BY HOWARD TSUMURA
(VarsityLetters.ca)
VANCOUVER — First as a player, then later as an assistant coach, Phil Jalalpoor cut his teeth in the university hoops world under the mentorship of one of the most successful head coaches in the history of Canadian university basketball.
Kevin Hanson, the hard-nosed former UBC point guard who went on to forge the modern-day identity of Thunderbirds men’s basketball through a head coaching career which not only spanned a quarter century on the Point Grey campus, but produced the most wins in Canada West history (378) and the fourth-most overall wins (614) in U SPORTS history, won’t be in his customary spot along the sidelines Friday as a new conference season opens Friday (7:30 p.m.) at War Memorial Gymnasium against Abbotsford’s visiting Fraser Valley Cascades. UBC plays Trinity Western on Saturday ( 8 p.m.) at the Langley Events Centre.
This past May 5, UBC announced that “After a decorated 25 seasons leading the UBC Thunderbirds men’s basketball program, celebrated head coach Kevin Hanson is stepping away from the sidelines.”
It was also noted that Jalalpoor, who was initially recruited to UBC by Hanson for the 2015-16 season, had agreed to handle the head coaching duties under the ‘interim’ tag this season, and that Hanson would step into a role as the program’s senior advisor.
“It’s a tough act to follow after all of his accomplishments and the foundation that he built at a program that is one of the powerhouses in the country,” said Jalalpoor of Hanson. “It’s been great jumping into this kind of a position, something I’ve obviously worked for in my life, and I think I am ready for, so I have been enjoying it.”
Change is never easy and the future can never be predicted.
Yet whatever may lay ahead for the program Hanson played such a hands-on role in crafting for what amounts to an entire generation, there seems a feeling of genuine connectedness of past and present as Jalalpoor assumes the reigns from his former mentor… one that is only enhanced by the fact that both see the floor from the vantage of the point guard position.
In fact you can take your first step into the future by asking Jalalpoor about the veteran he has running the point this season in Mt. Royal fifth-year transfer Holt Tolmie, who came to the team after a four-year career with the Cougars in which he was tasked with a voluminous amount of the team’s scoring.
“We had started a conversation and I told him that we have such a deep and talented roster here,” Jalalpoor said last Saturday after UBC’s 77-72 win over the Lethbridge Pronghorns, a victory that closed out the ‘Birds 5-0 preseason.
“I told him ‘Your role would change a bit and I want you to facilitate more… make other guys look good, use your gravity to utilize the other guys, and at the same time mentor the next generation of point guards.’ He said ‘You know what? I will do that.’”
Hearing that confirms two things.
The first?
When point guards-turned-head coaches talk to their present-day point guards, they speak a language that is all their own, one which transcends eras.
Here’s what Hanson told me back in October of 2015, during my days at The Province newspaper, when I asked him about the new German import point guard he had brought into the team following a year spent in the CCAA’s Olds College just north of Calgary.
“When we saw film of Phil, we immediately thought that this was a guy that could help take us to another. He’s a pass-first player, but he can really shoot it. With our FIBA rules in CIS (U SPORTS), we like his European style and the bounce he has to his footwork.”
And secondly, you can always judge the quality of floor general in question by the amount of willingness they have to sacrifice their own game for the good of their team.
Jalalpoor would clearly live up to Hanson’s pre-season prognostication, starting all 36 of the team’s games over the course of the of his UBC debut campaign, logging 961 minutes while shooting 41.3 per cent from beyond the long-line, averaging 10.3 points, 4.2 rebounds and 2.8 assists for a team that went 28-6 (16-4 Canada West).
But even better was the accountability Jalalpoor showed before the season had even tipped off.
To make the point guard transition work, the team’s top returning backcourt player that season, rising fourth-year standout Jordan Jensen-Whyte, had to make both a positional and philosophical switch and play from the off-guard position.
Perhaps displaying some of the chops that would push him in the direction of coaching, Jalalpoor took the pro-active step of phoning Jensen-Whyte and making sure that if he signed with UBC that it wouldn’t disrupt the team’s chemistry.
“That speaks to the character of Phil, that he would do that,” Hanson told me 10 years ago of Jalapoor, who over his three seasons started 92 of 97 games., closing out his ‘Birds career by averaging 16.6 ppg in 2017-18.
A decade after his UBC debut as a player, change is once again afoot.
UBC has been chosen fourth in the Canada West’s preseason coaches poll.
A strong core of returning players, led by fourth-year big man Nikola Guzina, and further anchored by a quartet of fifth-years including Tolmie, swingman Gus Goerzen and forwards Toni Maric and Tobi Akinkunmi has remained thirsty for post-season momentum and will attempt to quench that desire along with Karan Aujla, the 6-foot-8 former Burnaby South forward/post who has returned for his third season, having transformed his powerful physique to feature a new level of nimbleness.
“They are having their last run and they are super-motivated because they haven’t had a lot of playoff success,” Jalalpoor says of the older players in the aforementioned sextet. “They want to go out with a bang.”
At the other end of the age spectrum?
Try four first-year players, three second-years, as well as two very talented redshirts in rising 6-foot-6 third-year former Simon Fraser Red Leaf forward Immanuel Oludele, as well as 6-foot-7 pure freshman forward/guard Frank Linder, who as a senior last season at Nanaimo’s B.C. Quad-A Dover Bay Secondary was one of the cream of the provincial high school crop.
That’s basically seven players in their first and second years, and four in their fifth years, with very little representation from the third- and fourth-year classes, creating a challenging situation where following this season, youth will be given its chance to fully rule the Point Grey roost.
Yet nothing can stop the passage of seasons.
Just as Hanson brought Jalalpoor into the program a decade ago, Jalalpoor has brought in Tolmie, whose buy-in has already kick-started a mentoring process with the like of freshman guards Edouard Gauthier, who starred as a CEGEP stand-out at Montreal’s Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf last season, and Zeru Aberra, who earned his own share of accolades locally while leading Burnaby’s St. Thomas More Collegiate Knights.
When asked about Gauthier, who averaged 11.6 points in just 17.6 minutes per game during the preseason, Jalalpoor likely knows he has a player ready to step to the fore sooner rather than later.
“He was one of the best in the CCAA last year,” the coach begins. “Mature beyond his age and we’re glad we have him because he’s a spark. We’re just trying to refine his PG skills. And he’s been learning a bit from Holt on how to manage the game more. But he knows what he’s doing and he is a guy that really fits our program.”
From the winningest coach in Canada West men’s history, a legacy has been left, and the easiest place to see that is if you’re sitting in the seats at War Memorial Gym on Friday night, watching the player who is bringing the ball up the court and commanding his team from the point guard position.
From Kevin Hanson, who dished 16 assists in a February 1987 game against Calgary to set one of the program’s longest-standing single-game records, to new interim head coach Phil Jalalpoor, to Holt Tolmie and to everyone else in-between and on the horizon, it’s an invisible chain that from its first link has grown to represent the best ways that tradition helps weather all storms.
(Varsity Letters once again extends huge thanks to Martin Timmerman and usportshoops.ca for its continued dedication to the history and legacy of Canadian men’s and women’s basketball)
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