Hoops star Tomley follows in Nash’s footsteps
B.C. teen commits to Santa Clara, same school Canadian basketball icon played for
For an encore to setting the B.C. high school boys basketball tournament scoring record last spring, Miguel Tomley is committing to Steve Nash’s alma mater.
Tomley — a 6-foot-3 guard who led Surrey’s Tamanawis Wildcats to a third-place finish at the quad-A provincial championships last March at the Langley Events Centre as a Grade 12 — relayed on his Twitter feed over the weekend that he’s on his way to the Santa Clara University Broncos for the 2019-20 season.
Nash, the NBA great from Victoria, went to Santa Clara and helped the California school to its last NCAA tournament berth in 1995-96.
Tomley plays in the club ranks for former Richmond Colts star Pasha Bains with Drive Basketball, and Bains, via a Twitter direct message, explained that Tomley will spend this coming school season with TRC Academy, a prep-school team in Brantford, Ont.
Tomley scored 180 points in Tamanawis’s four games at provincials. The previous best for the top tournament tier was the 167 points produced by Nathan Vogstad of Queen Charlotte in the 2014 provincials.
Tomley tallied 48 points in the No. 2-seeded Wildcats’ 74-67 semifinal loss to the crosstown Semiahmoo Totems, then amassed 66 points in a 100-76 triumph over the No. 13 Belmont Bulldogs of Victoria in the thirdplace game.
He was 21-of-57 from the field in that one, including 15-of-38 from three-point range. It was the second-best, single-game point total ever, trailing the 75 points Vogstad scored in a game in 2014.
There was some buzz at the LEC going into the final that Tomley merited becoming the first player since Kelly Olynyk with the 2009 South Kamloops Titans to win the tournament MVP award on a third-place finisher. The award instead went to Burnaby South Rebels forward Jusuf Sehic, who led the No. 8 seeds to an 80-72 win over the No. 6 Totems in the final by supplying 18 points and 10 rebounds. He had 17 points and 17 rebounds in a 78-66 quarter-final win over the topseed Oak Bay Bays of Victoria.
Tomley was named to the first all-star team.
The Cal Baptist Lancers announced last November that had Tomley signed a letter of intent to join them for the 2018-19 season, which will be their first at the Division I level for the Riverside, Calif., school after jumping up from the Division II ranks.
Tomley told Howard Tsumura’s Varsity Letters in March that he opted out and reclassified, explaining, “hopefully I am able to get something bigger and better.”
Santa Clara was 17-16 two season ago, including 10-8 in West Coast Conference action, but slipped to 11-20 (8-10 in conference play) last season. They have two 20-win seasons in the last eight years.