Calmese Just Wants to Play Again, Either at UW or Elsewhere

The Lamar transfer went from Southland Freshman of the Year to little-used Husky reserve.

Dan Raley | Mar 11, 2024

In this story:

Washington Huskies

Not heavily recruited as an Arizona teenager, Nate Calmese managed to scrounge up a basketball scholarship from Lamar and proceed to show everyone else they had missed on him.

For the Beaumont, Texas, school during the 2022-23 season, he took 421 shots and made 202. Played 975 minutes, an average of 31.5 per game. Led his team in scoring at 17.6 points an outing and was named Southland Freshman of the Year.

Choosing to trade in his freshman success for a bigger platform, the 6-foot-2 Calmese transferred to the University of Washington — and immediately took a seat on the bench and went back to square one in his basketball career.

One of the criticisms for recently fired Husky coach Mike Hopkins has been his player development, or lack of it. For exhibit A, see former UW forward Jaden McDaniels, who overnight went from uncaring college player to serious NBA craftsman. Guards such as RaeQuan Battle and Marcus Tsohonis likewise had to go elsewhere to become full-time players and big scorers.

"It's really been a challenge for me to stay mentally positive and find a way to get better every day," Calmese said last week.

TEXTBOOK JUMPER :: Joe Camporeale/USA TODAY Sports

Nate Calmese lets go of a jump shot at Arizona, demonstrating perfect form in a game in which he scored a season-high 15 points.

CARDINAL SIN :: Robert Edwards/USA TODAY Sports

Nate Calmese beats the Stanford defense and heads to the basket for 2 of his 8 points on 4-for-7 shooting in a game the Huskies lost 90-80.

In pregame warn-ups before facing UCLA, Nate Calmese shows off his athleticism with what appears to be a wind-up dunk.

Nate Calmese spoke about his strange season in which he went from a 17.6-point scorer at Lamar to a little-used player at the UW.

Nate Calmese has seen his scoring average drop from 17.6 points per game at Lamar to 4.1 at UW after changing schools and basketball roles.

Nate Calmese spent his freshman season at Lamar in Beaumont, Texas, and was the 2023 Southland Freshman of the Year before transferring to the UW.

While not heavily recruited, Nate Calmese had 15 games as a Lamar freshman in which he scored 20 or more points, topped by a 32-point outing.

At the UW this season, Calmese has dropped to a measly 63 field-goal attempts and connected on 25 of them. His minutes have shrunk to 175. He sat out half of the Huskies' 32 games.

If he doesn't return to the UW next season, no one will blame him because of the career falloff he's experienced. If this team had been overly successful, Hopkins might have been excused for not playing him more, but that wasn't the case as the UW stands 17-14 entering the Pac-12 Tournament. It just seemed that Calmese brought far too much offense to be ignored as he was.

"I'm definitely going to look at all my options, but this is obviously the first one because I'm here and I love the environment here in Seattle," Calmese said. "But I'm obviously going to explore all my options."

At Lamar, he turned in 15 games in which he scored 20 points or more, with a high of 32 points against Houston Christian. For the Huskies, he's had just three double-digit outings, with a high game of 15 points against Arizona once back in his home state.

Calmese acknowledges he could become a better defender, but he still doesn't think he suffered that much at that end of the floor to the point he couldn't contribute more.

Now he'll have to determine if a new Husky basketball coach would use him or whether he'll have to transfer elsewhere to restore his game.

"My main goal is just to play," Calmese said. "As you can see, it didn't really work out here, so at the end of the day I really want to play and produce my talents on the court."

Go to si.com/college/washington to read the latest Inside the Huskies stories.

Follow Dan Raley of Inside the Huskies on X — @DanRaley1 or @UWFanNation.

Find Inside the Huskies on Facebook — at Inside the Huskies/FanNation at SI.com or https://www.facebook.com/dan.raley.12

Published Mar 11, 2024

DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.