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Wednesday, January 26, 2000

Rainbows
relying on
foreign aid

With the nation's top prep
basketball players harder to
get, coach Riley Wallace
has found talent abroad

By Pat Bigold
Star-Bulletin

Look at the list of the country's top 100 prep basketball players any year and you'll notice they commit to a familiar list of schools.

North Carolina, North Carolina State, Indiana, Michigan State, Maryland, DePaul, St. John's, Kentucky, Duke, Kansas, Cincinnati, UCLA, Texas. If the program has a heritage of getting into the NCAA tournament and providing its recruits with national TV exposure, that's the preferred program of blue-chippers.

It's almost mission impossible for Hawaii's coaching staff to get a foot in the front door while dozens of recruiters with Big Dance credentials are jamming the foyer.

But Rainbows head coach Riley Wallace is finding these days that he doesn't have to rely on getting into that claustrophobic foyer to put together a competitive basketball team.

Columbus discovered the New World and Wallace has now discovered the Old World.

Forty percent of a starting lineup that has yielded him a 13-5 record this season is from Europe.

Shooting guard Predrag Savovic, a 23-year-old sophomore from Montenegro, and small forward Nerijus Puida, a 24-year-old junior from Lithuania, have played all 18 games.

Savovic has been the high scorer in five of those games while Puida has the Western Athletic Conference's second-highest assist average (5.00).

"The ones we have here now are excellent students, definitely are going to be graduates, and are very coachable," said Wallace. "I like their attitude."

On Monday, Wallace introduced his latest European find: 6-2 point guard Albert Tecul Real, a freshman from Spain.

Tecul Real is redshirting this season, along with Canadians Carl English, a 6-4 freshman shooting guard, and Phil Martin, a 6-7 freshman forward.

That means that five, or 38 percent, of Wallace's 13 scholarship players are foreign.

Next season, there could be as many as seven foreign players, mostly European, on the Hawaii roster.

"But I don't look at them as foreign," said Wallace.

"They speak English, they're making this their home, and everybody in the United States came from somewhere else. There were only two we've gotten directly from Europe -- Albert and Ales Zivanovic."

Savovic (Alabama-Birmingham) and Puida (Weatherford College) attended other American schools before coming here.

Wallace is looking at other Europeans at American junior colleges.

With U.S. prep recruit egos causing nightmares for some college coaches on the mainland, the increasingly notorious work ethic of foreign players is becoming highly coveted.

Coaches of players like Utah's NBA prospect Hanno Mottola (Finland) say they show loyalty, diligence and a willingness to learn that's not often seen among the top American recruits.

Savovic once pointed to Wallace across the gym floor and said to a reporter, "If I'm going to learn about this game, I'm going to learn it from that man."

Wallace said another advantage is that his foreign players have helped him recruit other talented foreigners.

Savovic helped convince Puida to make Hawaii his choice. English's decision to leave Newfoundland for Hawaii influenced Martin to leave Ontario.

"If we can get Nerijus's friend (Weatherford College's 6-7 Mindaugas Burneika) it will be because Nerijus is here and likes it," Wallace said.

Wallace said he's never going to give up trying to get the Anthony Carters and Trevor Ruffins. But with the help of assistant coach Scott Rigot, who has a number of contacts in Canada and Europe, Wallace intends to explore the recruiting frontier that could some day put Hawaii back in the polls.

While the Big Dance denizens are piling into living rooms in U.S. cities, Hawaii's siren call is reaching across the cold Atlantic.

The sell is easy. Only the U.S. has NCAA ball, and no other state offers such an idyllic setting as Hawaii.

"They're more willing to go where they feel comfortable, and it's not as important how many times they're on television because there's no one they care about here who's going to watch them on television anyway," said Wallace. "Hawaii to them is truly paradise."

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