Diamond in the rough
Sacred Heart finds hidden gem close to home in Thomas
To say Tyler Thomas, suddenly one of the most productive players in college basketball, honed his skills on the outside courts of the Connecticut shoreline is no distant reflection. We’re not talking five years or even five months ago. He was out there last month in the early December chill.
That’s what life in a pandemic is.
That’s what COVID-19 can do.
“I was in Stamford, Bridgeport, New Haven, wherever there was a park open,” Thomas said as Sacred Heart prepared for an in-state game with Central Connecticut Thursday night. “I wasn’t allowed in gyms, so I just kept finding parks. I got myself a basketball and just did all the drills.”
How’s this for a layoff? In November, the Pioneers went on a two-week preseason COVID pause before getting a week of practice in and playing Rutgers on Nov. 25.
Thomas, who was named the NEC and Metropolitan Basketball Writers Player of the Week the other day, missed the opener because of extended COVID protocol.
“Then I tested positive
right after that,” Thomas said. “I was shut down for a month.”
Thomas had no symptoms. He wasn’t sick, except maybe for cabin fever. Talk about a mental challenge for an eager sophomore.
“Honestly, I look toward challenges,” Thomas said. “Even in quarantine, I had to do something. I just couldn’t sit and do nothing.”
So he went out park hunting.
After Rutgers, SHU games against Fairfield, St. John’s, Hartford, UConn and others went out the window with the second COVID pause. The Pioneers (3-4) finally got back on the court against LIU on Dec. 16.
Now, Thomas hardly comes off. Over six games, he’s seventh in the nation in minutes played at 38.2. After scoring 29, 36, and 22 points (29 points a game) in his past three, he’s sitting at 19.9 — the most of any Connecticut kid in Division I and 44th in the nation. UConn’s James Bouknight, the New York native who’s out indefinitely after elbow surgery, is averaging 20.3. Tre Mitchell, from Pittsburgh who played prep at Woodstock Academy, is averaging 20.7 at UMass.
Not shabby for a guy who didn’t get into a game until nine days before Christmas and got only sniffs of D-I interest coming out of Amity High.
“Honestly, it’s the confidence I have right now,” Thomas said. “Off season, it was more of me working hard, so I don’t feel the need to dim my lights for anybody or not to believe in myself if someone else may believe in me.”
His coach Anthony Latina believes.
“My goal for Tyler, and he agreed, is to be the most improved player in the NEC and be a first- or secondteam all-league guy,” he said. “He’s right on track for that. His performance the past two weeks, he has been doing that since he got here in practice. So we’re not surprised. It does take time. There’s a transition from being a dominant-type player in practice to doing it when the lights come on. Something clicks. Man, I can do this on a regular basis.”
What comes next is another challenge.
“He’s going to be on the top of other team’s scouting reports now,” Latina said. “Tyler is versatile (5.7 rebounds, 3.7 assists). He can score different ways and pass the ball. The thing we’re stressing with him is do what it takes to win. Sometimes that’s 30. Sometimes that’s 15 with a lot of assists or be a decoy.”
Thomas, whose family moved from Longmeadow, Mass. to Woodbridge when he was a high school sophomore and more recently to Stamford, led Amity to its first state finals in 2018. The college offers at that point were primarily Division II. The top offer he got was from Merrimack, moving up to D-I.
Did schools miss the boat on him?
“Well, I think so,” said Thomas, 6-foot-3, 195 pounds. “I did have a running problem with my knees. Maybe it was, ‘He’ll get injured.’ I don’t think people understand I’m kind of athletic, not just a shooter. I can jump a little bit.
“It kind of confused me. I would play against guys with high major offers (in AAU and prep) and still would do the same kind of things I did against the CT competition. I wasn’t going for 30, but it wasn’t four either.”
Sacred Heart only had one scholarship available in the summer of 2018. The thought process after already bringing in seven freshmen was to probably go with a transfer.
“Bobby Abate, a good friend and kind of a mentor to me from Hartford Public, is a basketball junkie and was like my first coach,” Latina said. “When I was an assistant at Central Connecticut, there was this little guard (from Kingswood-Oxford). He told me you’ve got to recruit this kid. We didn’t. To our defense, no one did. Well, Jared Jordan ended up leading the country in assists for two years at Marist.”
Latina said Abate never lets him live it down.
“He sees Tyler play against Hartford Public in the state tournament, he calls: ‘Best kid I’ve seen this year in Connecticut.’ Bobby’s all over me. You messed up last time. Don’t do it again.”
The Sacred Heart staff watched Thomas play over the spring and summer. Everybody liked him. Still, the thought of a freshman coming in, not playing and maybe transferring out …
“Early that fall, I get a call from a good friend Jack Perri, who coached at LIU and is now at Southern New Hampshire,” Latina said. “I have a ton of respect for him. He goes to me, forget about getting a transfer. This kid, Tyler Thomas, is really good.”
Two days later, Latina drove up to Williston Northampton in Easthampton, Mass., where Thomas decided to prep. Using an old Howie Dickenman method, Latina tracked him statistically in a practice pickup game.
“He went something like 15 of 18 from 3, so I asked his coach Ben Farmer — a guy who doesn’t overrate his players — if he always shoots like this?”
His answer was the same thing Abate and Perri told him: “This kid is really good.”
It was before the start of the prep season. UMass, Colgate, Binghamton were showing interest.
“I’m like, ‘This is crazy, what are we doing here?’ ” Latina said. “We offered him right on the spot.
“When Tyler made the commitment, we really feel like we got a steal, that people missed the boat.”
Thomas averaged 5.6 points as a freshman in 18.7 minutes a game, but you’ve got to remember the Pioneers had 6-6 star E.J. Anosike along with guards Koreem Ozier, Cam Parker (who had an NCAA record 24 assists) and Aaron Clarke ahead of him.
“I felt we had as talented a mid-major team as there was on the East Coast,” said Latina, whose Pioneers finished 20-13. “Still there were times when Ty was the best player on the court. On very good teams, good young players sometimes don’t play as much as they should.
“Once the season was over, even before the transfers, we were like Ty is going to be the best of all these guards.”
Anosike went to Tennessee, Ozier to Louisiana Monroe and Parker to Montana. Clarke is averaging 12.3 points alongside Thomas on one of the youngest teams in the nation.
“The transition has been as easy as it can get for not having a preseason.,” Thomas said. “The guys are really easy to talk to. Everyone loves each other here. I take it as a challenge to become a leader. That wasn’t my role last year and I’m not the most outspoken person. It’s a learning process of when to say something and when to lay off.”
In the meantime, he watches C.J. McCollum, he watches Lou Williams for his craftiness to get his shot off, and Damian Lillard for his shooting ability. It is motivation for Thomas to see McCollum, from Lehigh, and Lillard, from Weber State, make it big out of mid-majors.
“I kind of move like C.J. McCollum,” Thomas said. “I’m not the top athletic, but I’m not un-athletic.”
“I told a lot of people Tyler reminded me a lot of Shane Gibson, who scored 2000 points for us here (and has gone on to a professional career abroad),” Latina said. “Thankfully, Tyler is making me look like a smart guy.”