Hoops imports: Mercenaries one and all

Some 135 players on the active rosters of Canadian Interuniversity Sport’s 94 basketball teams list their hometowns as being from outside Canada.

There are those who argue that’s 135 too many, others who say the total should be chopped back or elevated by at least a third, and still others who contend the borders should be opened, a la the United States, even if that means Canadian hoops returns to the days when national titles were won primarily by teams that stockpiled Americans and All-Canadian teams were regularly comprised of a majority of Americans.

Not all of the 135 players are necessarily non-Canadians. Some hold dual citizenships or have since become naturalized citizens.Yet, whatever the precise total, there’s little doubt there’s a trend toward recruiting imports, led by Canada West and Atlantic University Sport. That’s not particularly surprising given that the recruiting pool in those regions is smaller; that coaches increasingly have to win to keep their jobs and feed their families; that Canada West has more than doubled its membership since 2000 (from 7 to 17),and that there’s an ever-increasing exodus of Canadian players to the United States, whether that be the NCAA ranks, or lower levels like the NAIA or junior colleges.

Without question, the biggest splash being made by imports is in Canada West. Again, that’s not surprising given that coaches sat back and watched California-imports Jamelle Barrett (2011 and 2012) and Stephon Lamar (2013) win the league’s most valuable player awardand said to themselves: ‘I gotta get me one of them Americans’. And, of course, there are those who can still recall the American pipeline once established by Jerry Hemmings at Brandon, which included North Carolina-product John Carson, a four-time first-team All-Canadian and winner of the Moser award as the nation’s best player.

There are 35 imports, including 20 Americans, listed on the 17 Canada West men’s active rosters, for an average of2.05 per team. Some 18 averaged double figures in conference play, led by Tennessee-product Thomas Cooper at Calgary, the nation’s second-leading scorer (25.8ppg) and favorite to be named CanWest MVP. Along with German-product Lars Schleuter (12.5 ppg) and Australian-productJosh Owen-Thomas (8.4 ppg), the trio gave the Dinos an aggregated foreign punch of 46.7ppg, or 52.7% of their offensive production.

Other teams receiving an aggregate 20+ points from importswere Brandon (Texas-product D.J. Jordan, 17.0ppg, and Nevada-product Earl Thompson, 16.5ppg); Lethbridge (Australian-product Brandon Brine, 19.0ppg, and California-products Dejon Burdeaux, 12.4ppg, and Carl Hoffman, 5.0ppg);and Trinity Western (California-product Kelvin Smith, 15.5ppg and Danish-product Sebastien Eliasen, 7.4ppg).

Beyond that were individuals packing considerable foreign punch for their teams: Ukraine-product VolodymyrIegorov(18.4 ppg and 7.1rpg) at Thompson Rivers, Australian-product Rhys Elliott (18.0ppg) at UNBC; Washington-product Grant Sitton (14.4 ppg) at Victoria; Utah-product Thadius Galvez (13.4ppg) at MacEwan; Spanish-product Alex Igual(10.8 ppg) at Regina; California-product Shawn Lathan (10.5ppg) at Saskatchewan; Hong Kong-product Glen Yang (10.6) at Mount Royal; and Washington, D.C.-product IlarionBonhomme (10.3) at Manitoba.

It’s definitely changed the dynamic within Canada West, says Victoria men’s coach Craig Beaucamp. “You’re only as good as your import. That’s where we are right now.”

There are 19 imports (an average 2.3 per team) listed on AUS men’s rosters, including five Americans. But just two are averaging in double figures: Serbian-product VasilijeCurcic(20.3 ppg) at Memorial, and Texas-product Cameron Walker (10.9ppg) at St. Francis Xavier.

There are 17 imports (an average 3.4 per team), including three Americans, on RSEQmen’s rosters. Again, two top double figures: Belgian-product ThibaudDezutter(14.0) at Laval, along with Phillipines-product Jenning Leung (12.4), who starts at the point for McGill.

Imports have permeated Ontario University Athletics rosters the least. There are 17 (an average 1.0 per team) on active men’s rosters, including seven Americans. Just three imports are averaging double figures, including Florida-product Bacarius Dinkins (17.6ppg) at Lakehead and Kansas-product Andre Barber (13.1 ppg) at Algoma. They provide the largest aggregated scoring punch at Toronto, where Massachusetts-product Devon Williams (10.7ppg), Serbian-product Miroslav Jaksic(8.2ppg) and Swedish-product Daniel Johansson (7.5 ppg) muster 35.7% of the Blues offence.

uOttawa coach James Derouin and Guelph coach Chris O’Rourke surmise the primary reasons that imports haven’t permeated the OUA to the degree they have in other parts of the country are that the province has a larger pool of players from which to recruit, and that Ontario universities haven’t been as willing to follow the lead of some of their counterparts by offering international athletes either tuition waivers or tuition on par with that charged domestic students.

