Dave Smart was hired as Pacific’s men’s basketball head coach on May 27, 2024, hardly an ideal time on the recruiting calendar. Smart inherited just one returning player from a six-win team and had to quickly bring in 14 newcomers, nine of them out of a fairly picked over transfer portal.
Smart, with a reputation as the premier college coach across Canada’s U Sport landscape, found one player whose potential and temperament fit his template of a guy who has aspirations to play professionally but knows he has lots of work to do.
“That’s exactly what I was,” said Elias Ralph, who left Victoria University in Canada to spend his final two college seasons in Stockton.
Smart has been pleasantly surprised by the 6-foot-7 native of Okotoks in the Canadian province of Alberta.
“He’s turned out to be better than I thought,” Smart said. “I recruited him to come in and be our eighth man last year and was disappointed and excited that he was our best player last year.”
As Ralph evolved into a player who averaged 14.8 points and 7.3 rebounds and recorded 10 double-doubles last season, Smart recalled thinking, “Man, this is awesome. But I thought we had five guys that were definitely better than him and three or four others who were going to be competing with him. But he’s better than everybody we’ve got here.”
One year later, Ralph remains the Tigers’ best player, and one of the best in the West Coast Conference. He’s averaging 17.4 points and 6.8 rebounds and is the leader of a Pacific team that is markedly better than a year ago.
Ralph scored 16 points on Thursday night in the Tigers’ 90-89 overtime defeat at Portland, dropping Pacific to 11-7 overall, 2-3 in conference play. A year ago, Pacific was 5-13 through 18 games, and two of those wins came vs. non-Division I opponents.
The Tigers return home for a 4 p.m. matchup Saturday against San Diego (7-10, 2-3).
Given a full year to organize recruiting, Smart has assembled a roster that better aligns with what he wants. Fifteen of them are newcomers, including transfer starters T.J. Wainwright (13.1 points), Isaac Jack (9.1 points, 6.1 rebounds), Jaden Clayton (8.4 points, 5.9 assists), Justin Rochelin (7.9 points, 5.9 rebounds) and sixth man Kajus Kublickas (6.8 points, 3.2 assists).
“It was a lot different (this past year), being able to recruit the way we want to recruit, the type of people we want to recruit,” Smart said. “We were very clear what we were looking for in terms of people we wanted to recruit: People who want to be good but realize they have a long way to go and know they’re going to have to work to get there.”
This team works hard on a daily basis and as a result continues to show progress on game nights. “I think we competed in games last year but I don’t think we got better in practice,” Smart said. “I don’t think that’s the way we recruited them because we were just trying to fill a spot. Whereas this group, they’re working every day in practice because that’s how they got recruited.”
Smart, who won 656 games in 18 seasons at Carleton University in Canada and was the U Sports coach of the year 10 times, understands it will take time to build what he envisions at Pacific. Noting the patience and support he’s received from the campus administration, Smart believes a 20-win season is a realistic goal for next season.
But the West Coast Conference isn’t easy. “Gonzaga is not just a Power 4, they’re an elite program, a top-10 program. And Saint Mary’s . . . I don’t know why anyone would want to play those guys in non-conference. It’s crazy. They’re just so methodical. I don’t think people realize how good those two teams are.
“And Santa Clara, the two years I’ve been here they are super-talented. I’ve said this a million times, it’s hard not to put the coaches in this conference up against the coaches in any conference in the country if you were given the exact same resources.”
Smart will continue to look for prospects who fit Ralph’s profile. “He’s a good basketball player, for sure, but he’s just a special person,” Smart said.
The difference in his second season with the Tigers is Ralph’s ability to mostly maneuver around what opposing defenses try to throw at him. That wasn’t often the case a year ago.
“He’s figured out who he is and he’s figured out that he doesn’t ever dictate how he’s going to play each game,” Smart said. “The other team dictates how he’s going to play, but he’s capable of playing whichever way they decide to make him play the game.
“Last year he struggled in the middle (of the season) because at the start no one knew how to play him so he got to play the way he wanted to. Then they took that away and he didn’t feel comfortable playing a different way, even though he had the skill set to do it. Now he feels comfortable that he has an answer to it.”
Ralph said he knew that moving from U Sport to Division I would be a jump.“Bigger, faster, stronger,” he said. But the chance to play for Smart and test himself against elite U.S. college players made the move to California impossible to resist.
He has now learned how to counter most everything opposing defenses are trying to do to him. “Last year I could look at it all I wanted and, `OK, in this situation I’ll do this,’ ” he said. “But in a game, it wasn’t really working like it is this year. That just came through experience.”
That growth is quite satisfying for his coach. “I don’t think he has any incredible, elite skill,” Smart said. “I just don’t think he has a whole lot of holes, either. Whatever way you play him, he’s going to take advantage of it.”
These two seasons have given Ralph the chance going forward that he’s dreamed about since becoming aware of former Santa Clara and NBA star Steve Nash, a Canadian basketball pioneer out of British Columbia.
A late bloomer, Ralph was still just 5-foot-9 when he reached the eighth grade and began the full-time transition from ice hockey to basketball. Canada has become a force in the basketball world over the three decades since Nash played in the West Coast Conference, with headliners including Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jamal Murray and Andrew Wiggins.
For Ralph, it was Nash’s path that felt most familiar. “I grew up in Western Canada and I knew Steve Nash played hockey when he was little,” he said. “I could just relate to him and his story more.”