Boys Basketball
Inexperienced Mules overachieved during gutsy 2016-'17 campaign




Former Leilehua boys basketball coach Russ Fitzgerald knew that he would have his job cut out for him going into the 2016-2017 season.

For starters, the Mules saw three of their top four scorers graduate the previous spring, including star guard Joseph Gaudy, the reigning two-time Oahu Interscholastic Association Western Division Player of the Year. What's more, three others — bigs Koa Kauhi, AJ Gainwell and Nicholas Duran — also completed their eligibility after helping the team to back-to-back division titles in 2015 and 2016.

That didn't leave Fitzgerald with much in terms of experience.

"The two years before that we were stacked," recalled Fitzgerald, who was the top assistant to former Leilehua coach Pat Wetzel before taking over on an interim basis during the 2015-2016 season.

"We had guys who would start for other teams that came off our bench," Fitzgerald added.

He wasn't exaggerating. The Mules went without a loss in OIA West action in each of the previous two seasons. In fact, the Mules they had not dropped a regular-season contest since Feb. 1, 2014: a 58-50 defeat at the hands of its rival, Mililani.

But with 11 of 14 players from the 17-win 2015-2016 team now departed, Fitzgerald — who had the interim tag removed by then-athletic director James Toyota that offseason — figured that he needed to get creative to fill out his roster.

"We actually won a JV championship under coach Randy Sagon in 2015. We had a bunch of really good players on that JV team but except for two of them, they all moved to the mainland because they were military kids, so they transferred out," explained Fitzgerald, a social studies teacher at Leilehua.

Only three players were set to return to the varsity team that winter, the only starter coming back was Fitzgerald's son, Liam, a 6-foot-5 junior who earned All-OIA West First Team recognition the previous season. The other returnees were both seniors in forward Trey Boatwright, who had limited playing time as a junior, and reserve guard Jostin Gampayon.

"Two of three kids coming up (to varsity) were from the JV, but didn't play much and then we had a bunch of guys that never played basketball before," Russ Fitzgerald said. One of those guys was Kaleo Piceno, who had just completed his senior season of football.

"He was our quarterback for Leilehua. I had him as a student — great kid — and you can't teach character or work ethic, but he brought athleticism and competitiveness and he was just so much fun to coach because everything was new to him," Fitzgerald added.

Surely, the Mules experienced their share of growing pains over the course of the season, but in retrospect Fitzgerald is most appreciative of the opportunity that presented itself to teach the fundamentals of basketball again.

"That was probably one of my favorite teams just because of the make-up of the them," said Fitzgerald, who graduated from Baldwin High School in 1981 and coached at Kailua for 15 years. Among those he counts as his mentors are longtime Bears' coach Wayne "Goose" Gushiken and late Surfriders' athletic director Alex Kane.

"Those were life lessons I learned from those guys," reflected Fitzgerald. "If you've ever met Goose, you know he's got that arm that he injured a long time ago and its permanently bent at about 45 degrees and he'd always tell us about the difference between being injured and hurt."

More on that later, but for now back to the youth of the Mules that their coach found so refreshing.

"We knew we had one returning starter in Liam, but other guys had to fill in spots and because they were all juniors and they hadn't gotten that sense of entitlement yet — because when you're a senior you've been on the team and your picture is on Instagram and your name's on ScoringLive — but they were still such a humble group," Fitzgerald gushed. "That team was just so much fun to coach. Every day at practice, I enjoyed my time with those kids; it reminded me of why I liked coaching high school basketball. That 2017 team was special."

With a team as green behind the ears as his, Fitzgerald said the collective group goal was simple: Make it to the final day of the state tournament.

"Get to the Stan Sheriff (Center), that was always our goal," he stated. "Get to play in that arena, on that floor, use those locker rooms just like the UH guys get to do, that was our goal."

Fitzgerald put his squad to the test early on with a rigorous preseason schedule. Leilehua dropped its first four games of the year and finished the preseason with a modest 3-6 record.

"We had a really good, competitive preseason, but each year we would get to the state tournament and ILH schools would just each us up with their full-time man-to-man (defense) all the time, while OIA teams play a lot of zone defense, so I told my assistant, Randy Sagon, that we've got to build depth and go man-to-man all the time, even if it costs us a game during the regular season," Fitzgerald explained.

