After a practice this week, Sheriff Drammeh emerged from the Hawaii basketball locker room and sat down for an interview. Interestingly, his cap bore a smiling insignia of Pikachu, the electric Pokemon known to put a charge into people.
“I just like the hat,” Drammeh said. “Whatever I think is cool to me, I’m going to get it. I really don’t care if people won’t agree with me or not. So yeah, it’s just my humor, it’s just who I am.”
The wiry sophomore Swede has never been afraid of drawing glances. Indeed, he thrives off of them.
Drammeh is chiefly known outside of the team for two things: Taking charges and dabbing. And the dab (a sharp nod toward the upraised crook of your arm) often follows a successful charge call.
Internally, he’s valued as a plug-and-play option at any of three positions — both guard spots and on the wing — for fourth-place UH (11-11, 5-4 Big West), which hosts Cal Poly (7-16, 2-7) at 7 p.m. Thursday. Drammeh started the first 16 games of the season, moved to a reserve role for five games, then was pressed back into the first five last game at Cal State Northridge when Leland Green missed it with an illness.
He’s not an efficient shooter (36.1 percent). He’s not the best playmaker (50 assists, 46 turnovers), although that ratio has improved to 18-9 in conference play since he’s relinquished point guard duties to Brocke Stepteau. But the all-around value of UH’s fourth-leading scorer (9.3 ppg) was demonstrated in a 72-63 win at UC Riverside on Feb. 1.
Besides his 15 points, Drammeh saved a couple of late-game possessions: first when he twisted around while falling out of bounds and threw the ball off a Highlander, then when he took a charge on a 2-on-1 Riverside fast break.
Associate coach Adam Jacobsen estimates that Drammeh averages 1.2 charges taken per game — it’s not an official statistic.
“I don’t know how many guys in the country do that,” Jacobsen said.
That’s despite being (generously) listed at 160 pounds. The coaches marvel at his ability to anticipate directions in transition, get to a spot and get his feet set, or at least appear to, to sell a call in his favor.
Back in Stockholm, he played on a smallish youth team that had to give up their bodies to stand a chance. That peskiness is partly why Drammeh, then a little-known player, carved out a bench role as a freshman during last season’s NCAA Tournament run. He was a late addition to Eran Ganot’s 2015-16 recruiting class. In preseason practices, coaches and others still pronounced “Sheriff” the same as “Stan Sheriff Center” and not the correct “Shuh-reef.”
At Spokane, Wash. — where he helped foul out future No. 3 NBA Draft pick Jaylen Brown by taking charges — he became considerably less anonymous when he dabbed for all to see against California.
“I never celebrated charges like that,” Drammeh said of his days prior to UH. “I just did it because, back home, we don’t even got a tenth of these fans as we have out here. The first time I did it was after I saw Cam Newton play. It’s not a double dab. It’s a dab and you point one way … like when you get a first down.”
Drammeh’s impish ways have been contagious to forward Gibson Johnson, another gifted charge-taker. Johnson picked up some antics back in November; now they give each other a knowing look when the whistle blows and they are successful.
“I hopped on his little bandwagon and started pointing the other way,” Johnson said. “But we’ll always find each other no matter where we are. That’s some little fun we have inside the game.”
Drammeh has always been partial to mischief, recalled his older sister, Binta, who influenced Sheriff to give up soccer and ice hockey to follow in her hoops footsteps. Their parents moved to the Nordic country from Gambia in West Africa nearly 30 years ago for a chance at a better life.
“Unpredictable. Tricksy. Funny. Caring,” Binta, 24, described him via phone from Sopron, Hungary, where she plays professionally. “But if I had to pick one, I would say that he’s crazy. Like, you never know what you get from him.”
His latest unexpected move is dialing back the dabs and only using them in select situations. Fans might have to watch closer for them down the stretch in Big West play.
“We’re just really excited about these next seven games, trying to see where our record can land at,” Drammeh said. “We were projected to be eighth, and we’re fourth right now. So hopefully we can keep climbing up. Just trying to shock people.”
