OGDEN — Weber State men’s basketball has been good, but never great, over the last 10 seasons.

The Wildcats are 107-76 (.585) in conference games in those 10 seasons. Pretty good.

But WSU hasn’t finished higher than third in the conference standings in those same seasons, and hasn’t appeared in the Big Sky tournament title game in nine years — even in the wide-open, 2025-26 campaign that saw seventh-place Idaho win the tournament. Not great.

WSU has produced great moments in that time, including Jerrick Harding’s rise to becoming the program’s career scoring king, Dillon Jones’ phenomenal individual career and selection in the first round of the NBA draft, and road wins over Utah State and Saint Mary’s. But the ultimate great has been elusive.

Robert Casey, Weber State Athletics

First-year head coach Kaleb Canales ran Damian Lillard’s NBA draft workout and coached Lillard in NBA Summer League all those years ago. Now, the pair leads Weber State’s program, and the first question they might’ve asked themselves was: how do we make the good become great?

One answer was: don’t settle in recruiting.

“For me, and for him as well, we looked at it and said we’re not going to come out here and … say ‘Alright, we’re Weber State, it’s going to be hard to beat out some of these bigger schools,'” Lillard said in a video interview WSU published on June 22. “We’re going to stand on what our mission is. We’re going to get behind that, we’re going to go out there boldly and get the best players.

“We wanted to recruit on the level above what Weber State typically has. And we already had a great track record for recruiting, sending guys to the NBA. … So we wanted to go out there with that type of mindset.”

Lillard said in that process, he didn’t want to just “throw my name around” with vague promises; he’s trying to make a real investment and have a real presence in the program. (The interview was recorded during a stint in which Lillard spent two weeks in Ogden for workouts.)

Robert Casey, Weber State Athletics

So what’s the result?

On paper, the Wildcats appear to have swung above their weight class, at least for a handful of players, in an attempt to do what Lillard described.

Chamberlain Burgess is the highest-rated recruit to ever sign at Weber State. Of WSU’s 12 new players, six of them — Mason Abittan, Sir Marius Jones, Gavin Lowe, Aaron Powell, Max Russell and Dylan Warlick — averaged at least 20 points per game in high school, with Hunter Hansen checking in at 19.

Burgess averaged 13 and 11 with 3.6 blocks per game the last time he played competitively at Orem High School. Brock Felder is a career 64.2% shooter in three college seasons and, the last time he was a starter (two seasons ago at Southern Utah), he led the WAC in blocks. Warlick, at 6-foot-5, averaged 11 rebounds per game as a high school senior, won two (and nearly three) state titles in Oklahoma, and was the best player on a team that went 65-10 in those campaigns.

Dyllan Thompson is a 6-foot-7 player with talent enough to originally sign with Georgia Tech, and Lowe is a two-time Mr. Basketball in Utah.

Robert Casey, Weber State Athletics

On paper, Weber State seems to have some dudes.

“I think they all fit the bill. They are high-character kids who care and are serious about playing, serious about their work and serious about their career,” Canales said. “It’s been fun, and I think we’re going to have a great season.

“Big picture, this was the plan. We wanted a team that was adaptable, flexible, strengths that can have a chemistry to it, and it looks a certain way. Obviously, we’ve got to do it, but I feel good about where that’s at.”

It’s his nature anyway, and the nature of summer basketball, but optimism oozes from Canales as he talks about his first WSU squad.

“They’re hungry and excited, and they know it takes a lot of hard work and sacrifice, so I think they’re up for the challenge,” he said. “Good group to be around; it feels like we’re already all pulling in the same direction.”

But there’s a catch: these Wildcats are young. So very, very young, at least in terms of playing experience.

Twelve of WSU’s currently rostered 14 players are first- or second-year players. None of them, whom you’d previously call “underclassmen,” have started in college. Some will log their first career college game at Weber State.

“That will be a hurdle for us — not necessarily that we’re young as players, but we have young team-playing experiences. It’s going to be one of our biggest challenges and hurdles this season,” Canales said. “We’ve got to fight through that, work through that, and we will.”

Canales said more than once that his team is “organically” hard-working, and each player seems eager and hungry to do more than they ever have on the basketball court. The age-versus-experience factor may be helping some; only two of the 12 newcomers are actual “true freshmen” arriving at WSU directly from high school.

Of the other 10, one has been out of high school for four years (Alvin Jackson), four have been out of high school for two years (Powell, Thompson, Warlick and Hansen), and five have been out of high school for one year (Abittan, Burgess, Jones, Augustine Ekwe and ArDarius Grayson). Powell, Warlick, Ekwe and Grayson have played in college.

“I think we can be a deep team but, playing experience-wise, we’ve got to get up to speed as fast as we can. But if we’re a deep team, I want them to all get comfortable playing with each other,” Canales said. “We need to play. We need to get out there, get up and down the floor in live games. We have this hunger that’s building that we want to play.

“We’ll be the best we can be at practice, and then when we finally get to the games, we’ll get that experience.”

Like Canales said, a major hurdle. If it can come together, then perhaps WSU can get through that third-place, no-tournament-title-round ceiling. The coach thinks he has the pieces to play big, play smart, and really cause problems for opponents trying to defend his roster.

“One of our team strengths, once we’re the best version of ourselves, is the ability to play different ways,” Canales said. “There’s so many good players and teams out there, you have to find different ways on different nights.”

RELATIONSHIPS, RETENTION

Canales and Lillard want guys to invest their careers with them.

A difficult ask and a difficult task, given the transfer portal and NIL money.

“One of our pillars, big-picture with our program, is going to be retention. That’s going to be a challenge every year, but we’re going to fight for it,” Canales said. “We want guys to feel like this is the place for them. We understand different situations, but there are teams around the country who keep almost their full roster. That’s a goal for us moving forward; it will come with challenges, no doubt.”

For example, Canales called Burgess a “home run” for the program. Burgess originally signed with BYU. It’s easy to see a future where he’s only at WSU for a year or two — but Weber State will battle those trends to the end and try to make that career development a partnership.

“You watch and you see guys hitting the portal every year, regardless of if they have a good year or a bad year; it’s like they’re just finding the next best situation, going to the highest bidder,” Lillard said. “I think (it’s about) establishing trust with the guys that you bring in, so they know that … you’re invested in what the best thing is for them, and what the best thing is for their careers. So then you take away it being about money and about what it means for ‘me.’

“So that’s kind of what we jumped on. We’re going to have real relationships with these guys and make it clear that we’re invested in their success.”

With the draft selections of Lillard and Joel Bolomboy (and now Jones), and the overseas success of several others, that’s long been the pitch at Weber State. But perhaps Lillard fully involved as a GM can give the effort more juice, more impact.

Lillard broke it down this way:

“The part I think a lot of people aren’t really focusing on — it’s like, you’re paying these kids all of this money and then, because of that, you’re trying not to get on them as much, you’re kind of babying them so they don’t hit the portal when they’re going to hit the portal anyway,” he said. “With us, we’re kind of doing the opposite. We’re not babying you, we’re not giving you no easy way out.

“If you want to hit the portal because you want something more comfortable and easy, then you can go and do that. But you’re not going to find somebody that is more invested in what’s best for you and getting you where you want to be, during your college experience and after that. That’s something that we stand on.

“And the experience that they’ll get being part of this program — being led by (Canales) and the rest of the staff, and me being a part of it — it’s something that can’t be bought. So I think that’s the difference in our approach and how we’re running a program versus everybody else.”