Hawaii men’s basketball: Junior college recruiting issues persist

The recruitment of junior college standouts was once the go-to, a preferred method of securing talent for the Hawaii men’s basketball program.

Think Bob Nash, Trevor Ruffin, Tony Maroney, A.C. Carter, Michael Kuebler and Matt Lojeski. More recently, Bill Amis, Vander Joaquim, Garrett Nevels and Roderick Bobbitt came out of JUCOs to become productive players.

Recruiting JUCOs often comes with its own set of positives and negatives. JUCO players often offer an immediate infusion of ready-to-play talent, but usually only have two seasons to play, and they sometimes carry red flags in academics or personality — common reasons why players go the JUCO route.

But the junior college pipeline has all but dried up for the Rainbow Warriors these days, at least in terms of meaningful production once they’ve arrived in Manoa. UH has increasingly turned to high school and international players, and the occasional Division I transfer.

On Tuesday, beat writer Stephen Tsai reported that UH’s only junior college offseason pickup, Junior Madut of Eastern Florida State College, will have to delay his enrollment entry to Manoa until January, ostensibly because of an issue with his eligibility clock and the time it took to resolve it.

Not including Jessiya Villa, who was signed a few years ago and went on a church mission, Madut was the first player signed for the 2019-20 class back in April. At 6-foot-5 with a slashing game, he was to be one of the Rainbow Warriors’ most athletic players.

Thanks to a hardship waiver, the lone junior college signee in the 2019 class is still coming, and will have two seasons to play. He might see action in the Big West this spring, but it seems more likely he will redshirt then play two full seasons beyond.

The latter scenario would be a blow for the ‘Bows, who lost their three most experienced players (Jack Purchase, Brocke Stepteau, Sheriff Drammeh) to exhausted eligibility and a couple more to early transfers. UH has been mired in the middle of the pack in the Big West since 2016-17 and could use every tool at its disposal to get out of the muck.

As mentioned above, the whole point of a JUCO pickup is to make an immediate impact.

Fifth-year coach Eran Ganot has had a couple of hits on JUCO players. Gibson Johnson (Salt Lake Community College), now a team graduate manager, was a Big West honorable mention as a junior and a BWC All-Acacemic pick as a senior; he averaged 10.9 points and 4.7 rebounds in two Division I seasons. Eddie Stansberry (San Francisco City College) enters his senior year having contributed to the program’s most prolific season from behind the 3-point arc in 2018-19. Stansberry was third on the team with 11.3 points per game and hit a team-high 77 3-pointers at a 35.8 percent clip.

So, that’s something.

But there have been several whiffs, including Madut for the time being, that have hurt.

They include:

>> Bryce Canda: Ganot’s first signee, out of Central Wyoming Junior College, could not gain admission for the fall semester of 2015-16 after going through UH summer school. He went on to have two productive seasons at Portland State in the Big Sky, averaging double-figure scoring both seasons. As a senior, he had seven 20-point games.

>> Larry Lewis Jr.: Lewis, of Odessa (Texas) Community College, was supposed to bring some athleticism and explosiveness to the perimeter, but much of the time never got off the bench. He averaged 1.8 points in 6.5 minutes in 21 games in his lone season of 2016-17 and wound up finishing his college career at Hawaii Pacific.

>> Jaaron Stallworth: Stallworth, out of Yuba College, came in with a severely injured leg and was behind the curve at point guard. He quit the team prior to playing an official game in 2017-18. Stallworth, tragically, was reported dead in May.

>> Brandon Thomas: Thomas came into the program out of Riverside City College with three years of D-I eligibility. But the younger brother of Mike Thomas never realized a productive role, as his touted shooting ability never materialized. He shot 9-for-43 (20.9 percent) from 3 in two seasons and left the team after last season.

>> Darryl Matthews, Brian Garrett, Trevor LaCount: A grain of salt here because they came in as walk-ons out of JUCOs, but Matthews, Garrett and LaCount were one-and-done scout teamers who did not stick following their first seasons in Manoa.

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The 2019-20 UH basketball roster has gone up. There’s a new addition in Garrett Cason, a 6-6, 200-pound freshman from Fairfield, Calif., and St. Ignatius College Prep. It’s believed Cason is a walk-on.