UH’s hunt for elusive big may end with Aussie recruit

Some people spend a good portion of their lives looking for the elusive Loch Ness Monster, Yeti or Sasquatch.

At the University of Hawaii the search has been for a Big Foot of another kind, an Australian difference maker for the men’s basketball team.

On and off for more than 30 years now, UH has chased the vision of a dunker from Down Under.

The quest began with Luc Longley in the mid-1980s and endures today. Which is why the announcement of a commitment by 6-foot, 11-inch, 230-pound Mate Colina of Melbourne is the most intriguing of the six players recruited by the Rainbow Warriors in the current period.

Let’s be clear here, this is not to say Colina is the next Longley — or maybe even a modern day Rogue Harris.

What he appears to be is a project, one of unknown duration. He is somebody who might not even see time on the Stan Sheriff Center court until the 2018-19 season, given his planned mid-year arrival, scant hoops background and probable redshirt status.

But for the ’Bows, he represents a hope long nurtured and, as yet, unrealized. Hope that, in time, UH will unearth not only a playmaker but someone who can open wider the doors of recruits from Australia.

For UH, a school that has been geographically challenged in its recruiting because of its distance from the continental U.S., it has been a bitter irony that, despite being the NCAA Division I program closest to Australia, UH has had painfully little to show for its proximity and incursions. That country’s best players have tended to fly right over Manoa on the way to Saint Mary’s, New Mexico and points east.

According to UH records, the ’Bows have had just two Australians enter as scholarship players since it formalized records beginning with the 1970-71 season — guard Matt Owies and forward Jack Purchase. Both played last year — Owies was a little-used freshman who has since departed, and Purchase, a transfer from Auburn, averaged 9.6 points a game as a redshirt sophomore.

Two other Aussies, Jakob Cornelissen and Michael Harper, were here, briefly, as walk-ons.

That history might have been markedly different had UH been able to land the 7-foot, 2-inch Longley in 1986 when it was a tug-o-war between just two schools, UH and New Mexico, for the center who would become a pacesetter as Australia’s first NBA player.

UH won the family but lost the player in that one. Longley’s mother, Sue Hansen Smith, adored Hawaii and even attended UH herself for a while. But her son, with the trademark floppy red hair, went to the Lobos, where he averaged 19.1 points and 9.2 rebounds a game before becoming a first-round draft pick of Minnesota.

Eventually in a 10-year pro career he moved on to the Chicago Bulls, where he was part of Michael Jordan’s supporting cast in the second three-peat (1996-98).

Longley was initially a rugby and Australian Rules player who eventually turned to basketball and built himself up from a 215-pounder on arrival in Albuquerque, N.M. Colina made his move a little later, joining Australia’s Centre of Excellence (Institute of Sport in Canberra) two years ago.

When UH hired Eran Ganot from Saint Mary’s, where he had been an assistant coach, the wish was that he could build similar Australian ties on behalf of the ’Bows.

Colina, who reportedly turned down Saint Mary’s for UH, might be his biggest chance.