TERRY COLUMN: Taking the long way around

For many high school athletes, opportunities to extend their playing career beyond the prep level are limited.

Those opportunities for basketball players in Montana are even more limited. With most of the high-level basketball camps stationed hundreds of miles away in Washington or Colorado and few AAU or other travel basketball options, the chances of being recruited by schools outside of the state are slim with so few eyeballs on the state’s high school basketball scene. Adding to the problem is a limited amount of in-state colleges — just two in NCAA Division I, one in Division II and six in NAIA — and hundreds of miles of road between the high schools and their relatively low-budget college recruiters.

There are the rare exceptions from our area. Gonzaga recruited 7-foot-1 Ryan Edwards out of Kalispell, but kept him largely under the radar outside of the Northwest until signing day. The Bulldogs also got the scoop on 6-foot-7 other-wordly athlete Brock Osweiler before losing him to another sport. But, those guys were hard to miss, by both stature and reputation, and finding the top recruits in any state is never the hard part.

Montana’s recruiting quagmire instead falls on the other recruits, the ones on the tier just below the elite, “can’t miss” prospects. The perpetually productive player who maybe doesn’t meet every metric, be it too short, too slow or too skinny.

The options for those players are slim. If the Division I teams pass, then their hopes in-state are left to the usually small recruiting classes of the seven other in-state schools. If you’re a kid who is productive but still needs to develop, even the smaller offers might not be there.

That was the case for Bryan Michaels.

A productive player at Glacier High School, he was one of the first players off the bench on arguably the Wolfpack’s most talented squad in school history his junior season, playing mostly out of position as a foot-shorter fill-in for Edwards.

That tenacity and rebounding ability were his strongest assests as he went into his senior season. Playing alongside three-year starter and eventual Division I football player Evan Epperly, his role shifted to that of the slashing, scrappy shooting guard and small forward to Epperly’s collected point game. He averaged 14 points per game that season and was No. 1 or 2 on the team in scoring, rebounding, assists, blocks and steals.

But with a lot of his game still to work on and with few offers out of high school, Michaels took a little used option to continue his career: Junior college.

The two-year route has its stigmas. Some athletes use it as a way to rebound from bad grades or bad situations into top-level schools. Others would rather spend four years at a lesser program to keep the academic side of college life neater.

However, many schools, especially struggling programs looking for a quick turnaround, mine junior college schools for experienced talent. Those players are typically more mature and have been seasoned against better talent, which can turn into more wins for a fledgling program looking to find its footing.

“A lot of kids aren’t good enough to play right away,” Michaels said. “Juco was perfect for me. It took me two years to develop.”

With coaching and his on-court work at Wenatchee Valley College in Washington, Michaels said he was able to work on a jumpshot and improve his perimeter game as a guard, his natural position.

“In high school, I was getting to the basket a lot and drawing fouls. In college, I had to change my game,” Michaels said.

“I needed to be more perimeter oriented. I definitely worked on my shot a lot. I shot a pretty good percentage from three.”

That work paid off last season at WVC, where he was in the top 10 in the Northwest Athletic Conference in scoring and rebounding and shot 42 percent from 3-point range.

Subsequently, his recruitment this spring was much different than after high school.

Schools from all over the country, including schools in Hawaii and southern California, called to recruit. While he said the offers from the tropical climates were tempting, he landed on Concordia-Portland, which played its first season in Division II last year in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference. The Cavaliers’ second game next season will be at conference foe MSU-Billings.

“I love their coaching staff, I love their campus, it has the degree I’m after. It’s a great fit,” said Michaels, who is seeking a major in business and a minor in art.

“I have a lot of faith in (CU coach Brad Barbarick) that we’re going to be competitive next year and my senior year.”

Sometimes the best way to be seen is to go where there’s already crowd.

Junior college sports aren’t always a first choice, but for athletes like Michaels, the path less taken sometimes works out for the better.