Kato shines in supporting role

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This article was published 01/12/2023 (1036 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If there’s one thing Mike Raimbault can know with certainty about coaching a top-ranked U Sports basketball team, it’s this: Star players are a necessity, but you also need good supporting pieces to make the whole enterprise click.

A prime example of the latter for Raimbault’s Winnipeg Wesmen is a skinny 6-foot freshman guard named Kato Jaro.

Jaro, an 18-year-old from Winnipeg, is having an sensational impact on the No. 3-ranked Wesmen.

He was recently named the U of W’s player of the week after scoring a career-high 14 points on six-for-seven shooting in 25 minutes of action in Winnipeg’s 87-48 victory at Mount Royal. Jaro also added five rebounds, three assists and three steals.

The next night, in a 83-72 Wesmen triumph, Jaro added another 14 points and chipped in five rebounds, two assists and two steals in 25 minutes of playing time.

Over the two weekend games, Jaro was 12-of-15 from the field and 4-for-7 from three. His accumulated 64.3 per cent success rate from behind the arc, albeit from a small nine-for-14 sample size, led the country entering Friday’s action.

Jaro’s progress comes in spite of — or perhaps because of — an early season to injury that sidelined veteran point guard Shawn Maranan for four pre-season games.

Jaro was inserted into the lineup as a starter and it was essentially a sink-or-swim scenario.

“He proved that he could run the team when Shawn was out of the lineup and those minutes are now extremely valuable for him in terms of just being comfortable in a whole bunch of situations,” said Raimbault prior to Winnipeg’s 56-49 loss to the Saskatchewan Huskies at Duckworth Centre Friday night.

Jaro had a relatively quiet game Friday, scoring one point while adding five rebounds and one assist in 19 minutes.

“I think what’s been really, really impressive for our group is that he’s never really emotional. He never really gets too high. He never really gets too low. He’s just steady in terms of his mental approach even if things are maybe not going his way.”

Maranan welcomed Jaro to what essentially became a job shadowing exercise.

“When I was out with that injury during during the pre-season I was trying to do my best to get him to feel comfortable on the court,” said Maranan. “Me being a veteran on this team and him being a rookie, I just wanted him to feel like he was meant to be on the court. And we know how good of a player he is — he does not look like a rookie out there.”

Did Jaro, who spent Grade 12 at Central Canada Prep before committing to the Wesmen, have any guarantees about playing time from Raimbault?

“Well, yes and no,” said Jaro. “I mean, when we kind of talked, coach and I, and he said he definitely thought there was a spot for me but I have to earn that spot.”

Jaro’s integration into the Wesmen scheme bears some similarity to 2020-21 when Maranan, then a rookie, apprenticed under starter Narcisse Ambanza and earned playing time mainly as a defensive disrupter.

Jaro is a hard-nosed defender, too, but his offensive contributions are not a priority for opposing teams quite yet.

“I think I’m still still kind of on the low end of the radar for now,” said Jaro.

With Jaro already battle-tested in Canada West, Raimbault can use the rookie to spell off Maranan to reduce the wear and tear on the Canada West all-star but he has also put both on the floor simultaneously and to good effect.

“(Shooting) is one of his strengths but I think his best area of his game is his ability to read the defence — his IQ for the game,” said Maranan. “He understands the game well and he’s great at finishing around the rim. He gets to the lane, makes great reads, can finish with both hands on either side. So his understanding and his ability to read the game is a big part of a big reason why he’s good at what he’s doing.”

Maranan has encouraged the rookie to think independently.

“He’s always looking at me on a dead ball saying, ‘Hey, what do we run? What are we gonna run?’” said Maranan. “I say, ‘Go ahead, man, it’s your ball.’”

Emmanuel Bonsu had 10 points and five rebounds for the Huskies, who improved to 5-4 in conference play. The Wesmen, with 16 points and 13 rebounds from Mike Mikhailov, fell to 7-2.

The teams meet again Saturday at 5 p.m.

Still unbeaten: In the early game, the No. 2-ranked Saskatchewan women led 50-23 at intermission and rolled to a 89-40 win over the Wesmen.

The Huskies, who improved to 9-0 atop the Canada West standings, got 23 points from Tea DeMong and 21 from Gage Grassic.

Unranked Winnipeg, now 1-8, had a team-high 10 points from rookie Jazmin Birch. The teams meet again Saturday at 7 p.m.

mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.ca