Young Huskies hobbling but ready to tangle with top teams
The University of Saskatchewan Huskies — who play host to this week’s Graham Shootout basketball tournament at the Physical Activity Complex — are young, inexperienced and, well, pretty banged up.
It’s one of the youngest Huskie men’s basketball teams in years and maybe one of the youngest teams ever.
“Lots of new parts,” said U of S Huskies head coach Barry Rawlyk. “We lost some guys we didn’t think we would lose but we did. That’s kind of affected us somewhat and we’ve got a bunch of new guys.”
Along with graduates Matt Forbes and Trevor Severinski, the unexpected departures include Shane Osayande (who signed a pro contract with Canada’s NBL), Jaylan Morgan, Davis Humbert, Jonathan Halvorson, Reid Thuringer and Mack Burns.
Point guard Alex Unruh is the lone fifth-year Huskie left on the squad.
Joseph Barker is the only fouryear Huskie back in the fold.
Among the other returnees are third-year Huskie guard Chan De Ciman plus second-year Dogs Emmanuel Akintunde, Lawrence Moore, Addison Dewar and Devin Wittow.
De Ciman, who is recovering from a torn labrum, is out indefinitely. He’s a medical redshirt for now.
Barker (ankle) and Wittow (knee) — along with highly touted new addition J.T. Robinson (broken foot) — are also sidelined by injury.
“We’re missing a bunch of guys, still,” said Rawlyk. “JT, once he gets healthy, he’s going to be a factor too but we just don’t have the depth at forward that we had at one time. We’re far more guard-oriented than we ever were before. We’ve kind of relied on our forwards a bit in the past; now our guards are going to have to carry the load for us. We’ve got some very capable people in those spots with Lawrence, Alex and a couple of our younger players who are coming along in Addison Dewar and Emmanuel Akintunde.”
Moore missed the team’s recent road trip to Ontario due to sickness but he’s back in the lineup when Saskatchewan meets the Mount Royal Cougars in opening-day Graham Shootout action Thursday (7 p.m., PAC).
The Western University Mustangs and University of British Columbia Thunderbirds are also in the Graham Shootout mix with games Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
“UBC is obviously loaded — they’ve got a lot of talent there,” Rawlyk said.
“Mount Royal is a bit re-tooling like us, so we’ll see what they’re like. They’ve got three returning starters, anyway. Western is going to be a good opponent for us. They’ve got some quality players on their team.
“We’re expecting a very good tournament.”
The Huskies are 1-2 so far in exhibition play this fall, having lost a pair of games in Ontario with an injury-riddled lineup that was no match to the Ryerson University Rams in a 116-43 loss.
“Alex Unruh was really the only starter that we had,” said Rawlyk, whose Huskies play UBC on Friday (7 p.m.) and Western on Saturday afternoon (3 p.m.).
“We were missing most of our regulars from our lineup and we were really up against us — they were just a lot better than us.”