Whaley’s success is no surprise to prep coaches
He can’t be considered a surprise anymore. The next time Isaiah Whaley posts a double-double or blocks a half-dozen shots in a game, UConn Twitter can’t react with astonishment.
This is who Whaley is: a 6-foot-9 bundle of athleticism and energy, a rimprotector and ball-screen defender nonpareil who can also knock down a few shots of his own. He’s one of the better forwards in the Big East, currently leading the league in blocked shots (3.7 per game) and offensive rebounds (3.3). Sure, he’s only played three nonleague games, but such is 2020.
“He’s become just a really good player,” coach Dan Hurley said on his weekly radio show, “a guy that you need on the court, either as a big four or as a center, because he rebounds well enough and is a presence defensively.”
In truth, this is who Whaley has always been. Just ask the men who coached him in high school and prep ball.
“He was the same as what you guys see — energetic, he could rebound, defend, make open shots,” recalled Roderick Harrison, who coached Whaley for a season at Mount Zion Prep in Baltimore. “He can defend the best big on the floor. Everything you guys are getting up there, he was doing for us, as well.”
Whaley formed a formi
dable frontcourt duo at Mount Zion with Obi Toppin, the reigning National Collegiate Player of the Year and recent New York Knicks’ lottery pick. The year before that, Whaley played a season at Evelyn Mack Academy in Charlotte, N.C.
“He was always athletic,” said Greg Primus, Whaley’s coach at Evelyn Mack who now coaches at Carolina Basketball Academy. “He was a shot-blocker with us. He didn’t shoot the 3-ball or mid-range. Everything he did was around the rim. He got his points. He would show a lot of flashes that he would be really great.”
The reason Whaley’s rise to prominence over the past 10 months is so surprising is because of how little he played for much of his first two seasons under Hurley. Whaley played decent minutes as a freshman under Kevin Ollie, averaging 13.8 minutes over 30 games — 12 of them starts. When Ollie was fired following the season and Hurley hired, Whaley initially had concerns, according to Primus.
“It was up in the air for him,” the coach recalled. “He wasn’t sure what would happen, where he would fit in Hurley’s system.”
But those concerns were short-lived.
“He came to me and said, ‘Coach, I want to stay. I love UConn,’ ” Harrison recalled. “It was just a matter of the new guys trusting him. It was almost like he had to go through the whole interview process all over again.”
“If you want to stay,” Harrison told Whaley, “you’ve got to establish a relationship. No one on that staff recruited you. You’ve got to go to the head coach, you can’t go to the assis
tants. You’ve got to create a relationship with Coach Hurley, because that’s the one who’s gonna change what’s going on.”
Whaley was little more than an afterthought on the end of the bench as a sophomore, logging a mere 83 minutes — the entire season. That’s just 3.6 minutes per game. The season ended on a high note, with a season-high eight points and 11 minutes in an AAC tournament win over South Florida.
But the momentum hardly carried over to last season, as his minutes remained somewhat sparse early on.
“Any kid, when they know they can help, would be frustrated,” Harrison said. “If you know you can’t help, it’s a different situation. But when you know you can help, even if it’s not putting the ball in the hole
— rebounding, blocking shots — he has a good knowledge of the game, so he’s sitting there watching like, ‘I can help with that. I can go rebound.’”
But, Harrison continued: “I don’t think he got frustrated to the point where it was bothering him. It was more like, ‘What do I need to do more so Coach knows that I can help?’ I think once he started talking to Coach Hurley and Coach Hurley started trusting him more, this is the end product.”
Pressed into the starting lineup for the final six games of the season, largely due to season-ending injuries to Akok Akok and Tyler Polley, Whaley couldn’t have responded better. He averaged 13.8 points, 8.7 rebounds and 2.5 blocks while notching three double-doubles over that span, in which the Huskies went 5-1.
By the time this season rolled around, Whaley was one of just two players — along with potential 2021 lottery pick James Bouknight — who Hurley has had pegged as starters since October. The coach has all but admitted he didn’t know what he had with Whaley when he first took over the program. And that’s somewhat ironic.
“Truth be told, he’s Hurley’s type of kid,” Harrison said. “He fits everything Hurley embodies — him, his dad, his brothers, all of them. It was just a matter of him recognizing it. Once he did, as you see now, he’s allowed him to take open shots and do the things he does well.”
He can’t be considered a surprise anymore. This is who Isaiah Whaley is.