Inside The Huskies

Huskies Host Southland Freshman of the Year on Basketball Visit

Guard Nate Calmese was lightly recruited and then had a big first year at Lamar.

Dan Raley

In this story:

Still looking to fill some roster spots and add a big scorer, the University of Washington basketball team recently hosted former Lamar guard Nate Calmese — the Southland Conference Freshman of the Year — on a recruiting visit, he posted on Instagram.

Originally from Gilbert, Arizona, the 6-foot-2 shooting guard wasn't highly recruited after averaging 27.6 points per game and leading Mesquite High School to a 2022 4A state championship, drawing offers only from Nevada, UC Santa Barbara and Portland State.

Calmese proved all of the bigger schools wrong by averaging 17.6 points an outing and shooting 48.1 percent from the floor for a 9-22 team. 

He finished as the nation's second-highest scoring freshman behind Alabama's Brandon Miller (18.8 ppg) and was the Southland's third-best scorer.

Starting all 31 games, Calmese shot 36.7 percent from 3-point range and reached 20 points or more on 15 occasions, with a high game of 32.

A clutch player, he hit game-winning shots against Nicholls and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.

Other schools now pursuing Calmese are Arizona, Alabama, UNLV and Cincinnati, among others. 

The Huskies had seven players enter the transfer portal following their 16-16 season and have replaced them with three transfers and a pair of high school recruits so far.

Incoming are 5-foot-9 point guard Sahvir Wheeler from Kentucky, 6-foot-8 forward Moses Wood from Portland and 6-foot-5 swingman Anthony Holland from Fresno State, plus schoolboy signees in 6-foot-4 guard Wesley Yates from Beaumont, Texas, and 6-foot-8 forward Christian King from Seattle.

Go to si.com/college/washington to read the latest Inside the Huskies stories — as soon as they’re published.

Not all stories are posted on the fan sites.

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

Follow Dan Raley of Inside the Huskies on Twitter: @DanRaley1 or @UWFanNation or @DanRaley3

Have a question, direct message me on Facebook or Twitter.

Published
Dan Raley
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.

Home/Basketball