Warrior Insider

If there’s one player on the Hawaii basketball team who can cowboy up, it’s Bo Barnes.

Raised on a ranch in Scottsdale, Ariz., Barnes spent his days roping cattle and his nights shooting hoops.

“My dad is a seven-time world champion team roper and I’ve just been around that all my life,” he said. “Just growing up doing that and basketball, and basketball kind of took over in high school.”

Now, Barnes is a sharpshooting freshman guard for the Warriors. He made quite a debut last week, scoring 11 points in Hawaii’s 83-55 exhibition victory over Chaminade. Barnes, who is 6 feet 4 and 190 pounds, went 4 for 4 from the field, including 3 for 3 from 3-point range.

He easily could have followed his father’s path into rodeo, but opted for basketball instead. When he wasn’t practicing on a horse as a youngster, he was shooting hoops on the family’s version of a driveway court – the backboard and rim were set up along a dirt road on the family’s five-acre ranch.

Once it became apparent that basketball was his primary sport, Barnes would spend most of his time in gyms, shooting hundreds of 3-pointers every day.

This past summer, prior to arriving on the UH-Manoa campus, Barnes said it was his goal to shoot 500 3-pointers per day. On his best days, he’d make more than 350 of them.

Interestingly enough, he said he learned his shooting skills from the same person who taught him how to rope cattle – his father Jake.

“My dad is a good shooter as well – he’s the one who taught me,” Barnes said.

But his mother, Toni, has also played a role in his basketball career. He wears jersey No. 24 because that is the same number she wore as a basketball player in high school.

“It’s actually my mom’s favorite number … but now it’s become my favorite number, too,” he said.