“If you did that, I think it would certainly change things on some level,” says O’Rourke. “Obviously we all want a competitive edge and if you can add a player here or there, I think most coaches would do it.”

On the distaff side, the 47 imports pack nowhere near as powerful a punch, though one, Arizona-product Paloma Anderson at Acadia, is the nation’s second leading scorer (20.3ppg). She’s among 10 imports (an average 1.25 per team), including six Americans, toiling in the AUS. Illinois-product Angenay Williams (15.4 ppg) at UPEI, is the only other import averaging double figures.

The largest contingent of imports (27, including 14 Americans) is again in Canada West, for an average 1.58 per team. Eight imports are averaging in double figures, though a few others aren’t far off that tally.

UNBC has been the largest beneficiary of import talent, led by Spanish-product Maria Mongomo(17.5 ppg), and Greek-products VasilikiLouka(12.3ppg) and EleniSteriopoulou(5.4 ppg). That’s 48.2% of the Timberwolves firepower. Meanwhile, California-product Keisha Cox (17.1ppg) and Maryland-product Alyssa Montgomery (12.6 ppg), generated45.2% of Brandon’s punch.

Other individuals packing double-digit scoring punches in regular season Canwest play were: Colorado-product Kara Spotton (17.0ppg) at U.B.C., English-product Kristie Sheils(13.6ppg) at Calgary; Washington-product Kendall Lydon(11.9 ppg) at MacEwan, Latvian point guard Sabine Dukate(13.1ppg and 3.6 apg) at Saskatchewan, and German-product Lena Wenke (10.1ppg) at Winnipeg.

There are five imports in the Quebec ranks, including three Americans, for an average of one per team. But just two are averaging double figures: Guinea-product and two-time first-team All-Canadian Mariam Sylla, who is now a naturalized Canadian citizen, (12.9ppg) at McGill, and France-product and second-team All-Canadian QuételineCélestin(13.3 ppg) at UQAM, though Ecuador-product Edith Noblecilla Varela (9.3 ppg) at Bishop’s is close.

Though last year’s Nan Copp winner as national player of the year, Georgia-product Jylissa Williams, toiled at Lakehead, imports have barely impacted OUA women’s ranks this season, with just five (or 0.29 per team), including four Americans, on the 17 rosters. The largest contingent(3) is at Windsor, which isn’t surprising given that coach Chantal Vallee is familiar with their value, having rode France-product Jessica Clemençon (a three-time All-Canadian and a Copp winner) to five national titles. This year, the largest scoring contribution is being made by Texas-product Charlotte Collyer (4.1ppg) at Toronto.

Mercenaries, one and all?

There is no simple answer to that question.

Certainly, some American imports are players who essentially fell through the US academic cracks. They either didn’t acquire the requisite credits in an academic year, or may even have flunked out. Either way, they no longer met NCAA eligibility requirements, which are more stringent than in Canada, where the test is essentially academic eligibility per se, rather than any measure of academic performance or progress toward a degree.

The upshot is that some imports find a temporary playing home in Canada, for a year or two, before their grades catchup with them. Yet, the reality is that there are probably an equal number, or even more, domestic players who fall under the same umbrella every year. A university squeezed them in and they hit the hardcourts for a year or twobefore exiting the stage because the rigours of a simultaneous academic and athletic life proved too onerus.

Equally problematic are other considerationsdriven by university enrolment trends. With the so-called “demographic decline”diminishing the size of the domestic student pool, universities are increasingly on the hunt for international students. Some even press their coaches to chase Americans.

International students now comprise about 10% of the student population in Canadian universities and constitute an even higher percentage of overall tuition revenues because most provinces deregulated international student fees and many universities seized the moment to jack-up tuitions to astronomical levels. In some universities, international tuition tops $40,000, though Statistics Canada says the average fee in 2015 was about $20,500, as compared with roughly $5,900 for domestic students.

In a globalized world and a multicultural nation like Canada, there’s certainly a pedagogic and cultural value to having diverse student populations, and on the surface, there’s no valid reason that principle shouldn’t extend to the hardcourts and other athletic playing fields.

But things get tricky when you start to consider such factors as the need to ensure that Canadians hoopsters have the opportunity to play (in the long-term interests of both their, and the game’s, development in Canada), or the increasingly uneven playing field, under which there are essentially have- and have-not schools, when it comes to international recruiting.

