(Atlantic) After a remarkable college career, Atlantic’s Ryan Hawkins is getting ready for the next stop in his basketball journey.
The former Northwest Missouri State Bearcat and Creighton Bluejay isn’t ready to hang it up anytime soon. “I’m going to try and stay in shape the best I can and then starting in mid-May I’ll start having teams call and go do workouts with them. I’ll have to find an agent in the next couple of weeks, but I’m just going to relax for a few days and kind of enjoy it. Hopefully the summer is full of a lot of workouts and hopefully a lot of different teams. The middle of June will be the combine and some of the elite camps that I’ll have to go to to get my name out there.”
Coach Greg McDermott and the rest of the Creighton staff have helped get the ball rolling. At the very least, Hawkins expects to have an opportunity to show a wide variety of NBA scouts what he could bring to a team. “From the feedback I’ve gotten so far I have a pretty good chance of getting a summer league contract and getting to go out to Vegas for 10-12 days and play out there. I’m hoping to do 15-20 workouts with teams this June and July to get my name out and get in front of scouts. If that doesn’t end up working out, head to Europe, play over there, explore the world for a year, and see what I want to do after that.”
His size and 3-point shooting ability appeal to squads, but he acknowledges his athleticism must improve. His pro potential greatly increased thanks to his one year playing Division I basketball. “Just got me used to the speed of the game. The Division II level has a lot of great basketball, but it doesn’t have seven footers standing in the lane ready to block your shot and it doesn’t have 6’6″ guards. If you’re 6’6″ at the Division II level you’re probably going to be a 4 or a 5 and playing down low. The Big East definitely got me ready for that with the athleticism and speed of the game. I feel like once I settled in I was able to handle that very well.”
Several options are on the table both in the United States and overseas. Hawkins puts his pursuit of some form of professional basketball in good perspective when asked where he sees himself next year. “Hopefully playing basketball and hopefully happy. I don’t care what it looks like right now. I don’t have any images in my mind or any place that I want to be or team I want to be with. I just hope that I’m in a good situation for myself and I hope that I’m happy.”
Hawkins won three national championships with Northwest Missouri State before guiding Creighton to the round of 32 in the NCAA Tournament. He was a 2nd team All-Big East selection. Hawkins scored 2,580 points and grabbed 1,220 rebounds in his college career. His teams went 147-19.
