Shane Coleman should be a household UH name

If you have followed either the Las Vegas or New York national tournaments this year, there’s a chance that you’ve heard of Shane Coleman before. If his name is unfamiliar to you, that should change immediately.

There are plenty of ways that players become recognizable names outside of their respective regions. For players like Ryan Jansen, Mckinsey Golfin or Michael Mastro, you get recognized for your name being heavily featured on the career stats page. For players like Paris Kyles and Dermaine Crockrell, you get recognized for multiple national titles and multiple tournament MVPs. For a player like Tevin Kelly, you have a singular moment go viral for all of UH Nation to see.

Coleman had the best statistical performance across all UH leagues on Monday night.

Coleman is not at any of those players’ level. Most of those guys have played in hundreds of UH games and multiple national tournaments. Coleman has yet to have a signature moment on the national stage, and his teams had a combined 2-4 record from both tournaments this year. His resume has a long way to go, but he’s been a consistently great player at all levels in his 44 career games, and last night’s win in MetroWest was a good example of that.

In the opening round of the MetroWest Draft League playoffs, Coleman led Fearless to a 114-81 win over Team Classic. His PPR of 51.3 led all of UH Nation on Monday night, as he put up a triple-double of 36/21/10 on 15-30 shooting from the field. Team Classic was missing Mychal Parker and Jay Resto, two of the team’s best players, but great players take advantage of that situation, and that’s exactly what Coleman did.

This win came a day after Coleman played in three games over the weekend in the New York National Tournament, where Coleman was the co-leading scorer (with Tommy Hubbard) for Team Classic with 15.3 points per game, which he did on 50% shooting from the field. It adds to his impressive play at the national level, as he led all scorers (who played against teams of five players for every game of the tournament) in scoring in Las Vegas, putting up 26 a game.

Coleman might not be UH famous yet, but he has all of the tools to be an extremely recognizable player beyond the Boston area. I’m buying as much stock in him as I can afford, and I look forward to that paying off in national tournaments for years to come.