Schools that allow tuition waivers, or offer international athletes tuition at par with domestic athletes, have a competitive advantage over those that don’t. For example, if you’re toiling in Canada West, which covers tuition for student-athletes, you can quickly find that a good chunk of your program budget disappears if you have to absorb the costs of three international tuitions.

Complicating the matter are the aforementioned laxer academic requirements. Because there are no minimum academic performance measures, there are some imports who are truly mercenaries and are apparently taking less-than-challenging courses (although apparently not quite at the basket-weaving and hoops-101 level that have plagued less-academically rigorous American institutions)until such point that they’ve either exhausted their academic interest, or maxed their intellectual capabilities.

But, as Beaucamp notes, that probably applies to several domestic student athletes as well, so the real question is whether things have reached the stage “where we need to have regulations [such as minimum credit requirements] that apply to both international and domestic players. Right now, we don’t even monitor that.”

“We have used internationals and prospered from it but I think we have to start asking ourselves: … What are we providing? Is it an education, followed by ‘they then play basketball’? Or is it a basketball player, followed by an education,” Beaucamp adds. Without linking academic performance and athletic eligibility, “you’re acting as a professional team. You’re basically paying a guy to play for you for a couple years.”

Until Canada moves to introduce tougher academic requirements for student-athletes, Beaucamp and most coaches believe Canada shouldn’t even consider expanding the import ceiling (currently three per team). And even if more rigid academic requirements were introduced, many believe Canada still shouldn’t venture down that path.

Yet others, like McGill’s David DeAveiro, believe the increasing need for universities to recruit international student is justification for expanding the ceiling, if not eliminating it entirely.

Itneeds to be undertaken in conjunction with academic requirements and possibly, be linked to graduation rates, so that if schools brought in a “one-and-done” player, they’d subsequently be penalized by having their permitted number of imports reduced, DeAveiro says. “Otherwise, it becomes chaotic. They’re like mercenaries. They’re just coming up here to play basketball.”

But DeAveiro rejects the notion (and therein, the original rationale for introducing an import ceiling) that roster spots need to be reserved for Canadians because that’s the only way they’ll have an opportunity to develop their game. “If our Canadian kids are not good enough, we need to do a better job of making sure they are good enough, because our best kids are leaving. So, for the most part, you’re getting the second-tier kids. … You want to make the product exciting and fun to watch. Right now, there’s some games that are not fun to watch.”

But others worry that expanding the ceiling might simply convert Canadian basketball into NCAA-lite and seriously compromise the game’s development in Canada.

Laurentian men’s coach Shawn Swords notes that even the European pro ranks limit the number of imports to “give young players a chance to play … and develop so that they can make their national team.”

O’Rourke says the three-import rule “is more than adequate. … We have a lot of homegrown talent here that we need to continue to develop.”

“It is the CIS,” Beaucamp notes. “I wouldn’t like to see it change any more than it is now because I think that easily, teams could fill out their entire roster, if they wanted, with American kids or international kids. Let’s be honest, we are north of the biggest basketball power in the world. There are thousands of players down there who could easily be CIS players…. But I would not want to see us cut our hand off and not have opportunities for Canadian kids to play.”

U.B.C. men’s coach Kevin Hanson, who’d like to see CanWest return to its former two-import ceiling, argues that a wide-open model would only invite abuse. “I don’t want to see us getting to the business side of sports and saying, it’s winning at all costs, let’s get these guys. But if they’re being one-year wonders, I don’t think that’s healthy for our sport. … Up here,they are called student-athletes for a reason. They need to be students. They need to be graduating. I’d like us to move more in that direction, of monitoring, before we make steps toward opening up the doors.”

Moreover, unlike the American university system, in which there is a broad mix of public and private universities, all Canadian institutes are primarily funded through tax dollars, he adds. “As a taxpayer, I’d rather see my tax dollars go to local kids to participate. … We’re Canadian. Our system is unique. It’s different. In the US, it’s all about winning. The coaches get paid big salaries … If you open things up, then you also start opening doors to bending the rules and I don’t think that’s a road to go down.”

Derouin concurs. “I don’t want to see the CIS becoming a free-for-all and players being added at Christmas and all the stuff that was going on in the past. … There is a special community feel to what we do here in CIS. We don’t promote enough thatit’s Canadian and that it’s a Canadian league.”

If there are problems, like the exodus of Canadian players to the US, “we created the problems, and the solution is to fix them,” he adds. “We don’t do a good enough job exposing our great players and exposing our brands and exposing how good our game is. The result is that kids don’t even know about CIS basketball growing up and how it’s generating great opportunities for professional careers in Europe. That’s our fault again. We need to fix that, so that kids realize that staying in Canada is a viable option. … We gotta splash the Canadian flag all over our product.”