Update on South Australian men in D1 College Hoops - week ✌️

Hold the 📞!

A new South Australian NCAA Division 1 men’s player has been discovered!!

Well maybe not quite, as many of our readers would know him already…..

And a bit embarrassing for www.highperformancehoopsnetwork.com to miss him in our list in our article last week considering he won a history making Melbourne Classic Gold for SA in both u16s and u18s, is one of our favourite athletes and people, and a star in the making. Spending time at the Basketball Australia Centre of Excellence, proving himself as one of the top young talents in the country at the 2020 U18 National Championships, we did infact miss Keanu Rasmussen from our list of D1 South Aussies this season. By all accounts Keanu is loving is loving his time at Cal Baptist University. Not playing mins just yet he would be biding his time, in a team packed with extremely good players in his position, including emerging NBA prospect from Tassie, Taran Armstrong. We look forward to an exciting future from Keanu who is no doubt continuously improving his game with all the great resources CBU has to offer. CBU, who have been known to recruit a number of South Australian prospects, are currently 3 and 1 and expected be very successful once WAC tournament play starts. One of their wins includes a massive win just today against Pac 12 Power Washington Huskies.

And Sam Houston State! Well, well what can we say. Can Cam Huefner’s team (and soon to be another SA player Lewis Rowe who committed for next season this week) be the Cinderella story of 2022-23?

PICTURED: Sam Houston State Vs Utah Upset. | Pic. Rick Bowmer, Associated Press

They beat the Utah Utes this week led by the great man Craig Smith. Coach Smith apparently having made a couple past visits to the Church of Churches may be disappointed having let Cam sneak under the radar, with the Sophomore registering 3 pts and 5 rebounds in 16 mins of playing time. Sam Houston has now claimed the scalp of Big 12 school Oklahoma and now Pac 12 power Utah, in addition to winning 2 gimme games in between against lower division schools. What amazing experience for Huefner who is playing good minutes, even against super teams, in such a booming program. If they can take down Nevada and Oklahoma State in the coming weeks America will all be talking about Cam’s team.

The Thomas and Mack centre, where NBA summer league is hosted, with a capacity of 18,000, is one of the most famous basketball venues in the world.

PICTURED: Ben Griscti protecting those rims. | Pic. L.E. Baskow/Las Vegas Review-Journal @left_eye_image

UNLV Head Coach Kevin Kruger is rumoured to be a keen observer of South Australian talent since his days on his Dad’s, Lon Kruger, staff at Oklahoma. "Sources" tell us that Ben Griscti was told in 2019, in an unofficial visit to UNLV, by his AAU touring team Coach, “one day you will play here”. Sure enough, in 2022 it happened for Ben as his team UIW took on UNLV. UNLV is up there in rankings this year and UIW not expected to win overcame UIW by 25 pts. Ben was again a starter registering 9 pts, 5 rebounds in 21 mins of playing time. UIW flipped fortunes a few days later winning their gimme game by 37 pts, with Ben continuing to register good numbers.

Lachie Olbrich’s team UC Riverside had a tough one a few days ago against one of the biggest names in College basketball in Creighton. Riverside succumbing to Creighton by 29 pts. This was a few days after a nice win to Loyola Marymount University, who compete in Riverside’s rival conference the WCC. Lachie, who has impressed the staff at Riverside, continues to start for the team and in the LMU game dropped 10 pts, in 29 mins.

PICTURED: Lachlan Olbrich with his UC Riverside team | Pic. John Peterson.

It is great to see Anyang Garang begin to register minutes for UMBC. Anyang has been gradually building up after an injury redshirt year last season and starting to get into it. UMBC suffering a big loss to Princeton, Princeton aint no slouches themselves this coming season.

In the coming weeks we want to checkin with readers on all the male athletes over in the USA. We currently track:

Aime Rutayisire Akok Machar

Curtis Scott Hayden Meakes

Joel Dyer

Lewis Rowe

Magok Manyang

Nate Deer

Seb Griffin

Taine Mitchell

Toby Woolcock Tyson Dyer

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