"Nobody can stop his quickness," said his coach, Tony Sellitto. "Once he learns what he's doing, he's going to be great. Actually, he's already great."
Smalley scored 28 points to lead the Sea Warriors past Brigham Young-Hawaii, 82-67, for the Hawaii Intercollegiate Athletic Conference championship last night at Blaisdell Arena.
With the victory, No. 3-ranked Hawaii Pacific earned a berth in the NAIA tournament, March 18-24 in Tulsa, Okla.
Two big questions remain for the No. 17-ranked Seasiders: whether they will receive an at-large bid to the tournament, and whether coach Ken Wagner will be hired by Brigham Young-Provo.
"We'll know Monday or Tuesday," Wagner said of the tournament. He did not speculate on when the Cougars would make a coaching decision.
Smalley made all the right choices on offense last night, hitting on 11 of 15 shots and adding three assists with no turnovers.
But even though he's been playing organized basketball for only a couple years, Smalley knows it takes more than offensive talent to win championships.
"We're starting to play together," Smalley said. "And we need to keep playing defense. Defense is the key."
The Sea Warriors built a 39-29 halftime lead behind 15 of Steve Richey's 21 points and defense that stopped everyone except Brandyn Akana.
Akana led BYUH with 26 points. He scored eight in the last 1:20 of the first half to bring the Seasiders back into it. Akana also tried to kick-start his team in the second half, but to little avail.
"In order to get a run going, you've got to play defense," Akana said. "We didn't play very good defense. We had some breakdowns."
HPU center Juergen Malbeck, plagued by fouls in the first half, came out strong in the second, with nine points in the first six minutes. He finished with 17 points, nine rebounds.
Akana keyed BYUH's only second-half run, an 8-2 outburst, by scoring on a fast break and taking charge on Richey. That made it 58-49 with 10:15 left. But Smalley scored 13 points in the next nine minutes to propel HPU to a 79-62 lead with 1:32 remaining.
"We knew they'd make a run eventually," Smalley said. "When they made their little run, we just wanted to keep our composure."
"Good players always rise to the occasion," Sellitto said. "Those three guys (Smalley, Richey and Malbeck) rose to the occasion. We completely dominated the second half."