster, with all-conference potential in his future, and Arnold Silva, a 6-6 junior transfer from Santa Rosa JC looks like a rebounding beast off the bench. Additionally, Johnson-Wilson is fully healthy and playing as well as he ever has.
The biggest recruit, in more ways than one, might be Onxy Boyd, the 6-11 left-hander from Virginia Beach, currently being treated for a circulatory issue not believed serious. If his medication treatment is successful, he’ll be available by the end of the month.
The mark against there recruiting class came when the school rescinded the scholarship offer to junior wing Donavan Taylor and sent him back to California after he had enrolled.
“He had an academic requirement he needed to finish to be eligible,” Coleman said. “He was enrolled but we decided it would be better for him to finish his requirement in California.”
UHH athletic director Pat Guillen said, “it was a surprise to all of us (that Taylor was short a credit), but at the end, it was his decision to go back home and get the credit there.”
Even without the benefit of practicing a year with the team that Taylor would have provided and the possible recruiting repercussions that could develop from rescinding a scholarship, there’s still a good feeling around the program.
“We have a chance,” Coleman said with a laugh, “I guess you always have a chance but it’s a lot better chance this year than it was last year.”