Hawaii basketball teams mining Mt. SAC for winners

It is approximately 2,629 miles from Manoa to Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, Calif., and the betting is University of Hawaii basketball recruiters no longer require the use of GPS to get there.

Among UH coaches, the sprawling junior college referred to as Mt. SAC for short is on first-name familiarity while Hawaii attempts to hitch its fortunes there.

If UH basketball — and we’re talking both the Rainbow Wahine and Rainbow Warriors here — is to take a leap forward in 2013-14, it is likely to be fueled by an infusion of talent from the school 25 miles outside of Los Angeles under the snow-capped San Gabriel Mountains.

Three Mounties have already pledged to the Rainbow Wahine for next season, and ’Bows coach Gib Arnold is doggedly pursuing two of his own, Mt. SAC coaches say.

The largest (enrollment 35,234) among California’s 112 community colleges, Mt. SAC makes for convenient one-stop shopping these days as the just-crowned winner of both the women’s and men’s state championships this month.

FOR THE 34-0 women, it is a second consecutive title and sixth in school history, a resume well known to Laura Beeman, who got the ball rolling with four of them in her stay (1994-2010) before moving on to the WNBA, USC and UH.

“The one thing my team needs more than anything else right now is a winner’s mentality, and when you go 64-3 (over the past two seasons) like they have, you definitely have that mentality,” Beeman said.  

The Rainbow Wahine landed 6-foot-2 center Ashley Burchfield (9.3 points, 7.3 rebounds per game), 6-1 forward Shawlina Segovia (10.3, 7.9) and 5-9 point guard Morgan Mason (12 points) in the November early-signing period.

They are commitments that look even better given the perspective of the state tournament, where Burchfield and Segovia were all-tournament selections. Mason was the tournament MVP in 2012.

“Laura was my boss for 11 years, but (the players) didn’t just decide to go there to Hawaii because of it,” Mt. SAC coach Brian Crichlow maintained. “Hawaii got on them early and they liked the place and players they met on their recruiting trip.”

ARNOLD, meanwhile, is among the coaches wooing the backcourt that led the Mounties to a 29-3 record. Six-foot point guard Corey Allen (21.2 points per game, 4.2 assists) and 6-2 shooting guard Garret Nevels (19.8) combined for 57 points in the state championship game, 32 by Nevels, who was the MVP.

In tandem, they have the potential to fix much of what ailed the turnover-prone, shaky-outside-shooting ’Bows these past two seasons. And, as a possible package, they have become more important now that Santa Rosa JC coach Craig McMillan said his shooting guard, 6-foot Bobby Sharp (17.3), a UH target, has committed to the University of Portland.

“No doubt about it, we’re seeing a lot of interest from Hawaii this year,” said Mt. SAC men’s assistant Keith Hollimon. “They’ve been very persistent.”

When you are chasing success, Mt. SAC isn’t a bad place to start.

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Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.