By Howard Tsumura
Varsity Letters
BURNABY MOUNTAIN — A great conductor will tell you that there is infinitely more to performing a great symphonic score than just looking at notes and abiding by time signatures.
It’s more about seeing the big picture, and within the details, trusting that through the repetition of rehearsal that your vision is both shared and understood by your orchestra of players.
It’s the same with point guards.
As Simon Fraser returns to the cozy confines of the West Gym for a Great Northwest Athletic Conference home weekend which begins Thursday (7 p.m.) against the Alaska Nanooks, Vancouver native Mikyle Malabuyoc will once again be introduced as the team’s starting point guard.
In his debut season with SFU, the 5-foot-11, 180 pound junior, who played his high school ball at Vancouver College before spending the past two seasons in the OUA with the Western Mustangs, has been just the kind of on-court maestro that a chemistry-hungry Red Leafs team needed.
Forced to come together quickly amidst a high number of defections and additions this past offseason, his recruitment by new head coach Barnaby Craddock could not have been more perfectly executed.
Malabuyoc comes into play Thursday sitting second in the GNAC in assists-per-game at 5.3 per game, a healthy total which goes along with his team-leading 14.6 points per game.
And to put his assist numbers into perspective, his current average represents the fourth-best season enjoyed by a Red Leafs point guard in over a quarter century.
Since SFU left the NAIA for CIS (now U Sports) 26 years ago in 2000-01, through its entry into the NCAA in 2010-11, Malabuyoc’s assists-per-game average in conference play is topped only by PoCo-Terry Fox Ravens standout Raj Mander who averaged 6.0 apg (120 assists over 20 games) in 2004-05, Sango Niang, who averaged 5.7 apg (102 assists in 18 games) in 2014-15, and Niang again, who averaged 5.6 apg in 2013-14.
“I feel like one of my strengths is playmaking, like being able to read defences and find teammates in open spots,” said Malabuyoc, who could become the program’s U SPORTS/NCAA all-time single-season record holder if he was able to dish 61 assists (an average of 6.8 apg) over the final nine games of the regular season beginning Thursday, a total which would allow him to finish with a 6.1 average. “Coming in, I told them ‘I’m a pass-first point guard. So if you guys just move with me, and get into open spots, I’ll find you.’”
He’s lived up to his end of the deal thus far working with the likes of fellow starters like veterans Zach Stone, Tate Christensen and Matthys Van Bylandt, and rookie sixth-man Sartaj Bhangu, and despite the team’s 2-7 record at the midway mark of the conference season, has helped put the Red Leafs in a position to win a number of close games, including a pair of games on each end of an 87-82 win over Montana State Billings in which they lost 73-71 in Fairbanks to the Nanooks, then lost 72-69 in overtime at home to Seattle Pacific.
Nonetheless, as the team battles adversity in search of its breakthrough, Craddock has appreciated what he’s seen from his lead guard.
“He’s a fast, athletic guard and he’s polished,” said Craddock of Malabuyoc, who not only boasts a 2-to-1 assists-to-turnover ratio, but in the Red Leafs’ 19 overall games this season is shooting 42.2 per cent from beyond the arc, and 84.3 per cent from the free throw line
“He thinks the game well, he has a mature style of game, and it’s showing out there right now on the big stage. He does such a great job of facilitating but he’s got a knack for hitting big shots. We’d actually like to see him getting more shots because every time he puts it up, we think it’s going in.”
True point? Natural combo? Old-school leader? What kind of guard is he?
At various points of his career, which has also included his time with Western in London (Ont.) and the Fighting Irish, as well as his club time with the Vancouver Sports Club and Drive Basketball, he has been asked to don all three masks.
But to get to the heart of where his true hoops heart lies, you have to go way back to his grade school days at Vancouver’s St. Andrews Elementary.
WHEN MIKYLE MET KARLO
Ask Mikyle Malabuyoc how he gained early assurances as to his true hardcourt identity, and it’s clear that he delights in looking in his rearview mirror.
“When I was younger, I feel like I had a lot of coaches who were point guards and they’ve kind of paved the way for me… really told me how to read games,” he adds.
Interestingly enough, from his neophyte days at the Vancouver Sports Club (VSC), one of his very first coaches has wound up being perhaps his most memorable and impactful.
