Then-UBC head coach Kevin Hanson points the way to his newly-recruited point guard Phil Jalalpoor on the eve of the 2015-16 Canada West season. After 25 years at the helm Hanson has stepped away from the sidelines and Jalalpoor has been appointed interim head coach for the 2025-26 season. (Photo by Wilson Wong property of UBC athletics 2015. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Men's Basketball

From Kevin Hanson to Phil Jalalpoor, examining how torch-passing former point guards pay forward a coaching legacy which beats strong at the heart and history of UBC men’s basketball!

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 […]

A positional tweak this season has upped the volume of Phil Jalalpoor's offensive contribution to the UBC offence, and the Thunderbirds' German import has made it count. (Bob Frid photo/UBC athletics)
Feature University Men's Basketball

UBC’s Phil Jalalpoor: How a basketball vagabond unpacked his bags and found a perfect fit in Thunderbird nation

VANCOUVER — You’d like to think that the basketball gods put a little check mark by his name back in the fall of 2009. Yes, they would have agreed, it was gutsy how this ninth-grade German kid, at the tender age of 14, left his safe European home on a solo flight to North America