UH hoops walk-on LaCount done playing

Some college hoops players toil away behind the scenes and never get much in the way of public recognition. Such is the life of a scout-team player.

Occasionally, some guys never get the public spotlight at all.

Alas, such is the case with Hawaii basketball walk-on Trevor LaCount, who follows in the tradition of Caleb Dressler, Orel Lev, Aleksandar Milovic and Gary Satterwhite Jr., to name a few players of recent vintage who practiced and scouted opponents for at least a full season (or close to one) but came and went without getting a minute of official game action for UH. It happens for various reasons — redshirt ineligibility followed by a transfer out, a lasting injury followed by a transfer, or just a plain DNP from a coach for a whole season or more.

While updating our 2018-19 Rainbow Warrior basketball roster on Warrior World, we noticed one man was missing on UH’s version — LaCount, the 6-7 forward from Ventura, Calif., who joined the team as a practice player out of Ventura Junior College on the first day of official practices for the 2017-18 season.

A UH spokesman said LaCount, who arrived here in the summer of 2017 thinking his basketball playing days were done, recently chose to give up playing and focus on his studies. The 2018-19 season would’ve been his senior year.

By all observations, LaCount was a hard worker and good teammate — he even had a nice putback dunk over Gibson Johnson in a midseason practice. Though LaCount didn’t get into a game last season, he received a couple of minutes in the final game of UH basketball’s tour of Australia last month.

Will this have a practical effect on the team? No offense to LaCount, but not really. UH, for the first time in a few seasons, has enough big bodies to bang around in practice that he shouldn’t be missed. So, for the time being this drops UH’s roster count to 15, although students who are already enrolled in school, like LaCount last year, may be added at the last minute.

With Brocke Stepteau being awarded a scholarship for his final season and Zach Buscher and now LaCount done playing, UH’s complement of walk-ons is completely changed out from last season. The new guys are freshman Zoar Nedd (Kapolei) and sophomore Huthifah Abdeljawad (McKinley). Abdeljawad was a team manager last season.