MISSOULA — Jeff Linder remembers tracking Jamar Akoh before he committed to Cal State-Fullerton and followed him during his stint in the Big West. Linder, Northern Colorado’s second-year head coach, has recruited the West Coast for some time between his stops under Randy Rahe at Weber State and while Linder served as an assistant at Boise State before taking the Northern Colorado job prior last season.
Linder remembers Akoh as a skilled big man who “liked to hang out on the perimeter quite a bit.” On Saturday in Missoula, Linder and the Bears got a full dose of the new Jamar Akoh.
[restrict paid=”true”]“Now he looks like a guy to me, somehow, someway, I don’t know if you have the Montana Grizzly strength and conditioning coach go ahold of him, but I don’t remember him being that big,” Linder said in an interview with ESPN Missoula on Friday, January 5 the day before playing Montana. “Now he’s a force down low.”
After spending a year sitting out due to NCAA transfer rules last winter and another half a dozen games getting acclimated to UM head coach Travis DeCuire’s aggressive style of basketball, Akoh’s recent nine-game rip peaked with a performance for the books.
The 6-foot-8, 255-pound power forward established position early and often against UNC, getting post touches in bunches. Despite Akoh’s apparent size and strength advantage on the block, the Bears declined to double team the UM junior.
Akoh recognized the defensive scheme almost right away and went to work. He scored 20 of his career-high 34 points in the first half to boost UM to yet another halftime advantage during its 4-0 start in Big Sky Conference play. He finished 11-of-15 from the floor and 12-of-16 from the free throw line to pace Montana to an 89-80 victory over the upstart Bears.
“I wouldn’t really say I was in the zone, I was just playing,” Akoh said . “I got the ball, I got tight touches, they went one-on-one with me and I was able to get some pretty good looks at the basket early and I kind of got rolling. My teammates kept feeding me the ball and it kept going in.”
“We knew they wouldn’t double at first, so that’s just one on one for me and when I got going, I expected a double team to come and it didn’t come so I kept on going.”
The breakout performance against UNC came on the heels of a 22-point, 11-rebound outing in a 109-79 blasting of defending Big Sky champion North Dakota. For the week, Akoh averaged 28.5 points and 9.5 rebounds per game. He was named the Big Sky Conference Player of the Week on Monday.
“It’s an honor, I guess but I’m more about the team and I think our team is rolling right now, we’re playing pretty well,” Akoh said. “We are trying to sustain that, keep going off that.”
He’s scored in double figures in nine consecutive contests, averaging 19.2 points and 8.2 rebounds per game during that span. The Grizzlies have now won six of their last seven contests. Since a 16-point, 10-rebound outing against Carroll College, Akoh has 10 double-figure games scoring and 10-plus rebounds in a game four times.
“We knew he was capable of that,” DeCuire said following Monday’s practice. “At Fullerton, double figure rebounds about every other night, so we knew he was capable of that. The way he was scoring the ball for us here his redshirt year, we knew we should be able to get the ball to him and get some stuff going.
“His slow start raised some eyebrows but we knew at some point, the lid was going to come off the rim for him. It was important for the guys to show that confidence and actually put the ball in.”
During Montana’s first five games, Akoh struggled to stay out of foul trouble. In DeCuire’s pressure defensive scheme, the post players often show hard on high ball screens, leading to quick fouls if a player doesn’t move his feet quickly enough. It took Akoh a stretch to warmup as he scored in double figures twice in UM’s first five, including an 11-point effort in 34 minutes in a 70-57 loss at Penn State and 12 points in an 80-72 loss to UC Santa Barbara, a game in which Akoh played just 17 minutes.
The bruiser scored 16 points and grabbed 10 rebounds against Carroll College, dipped to six points in 21 minutes in a loss to Stanford and has been on fire since.
Akoh followed his 17-point, 12-rebound effort in a win over UC Riverside with a 23-point outing against UC Irvine’s talented front line that featured four players over 6-foot-9. Akoh has scored at least 17 points in six of Montana’s last seven games. UM has won six of those contests.
“It’s pretty clear the impact he’s made,” Fabijan Krslovic, UM’s lone senior, said on Monday. “He’s an absolute animal down there. He’s scoring, he’s basically impossible one-on-one to guard in the post. Even just his presence down there causes mismatches and teams to collapse so it opens things up for other guys.”
The presence of a second post has helped DeCuire diversify his rotation. Akoh and Krslovic start next to juniors Ahmaad Rorie, Michael Oguine and Bobby Moorehead. When Montana’s fourth-year head coach goes to his bench, he can insert sophomore Sayeed Pridgett or freshmen Timmy Falls and Karl Nicholas for any of the five, creating a completely different lineup and accompanying mismatches.
“Last year, it was a bit different because I was the only post player that we had playing consistent minutes,” Krslovic said. “Having another guy up there has changed my roll a lot and it has taken more of a backseat my first couple of years when I was playing with Martin (Breunig). Jamar is a pretty similar player so I’ve just been trying to be a facilitator and helping out any way I can.”
After graduating from Los Osos High School in Rancho Cucamonga, California, Akoh played in 30 games as a true freshman at Fullerton. As a sophomore, he started 26 games, averaging 6.1 points and 6.3 rebounds per game, including 7.8 points and 6.9 rebounds in Big West competition. He scored in double figures seven times and grabbed 10 or more rebounds on five occasions.
Although Akoh played plenty of minutes with the Titans, he quickly grew tired of losing. Fullerton won 19 games in Akoh’s two years. Meanwhile, Montana posted 20 wins each of those seasons.
“I wanted to compete for championships and play at a high level,” Akoh said. “I wanted to win overall more than anything.”
When he was first granted his transfer, Fullerton assistant and former Montana State standout Danny Sprinkle facilitated contact with both Montana Big Sky programs. UM associate head coach Chris Cobb reached out to Akoh and sold him on the winning tradition at Montana along with DeCuire’s lofty vision to bring his alma mater to national prominence.
“I did my research, saw what they were doing here,” Akoh said. “At that point, Travis had two years of 20-win seasons. They were in the championship game two years in a row. I saw an opportunity to compete for a championship. I came on a visit and after that it’s history.”
Last season, those who watched Montana practice saw a duo of talented players ripping up the varsity from UM’s scout team in Akoh and Washington transfer Donovan Dorsey. Dorsey suffered a season-ending hip injury that required surgery before the season began but Akoh has lived up to if not exceeded expectations. Krslovic, for one, saw it coming.
“The leadership he has I knew it was going to be big this year because in the locker room, he has a presence,” Krslovic said. “It was big when we were at home and unfortunately, we didn’t have that when we would go on road trips but now he’s with us full time, he’s a full member of the squad and that’s pretty obvious in the leadership he has and how much people respect him and look up to him. I think that’s a big reason why we’ve had so much more success this year because we are more mature and he’s had a huge part of that.”
Montana finished 16-16 last season, losing to Idaho in the quarterfinals of the Big Sky Tournament. This season, UM is off to a 4-0 start in conference play and hold an 11-5 record overall. Akoh has played a major role in that improvement.
“I think success has led to his aggression,” DeCuire said. “He’s seen the ball go into the basket. He’s getting multiple touches. The team is confident in him. His body language has changed to the point where now he’s demanding the ball and that’s what we want.”
Akoh and the Griz will take on Sacramento State at the Nest in California’s capital city on Thursday. No player Montana’s roster has ever won in the venue. Tip is at 8 p.m. MST.
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