The Hawai’i basketball team has been searching for some athletic wing players, and it landed one this week in Brandon Spearman.
Spearman, a 6-foot-4, 195-pound guard, made an official visit to Hawai’i last weekend and said that he is committed to joining the Warriors for the 2012-13 season.
Spearman just completed his sophomore season at Indian Hills Community College in Iowa. He averaged 11.6 points per game and made 53 3-pointers for a balanced team that had a 33-4 record and finished the season ranked No. 7 in the junior college national poll.
“I based this decision off the coaching and the players,” Spearman said. “They have some really cool coaches and I got to meet the players and felt like it would be a good fit for me.”
Spearman has a vertical jump estimated at 38 inches, and is described as “an all-around talent” by Indian Hills head coach Barret Peery.
“I think Hawai’i is getting a guy who can score both getting to the rim as well as from the perimeter,” Peery said. “He’s a strong shooter and a solid ball-handler, just an all-around talent.”
Spearman said: “What ever the coaches want me to do, I can do it. I can slash to the hole, I can shoot the 3 ball, I think I’m an all-around player. What ever I can do to help the team win, I’ll do it.”
When Spearman was a high school senior in Chicago in 2010, he was ranked as one of the top 100 recruits in the nation by Rivals.com. He was a reserve player at the University of Dayton as a freshman, and then transferred to Indian Hills for his sophomore season.
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“Dayton was going through a coaching change, so I wanted to get out of there,” he said. “The coaches that recruited me went to Georgia Tech, and it just wasn’t a good fit for me.”
Spearman will have two seasons of eligibility at Hawai’i, and can play immediately as a junior in the upcoming 2012-13 season.
Several other programs were recruiting Spearman out of Indian Hills, including Wake Forest, Penn State, Iowa, TCU and San Francisco. “Some of them stopped calling, but Hawai’i was there the whole way,” he said. “That was big for me – building that relationship.”
Spearman spent two days in Honolulu last weekend on his recruiting visit, and said the sunshine and beaches offered a bonus.
“It’s about the school and the team, but we did a lot of other stuff,” he said. “We ate at some good places and we went out canoeing one day – that was crazy … I never thought I would do something like that in my life.”
Peery added that Spearman is a “solid” student with a likeable personality. “He was a (academic) qualifier out of high school and was at a good school in Dayton as a freshman, so he knows what it takes to be a Division I student-athlete,” Peery said. “He’s been a quality guy at our place as well. He’s just a good person to have on the floor as well as off the floor.”
Spearman was one of four recruits to visit Hawai’i last weekend, and he is the first to make a known commitment. He is expected to make it official later this week when he signs a national letter of intent.
The Hawai’i coaches cannot comment on a recruit until the letter of intent is signed and approved.