PHOTO COURTESY BYUH ATHLETICS
Pablo Broering has been BYUH's defensive stopper this year, but may be asked to score more often down the stretch.
Center of When Scott Salisbury went down with a fractured larynx last week, a lot of curious eyes turned to Pablo Broering.
Attention
All eyes are on BYUH’s
- Notebook -
Pablo Broering to replace
Scott Salisbury
Seasiders' goals stay the sameBy Jerry Campany
jcampany@starbulletin.comBut Broering is used to it. You can't walk through life at 6-foot-11 and not get noticed.
"It's really tiring," Broering said. "When you walk around, everyone looks at you and stops you just to say, 'Damn you are big.' I already know that. But I am glad to be big."
Before, being bigger than most of the rest of the people his age was enough. It was enough for him to dominate high school games in his homeland of Brazil and it was enough to give him an opportunity to study abroad, first at Arizona Western College, then at Brigham Young-Hawaii.
But now, size is not the only thing that matters. Broering is the biggest of many players Seasiders coach Ken Wagner is asking to fill the shoes of his injured all-conference center.
Broering's position will not change -- he has shoved Salisbury out of the pivot all season -- but his role will. He will be asked to do the things it seemed only Salisbury could do night in and night out. He will have to set the picks to free forward Alexus Foyle and rebound like the madman Salisbury -- who slipped into his street clothes as the 14th best rebounder in the nation when he got hurt -- always was.
It is a challenge Broering has been waiting for.
"I will probably get a chance to play a little more," Broering said. "But it doesn't really scare me, I am pretty good at keeping in focus every day. Coach always tells us to work hard in practice and we do it to be prepared for something like this."
Broering had a flashback of his prep days in the Seasiders' first game without Salisbury, scoring a career-high 14 points against Hawaii-Hilo and missing only a single shot. The offense certainly doesn't run through him now, but it does depend on him a lot more. He has only missed once from the field (13-for-14) in the three games since Salisbury went down. He was shooting 48 percent in the 15 games with Salisbury around to clean up his messes.
"Well, that (his recent success shooting the ball) is because we told him he has to step it up," Wagner said. "He works extremely hard and that put him in position to do it. He is just so stable, he does all the right things in school and practice. That's the nice thing about coaching here, all of our guys are like that."
Broering's collegiate career is winding down. He will graduate in December, and after that it is back to Brazil to try to extend his days of playing basketball. He has European citizenship but wants to go home to be with his girlfriend of two years, Andreia Tinelli, and settle down to a job in business.
But business will come after he has squeezed all of the pleasure out of his career. Unlike many of the people Broering left behind when he went to Arizona without speaking a lick of English, Broering has options.
"In Brazil we can either play basketball or go to school. We can't have both, but I wanted both. When I was playing over there I was thinking to myself, 'What if I get hurt?' "
Broering's return to Brazil is anticipated by a lot of the basketball community, people who want to see living proof of how much one can improve by leaving home. His high school coach, Jose Medalha, steered him toward America with the thinking that it would make him so much better and will be the ultimate judge of whether or not he has improved. Medalha now coaches a professional team in Brazil and has been tracking Broering's progress. A call to Wagner would tell Medalha everything he needs to know about his former student, that numbers on the Internet -- he is averaging 7.2 points and 4.6 rebounds in 18 minutes per game this year -- offer no clue as to what Broering faces every day.
"For a 6-11 guy, you are out of place in Division II," Wagner said. "It's more of an up-and-down game and hard for a 6-11 guy to chase them down. I think if he played D-I or professional it would be much easier for him and he would be even better."
Broering, who remembers loving the game since long before he became a giant, just wants to keep playing.
"It's pretty good money, I will play for as long as I can," Broering said. "In Brazil there are only one-year deals, but if you keep improving other teams might pick you up. Plus I have a few connections."
Even if he didn't have the connections, Broering would get noticed.
When he walked away from the game in Brazil, Broering was a member of the junior national team with current Denver Nuggets forward Nene Hilario, and on his way up the ladder to the national team. He wants to put a national title banner on the ceiling of the Cannon Activities Center this year, and he says that doing so occupies all of his basketball time, but down the road he would like to try to finish the job he started as a youngster.
"I'd like to play the Olympic games," Broering said. "That would be the ultimate if I can get to the nationals this year, first."
That is probably not going to happen unless Broering can continue to contribute on the floor, singling out the biggest guy on the other team and shutting him down. The problem is that in Division II, there are so few Pablo Broerings.
"I like to feel like the short guy," Broering said, "see how hard it is to play against someone big. I never really going to get big guys to play against, but when I see someone big, I tell myself that I have to go get him. Right now it's my job and my challenge."
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