“I was very fortunate, for two years (2017-18, 2018-19) to be coached by Karlo Villanueva,” Malabuyoc says of the former Richmond high and UBC standout whose play on the court, where he defied the odds at just 5-foot-3 to become UBC’s all-time assists-per-game leader, consistently seemed to mirror a game-day stage which defined the courageous and fearless protagonist.
Upon reflection, Malabuyoc — who played both guard spots on that VSC team alongside current UC-Irvine point guard Torian Lee — can’t help but describe a kind of enduring resonance in the advice imparted from a coach 20-plus years his elder.
“When he talked to me, he really opened my eyes to the point guard role,” began Malabuyoc, who as a smaller player himself and still just age 13, was instantly able to relate to Villanueva. ”He said ‘Right now, you’re the best scorer on the team, but as you get older it’s not always going to be like that.’ He told me that I had find new ways to impact the game, that if I didn’t grow much (in height) from that point, to really find ways to make plays and be like a true point guard.”
Last season, while still living out east in Ontario with work commitments, Villanueva got a chance to watch Malabuyoc up close and personal when Western played games against both Toronto and Toronto Metropolitan, the latter formerly known Ryerson University, where Villanueva began his own university career for straight out of high school in the fall of 2000.
“I was so pleased to see that he had really developed that playmaking,” said Villanueva, who shares so many traits with Malabuyoc, not the least of which is the fact that both celebrate their Filipino heritage, and thus a community which has always percolated with the spirit of the game.
“Even watching him play his 10th, 11th and 12th grade years in high school… he was a scorer at V.C., even though he did play the point in Grade 11 and 12,” added Villanueva. “But his game has really come around and it’s just way more balanced than mine was in that I was more a playmaker and not as much of a scorer as he was. That’s for sure.”
Last season at Western, Malabuyoc averaged 12.7 ppg to go along with a team-leading 5.3 assists per game, more than hinting that a balance had indeed been struck in his game.
After his time at Vancouver Sports Club, Malabuyoc moved over to Drive Basketball where one of his coaches was the club’s co-founder and himself a former SFU alum.
“Pasha (Bains) would tell me that ‘You were a great scorer in high school, but now the coaches at the university level, they are going to want to see if you can read the game,’” he continued of Bains, the U SPORTS national Player of the Year in 2003-04 when he averaged 25.1 ppg, the highest average in SFU’s 26 combined seasons of U SPORTS and NCAA hoops.
“Can you distribute to others? Can you defend the other point guard?” continued Malabuyoc of the lessons he learned from Bains, who like Villanueva, played at Richmond High under the legendary Bill Disbrow. “He told me that you could score 20 points, but if you’re going to have a bunch of turnovers that you’re a con, not a pro.”
As someone who has prided himself on being a sponge around his basketball elders, Malabuyoc says a big part of who he has become as a player is a synthesis of the many he feels fortunate to have learned from, including VSC founder and former St. FX national championship guard Brian Lee, who in 2009 coached St. George’s to the top-tiered B.C. boys Triple-A title, as well as Drive coaches like Chris Randing and Karn Sharda.
Yet he seems confident in saying that discovering his true calling as a pure point guard has only just come at the university level.
“I feel like I have always had that sense of playmaking and I feel like maybe I see the game a lot faster than others… I feel like I can see things before they happens,” he says. “And I feel like in university, that’s when it fully clicked for me.”
And now, come Thursday, perhaps the stage is set for Mikyle Malabuyoc to be the kind of player who himself becomes the mentor.
The school will honour one of B.C.’s most vibrant basketball communities when it holds its second-ever Gabi Ng Pinoy, or Filipino Heritage Night, as part of its game against visiting its visitors from Fairbanks.
“There’s not many Filipinos playing post-secondary basketball out there or just in general in North America,” begins Malabuyoc, whose parents immigrated to Canada from The Philippines before he was born.
“So I feel like I’m able to show kids that it doesn’t matter where you come from, how tall you are, what you’re given… no matter what, you can put in the hard work and the dedication and you can go a long ways.”
The Red Leafs will wrap up the weekend playing host to Alaska-Anchorage on Saturday (7 p.m.).
Malabuyoc still has a long career left at SFU, but the business major has a pretty strong idea of what he wants to see materialize after graduation.
“I’m hoping to play pro in Asia, like The Philippines, Japan, South Korea, somewhere is Asia,” he remarks. “It’s always been my oldest goal, to play basketball professionally.”
And chances are he’ll be doing it just like the true conductor he’s learned to become.
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