Some nights they’d look competitive. Heck, on some nights they’d even have a lead at the end of the first half. But even on those nights, usually the other team took over and dominated the second half, leading to yet another loss.
“We would have [good] halves here and there, but it could never be two halves in the same game,” said Head Coach Virgil Hill. “We showed moments — brief flashes of solid play — but we just couldn’t be consistent enough stringing that together for an entire game.”
In the end, the men’s basketball team finished with a 2–24 record, and won just one conference game.
“Ultimately, it’s about winning and that’s what we weren’t able to do.”
The other win came against Douglas College, who plays in a lower level league and whom SFU regularly trounces — last year SFU beat them by 90 points and three years ago handed them a similarly impressive 70 point loss. This year? A relatively close 78–58 victory.
This is a team that underwent an 18 game losing streak. After finally winning a surprisingly dominant game 90–70 against Concordia, for their first and only conference win, in the middle of some very competitive losses, the team closed out the season with five straight losses — losing the last three by 20 points or more.
It’s an understatement to say that this team didn’t fare too well in the wins column.
“The challenge was probably greater than my expectations, I mean I expected that we were going to be able to manipulate some wins and coach them up a little bit and be able to surprise people and perhaps get more wins than we did,” said Hill. “Internally, we had higher expectations for ourselves as coaches and as a team. I think we found out the hard and cold truth, that we weren’t as good in all facets and we have to get better.”
To say it was unexpected, however, is not a true assessment of the season either. The team lost its four top scorers from last season: senior point guard Sango Niang, who led the Great Northwest Athletic Conference in points per game and was 13th in the entire NCAA Div II; junior Roderick Evans-Taylor transferred to Cal State-LA; senior Justin Cole; and promising 6’8” freshman Patrick Simon transferred across town to UBC.
With the combination of the loss of graduating seniors, and a high turnover caused at least in part due to a change in coaching staff — Hill taking over from coach James Blake, who had coached the team for five years, the result was a rebuilding year.
“Ultimately, it’s about winning and that’s what we weren’t able to do. So if you look at it in that perspective, it certainly wasn’t successful,” said Hill.
“Would I call it a failure? Partially, but it’s part of the process — you don’t win overnight and the program has struggled, especially in the era of the NCAA, and we haven’t quite found the right formula, in terms of how it’s going to be successful moving forward. And that’s what I’m trying to do now, trying to find that right formula, in terms of the right guys you need to recruit, given our budgetary constraints, how that’s going to play out.”
The term success — if it could be used to describe this season — would perhaps be used to describe the development of some of the younger players.
Oshea Gairey came in ready to play in this division in his freshman year, averaging 13.3 points per game and hitting the 20 point mark four times this season. If he stays for four years, he will almost certainly be the star of the program.
Redshirt freshmen Andrew Williamson and Bowen Bakken, two players Hill said he “didn’t expect anything from [. . .] at all,” have come into the lineup and become effective role players. Bakken has shown an ability, at times, on the three point line, playing more minutes than in an ideal situation — averaging 20.25 minutes in February after only averaging 8.9 minutes a game before that. Williamson has emerged as a workhorse, regularly putting up 30+ minutes in his last three games, with an ability to produce points, hitting double digits in those games.
“You don’t win overnight and the program has struggled.”
Redshirt-sophomore JJ Pankratz could also put up points and looked impressive on the three point line. He will be undoubtedly expected to jump into a bigger role in his junior season.
Gibran Sewani, who is in his junior season and as of now will be SFU’s only senior next season, showed flashes of brilliance, often making or attempting impressive plays like slam dunks or alley-oops, but couldn’t find consistency. If he finds that consistency, he’ll probably be one of the most exciting players to watch. And with senior Michael Harper’s departure, they’ll need it.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment, aside from the losses of course, was the departure of junior transfer Max Barkeley. He led the team in points per game and was always exciting to watch, with a visible passion on the court. With four games left, he left the team, and his absence was particularly noticeable in the final three games — one of which SFU shot only 58 points. However, being a junior, Barkeley only had one more year, and would not have fit into long term plans.
One of the biggest things Hill believes the current players need to work on is their “strength, getting bigger and stronger” and being “able to play at the next level of speed and be productive” at the Division II level.
“We need to get more athletic. To me, that’s obvious. You look at other teams in warm-up and we’re the least athletic team in the entire conference,” explained Hill. “Now, there aren’t many great athletes in the province of BC, so that begets another problem, now you have to go outside of the province to find that type of athleticism. That’s expensive, it’s hard because now you’re trying to recruit people where you’ve never really met them,” which makes it difficult to get a feeling for their character, says Hill. “You can be the best athlete, and if you’re a low character guy, it doesn’t really matter.”
As of now, the men’s basketball team has two new signees. Guard Kedar Wright, who played two seasons at UBC, was supposed to play for SFU this year, but will instead play next year. Wright averaged 11.8 points per game, and put up 23 points in 40 minutes in a CIS playoff game.
The other signing is Chase Hobenshield, 6’7” centre from GP Vanier Secondary on Vancouver Island, where he plays under SFU alumni Larry Street. Street told the Comox Valley Record that Hobenshield “may be the best post in the province.” Hobenshield is expected to redshirt.
Hill hopes that next season the may even compete for a playoff spot.
“I don’t know if this is realistic or not, I mean I’m being optimistic when I say this, but battling for that last playoff spot, battling for sixth place, that sort of seventh or sixth spot,” explained Hill. “But again, I don’t know how realistic that is at this point without recruiting. Obviously recruiting can change those fortunes quite quickly, and all of a sudden we go from the one win to 10 wins in a hurry.”
“Everyone just has to get better, and they don’t understand that you have to be ready for this — mentally, physically, emotionally, technically, you have to be ready in all phases — and a lot of the guys just weren’t, and they didn’t really know.”