The Mules handled their first two opponents in OIA West play — Aiea and Radford — by double-digits in road victories before a pre-New Year's Eve showdown against Waianae on Dec. 30, 2016 at Paul T. Kobayashi Gymnasium.

"I knew it would be a really good matchup because Waianae had some really good talent," said Fitzgerald, who singled out the Seariders' high-scoring guard Douglas Mitchell and ultra-athletic Blaze Kahikina.

"I remember telling our guys that (Mitchell) is one of the best kids in our conference and Blaze played volleyball with Liam and he could jump out of the gym. They were both great kids, too," he added.

Leilehua held a 13-8 lead after one quarter of play, but Waianae's 1-2-2 zone surrendered just two points in the second stanza — on a goaltending call — and the teams went into halftime tied at 15.

"There's almost no adjustment that you can make when you're just not shooting well," Fitzgerald recalled. "We just were not making shots and we knew that at that point we had guys that were not great shooters and because of a lack of experience it would be a defensive struggle all game. We wanted to get out there and run, but at the same time, Waianae was an athletic team."

During the second half, Liam Fitzgerald poked away a Waianae pass and chased down the loose ball. As he ran the fast break and went up for the layup, he was taken out from below him and went down in a heap. Russ Fitzgerald remembered the sequence, as well as the reaction of the rest of his players when his son was fouled hard.

"I think it really galvanized the team to see one of their leaders get taken out like that, but I think that it made Liam tougher, too," Russ Fitzgerald said. "He's like Tim Duncan — always stone-faced no matter what — but I remember him getting up and limping for a second, but he got pissed and I think for his teammates to see that really brought them closer."

The game went down to the wire. Leilehua inched ahead, 27-25, after three quarters, but Waianae tied it by the end of regulation to send it into overtime.

In the first OT period, the Seariders took the lead with 50.7 seconds on a steal by Mitchell and bucket by Wela Kalulu. The Mules had a chance to tie it with 29.3 seconds, but Jaymond Agdinaoy missed the front end of a 1-and-1 situation at the free-throw line. However, Boatwright put back Agdinaoy's miss to even the score at 31 and sent it to a second overtime.

"Trey did what Trey does; he was just a rebounding fool, like an OIA version of Montrezl Harrell. He would just rebound and played with energy," Fitzgerald said. "Trey was just a great offensive rebounder and athletic like crazy. He didn't have a lot of basketball experience — he was a wide receiver on the football team — but his mom was in the military and she drove Uber at night and she just taught him how to work and Trey knew how to work on rebounding and that was what he did."

Reserve forward Kalei Kauhi scored all four of his points in the second OT period and Agdinaoy atoned for his missed free throw by going 3 for 4 at the charity stripe to help the Mules hold on for the 38-35 win over the Seariders despite 29 turnovers as a team.

"It was definitely a game that could have gone the other way," Fitzgerald said. "But, like I said, we knew that we may have to give up some games early to stablished that we're a true team and not just Santa and his elves kind of things with Liam and the rest of the new guys. By the end of the season though, Tashaun Wright became a solid point guard, Genesis Ofoia became a solid (shooting) guard, Jaymond was a solid (small forward), Trey was not afraid and Kaleo provided some solid minutes for us and wasn't overwhelmed, so by the time we play Kapolei in the state tournament we're definitely a a team and it was teams like Waianae that made us that way."

Fitzgerald also pointed out something that stuck out to him as he re-watched the game recently.

"The game's over and Doug and Blaze came over to hug Liam on the court and I remember looking past them into the crowd and you could see two or three Waianae parents clapping in appreciation of how great of a game that was and I just thought that was very classy of them. Waianae probably had more fans that night than we did and they were the most gracious people," he said. "When the game was over they stood up and were clapping for both teams after a hard-fought game and I can always appreciate that."

Just five days after the double-OT win over the Seariders, Leilehua passed another tough test at Pearl City with a 43-41 victory.

"We needed those Waianae's and Pearl City's to really show the kids that it's not just effort, but you have to be able to execute, you have to be able to make an open jumper, which means you have to prepare your feet before you shoot the ball. Pearl City and the length of Waianae, those are the teams that got us ready for Mililani and Campbell, because they were pretty darn good teams, too," Fitzgerald said.

But the Mules took care of business against both the Trojans and Sabers and went on to start the regular season 9-0. It wasn't until the final game of the West schedule that they faltered in a 58-42 loss to Kapolei.

It was their first regular-season defeat in 1,091 days.

