By Howard Tsumura
BURNABY — Luke Howard’s climb to reach the summit of his college basketball career has been interminably long, at times undoubtedly lonely and beset with enough re-starts to wobble even the most unflappable of hardcourt warriors.
Yet at 7 p.m. on Thursday — seven years, four schools, a global pandemic and a torn ACL later — the 6-foot-9, 225-pound Simon Fraser forward and Abbotsford native will get to enjoy a moment he probably never counted on having.
That’s when Howard, who embarked on a circuitous basketball journey following his Grade 10 season with the Abbotsford Panthers way back in 2016-17, makes his full-circle return official.
Coming into the team’s West Gym clash against visiting Alaska Anchorage, Howard not only gets to hear his name called out in the Red Leafs starting lineup, he’ll be doing so as the team’s leading scorer (16.4 ppg) and rebounder (5.1 rpg) in what will be his first-ever home-soil conference opener, as SFU (4-8, 0-2) looks for its first GNAC victory of the season against the perennially-tough Seawolves (8-7, 1-1).
“I had a great opportunity to just come home and play in front of my family,” Howard said in reflection earlier this season after transferring to SFU following a two-season stint at Northwest University, an NAIA school just south of the border in Kirkland, WA.
“I have grandparents, uncles, so many in my family who have never seen me play basketball,” continued Howard. “So it was a great opportunity.”
It’s also been a perfect fit.
Howard comes into this weekend’s home twin-bill Thursday and Saturday (7 p.m. vs. Alaska Fairbanks) sitting fifth in overall GNAC scoring where, through his first 10 games with the club, he’s utilized an expansive skill set highlighted by his instinctive play in the paint and his deft 39 per cent (17-44) three-point touch.
But more than that, it’s been about the veteran presence he has brought to a young SFU team whose core is just now stepping into the realities of heavy game-to-game minutes at the Div. 2 level.
So what does seven years of toil on the highways and byways of the U.S. basketball road translate to atop Burnaby Mountain?
“I think a lot of maturity for sure,” said SFU head coach Steve Hanson. “I think when you look back on your career and the time you spend away from home… you mature quick.
“(Luke) brings a lot of calm and maturity to our team,” continued Hanson. “I think being a first-year Red Leaf, it’s hard to come in and just automatically become a leader, but he is getting a lot more comfortable.”
ON THE ROAD… AGAIN
The CliffNotes version of Luke Howard’s basketball odyssey?
It starts out by following the migratory path of the former Vancouver Grizzlies to Memphis, TN where Howard spent two very productive prep school seasons (2017-18, 2018-19) at Harding Academy.
His play there opened eyes to the degree that seven mid-major NCAA Division 1 programs showed interest.
Howard chose to stay in-state and signed on at Lipscomb University, red-shirting in 2019-20, then trying to establish himself as a freshman over the chaotic COVID campaign of 2020-21.
From there Howard spent the 2021-22 season at Div. 2 California school Biola in La Mirada, CA, before electing to join his younger brother Anthony, then a 6-foot-8 sophomore forward, for the 2022-23 campaign a lot closer to home, in Washington, with the Northwest University Eagles.
Howard, however, tore his ACL before the season started and thus sat out the entire campaign.
If you do the math, in the four combined seasons he spent between Lipscomb, Biola and his first season at Northwest, Howard played a total of just nine games.
All of that, of course, takes us to this past season when, with his health and opportunity finally converging, he was able to show his real self with the Eagles, establishing career-best averages of 19.2 points and 7.8 rebounds per game.
NORTH BY NORTHWEST
Following his younger sibling Anthony to Northwest University not only allowed Luke Howard a brotherly basketball reunion, it also pointed him due north, in the direction of his current station back in B.C. with the Red Leafs where he is currently working on a business degree.
Northwest’s Kirkland campus, by virtue of its two-and-a-half hour drive from the SFU campus, lies well within a comfortable footprint for any B.C. player looking to make a return home to finish up a college career.
A few seasons back, one of the Red Leafs’ most productive NCAA-era front court players ever made that very same move.
Jas Singh, a 6-foot-8 forward out of Delta Secondary, whose career stat line of 13.8 points, 4.9 rebounds and .406 three-point shooting is remarkably similar to what Howard’s may wind up being this season, also starred with the Eagles before doing the same at Simon Fraser in 2018-19, 2019-20 and a part of the 2021-22 season.
Additionally, one of Singh’s teammates his entire time at SFU was Arlington, WA native and guard Drew Bryson, who played his last season at Northwest.
That’s some pretty heavy hoops karma. In fact it seems more than enough to have pointed Howard home to finish his college basketball career.
And, if Howard elects to return for his senior season in 2025-26, what a two-season finish it could be.
All that a purist of the game has to do is watch the agility and balance that the long-armed, long-striding Howard brings to the court to know that he has never allowed his skill set to become static.
In fact, the aforementioned stat of playing just nine games between 2019-20 and 2022-23 is testament to the fact that even through the low ebbs of his career he never stopped trying to get better.
“Just going to the U.S., really, it made me get out of my comfort zone because there were such great players… it made me become a better player,” he says.
And Howard’s two seasons at Harding Academy were indeed a great prep for his future.
In his senior season of 2018-19, Howard was selected one of three finalists statewide for the coveted Tennessee Mr. Basketball award in the Div. 2 Class A tier.
The winner that season? Keon Johnson of The Webb School went on to become the 21st pick in the 2021 NBA draft. On Sunday, starting for the Brooklyn Nets, Johnson scored 14 points in his team’s 102-101 loss to Orlando.
These days, as it pertains to his potential within the GNAC, SFU coach Hanson sees a seasoned vet whose ceiling remains high and attainable.
“I think a lot of guys have the ability to get shots off near the rim, but he just has a knack for putting it in the hoop… that one-legged Dirk Nowitzki step-back jumper… he has some pretty unique skills,” Hanson explains. “I think when he is at his best, he is just very patient, and I think for him, this year he is learning that if he passes the ball, he is going to see double teams a lot less. And if he does, I think he is pretty much unstoppable in one-on-one scenarios. So that is where we are trying to get him to.”
No slouch as a three-point shooter and owning a ‘knack’ to produce in the painted areas, that one additional piece of which Hanson speaks could be a huge key, especially on a team which, through the first month-plus of the season, showed its shooting touch from players like Irish Coquia, Tate Christiansen and Tobe Ezeokafor.
“It’s about knowing what it takes to win at the GNAC level, about doing the dirty work every night,” summed Hanson. “There is no doubt he can score. He has been scoring in tough ways and easy ways. But I think the most important thing is perspective… just realizing that getting to play a lot at this level, at this point in his career, is an important part his experience.”
And one, based both on the figurative stamps in his basketball passport, and the real-time urgency he has shown over the first 10 games of his Simon Fraser career, that Luke Howard will never, ever take for granted.
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