"We lose against Kapolei — our only loss that year — and the kids after the game was over, I remember them walking into the locker room and thinking that ‘we played poorly and we could play better,' so that was encouraging," Fitzgerald said.

However, as Fitzgerald alluded to earlier, the teams would meet once more. But that almost never happened.

After the West second-seeded Mules were upset in their first game of the OIA Division I tournament by East third-seeded Kailua, 38-36, they had to fend off a pesky Aiea squad, 52-50, to even punch their ticket to the state tournament.

Leilehua lost to Kalaheo, 53-44, in the OIA fifth-place game to earn the league's sixth and final spot to states the following week. Their opponent in the opening, play-in round? Kapolei, naturally. At the ‘Canes' place, no less.

Less than two weeks after they saw their lengthy regular-season win streak come to an end, the Mules got their revenge in the form of a 51-49 win. The result extended their season, while Kapolei's came to an abrupt end. Boatwright led the way with a 17-point, 14-rebound performance and Fitzgerald tallied 15 points.

"That was probably one of the best two games he had all year along," Russ Fitzgerald said of Boatwright. "I went back and watched the tape and he doesn't score a basket from more than three feet away."

However, Leilehua was relegated to the consolation bracket after a 44-32 quarterfinal-round loss to third-seeded Lahainaluna. That meant, in order for the Mules to attain their goal of playing in the Stan Sheriff Center on the final day of the state tournament, they would need to beat Konawaena in a fifth-place semifinal and they would need to do so with their best player nursing a broken leg.

"Against Lahainaluna Liam cracks his fibula running a guy down from behind, he lands and cracks it and so he's done," Russ Fitzgerald recalled. "But he's on the side with our trainer and talking for a bit and he limps in during the third quarter. Then he puts up 25 (points) the next night versus Kona to get us into the Stan Sheriff Center."

Coach Fitzgerald said there was trepidation on his part — naturally — to allow his son to play, but Liam convinced him otherwise.

"Liam tells me that the fibula is a non-weight bearing bone and then he said, ‘You always talk about the difference between being hurt and being injured, so will you have a different rule for me?' Kid used my own words against me," he laughed.

Earlier in the season, Liam Fitzgerald was the unfortunate recipient of a thumb to the eye socket after his father got a little too excited during a practice.

"Liam was behind me and I threw my hands up because one of our new players had just made a left-handed layup and I thumbed him in the eye," Russ Fitzgerald recalled. "I had to go from coach mode to dad mode after I saw that his eye was swollen shut. He looked like Rocky Balboa and I panicked and we took him to Wahiawa General (Hospital) and right into the emergency room. We had just done a car wash fundraiser for Wahiawa General to help keep their ER open and when we got there the nurse recognized Liam as one of the basketball players that were just there for the car wash and sure enough a week later we're taking advantage of their services."

It all made for quite the eventful and rewarding coaching experience for Fitzgerald that season, which culminated with his team achieving its goal of playing in the Stan Sheriff Center. And although Leilehua lost to Kalaheo by a score of 50-43 in the fifth-place game that day, it mattered little in the end.

"For them to get there was such a huge accomplishment," Fitzgerald said. "Every kid on that team was equally important and like any great team you have to have those role players who are willing to accept that ‘for four minutes, I'm going to go out there and I'm going to be a terror on taking charges, I'm going to be a terror on making sure that I get behind a guy and get run over, I'm gonna get my feet set and run it right.' They were one humble bunch of goofy kids and I couldn't have asked for better friends for my son, too."

Leilehua completed its season with an overall record of 15-11 that year. Liam Fitzgerald was selected as OIA West Player of the Year and Boatwright earned Second Team recognition.

Russ Fitzgerald stepped down as coach following the 2017-2018 season. Liam Fitzgerald repeated as West Player of the Year as a senior that year before going on to play collegiately at Whitworth (Spokane, Washington).

Sagon has been the boys basketball coach at Waipahu since the 2018-2019 season.

Although he's been away from coaching for a few years now, Fitzgerald reflects upon his time with the program with only fond memories.

"Those kids raised in Wahiawa have a mentality of just being humble. The military kids were the ones telling Liam what kind of clothes to buy when he went up to the mainland for school. The local kids would tell the military kids what to buy and eat at the bon dance," Fitzgerald commented. "It was just such a great group of kids; we've been lucky."



Reach Kalani Takase at [email protected].




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