SMC Basketball's Tommy Kuhse's Incredible Story: From Walk-On to Starting Guard
Gaels' redshirt senior guard Tommy Kuhse never dreamed of playing college basketball growing up. He never so much as played on a club basketball team at any point during his youth sports career.
In fact, basketball wasn't even on the forefront of his mind until his senior year of high school. Before deciding to pursue playing hoops in college, Kuhse was set on playing baseball at the next level—the other sport he lettered in at Mountain View High School in Mesa, Arizona, and the sport he was most dedicated to as a teen.
His mindset only began to shift from the diamond to the hardwood during his junior year. Kuhse averaged around 18 points per game for Mountain View's varsity squad and slowly began filling out his current 6'2 frame. A few months later, he was back on the baseball field and played pretty well but was below a few seniors on the depth charts and wasn't able to get as many reps as he would've liked.
During the summer going into his senior year, the point guard decided to make a full commitment to basketball. But by that time, it was too late to get onto a club team. While most student-athletes rely on exposure at club summer tournaments to receive scholarship offers to universities, Kuhse was left with just his senior season to impress college coaches and get his name out there.
After another solid season in which he averaged 21 points and led his team to a section championship, Kuhse had zero scholarship offers and only a few Division I schools were showing interest. His offers were coming from small local colleges in Arizona and in Southern California with just one exception—Saint Mary's, over 650 miles from Kuhse's hometown of Mesa.
An All-Time Single Game High at the Right Moment
As luck would have it, Mesa also happens to be the hometown of Gaels' head coach Randy Bennett, who has deep connections to the basketball scene in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Bennett went to Westwood High School, just five miles from Mountain View, and actually was classmates with Kuhse's father. Additionally, Bennett's father, Tom, is a coaching legend in the area and spent over 30 years as a head coach between the high school and junior college levels. Suffice to say, there is a connection between Saint Mary's basketball and the Grand Canyon State.
Bennett had previously recruited a number of talented players from his home state since coming to Moraga: current assistant coach Mickey McConnell (2007–11), Todd Golden (2004–08), and Brett Collins (2003–07) to name just a few. The coaching staff had already spent some time in the area scouting Elijah Thomas, who was also a senior in 2016, and through Bennett's various connections, Kuhse managed to work his way onto the radar.
It didn't hurt his case either when he had a career game against in-town rival Dobson during his senior year—a team coached by Rick McConnell, Mickey's father. "I think I scored like 42 against Mickey's dad," recalls Kuhse. Those 42 points marked an all-time single game high at Mountain View.
Eventually, Kuhse would get the call to come visit campus. And when he did, he immediately fell in love with the team and the culture of the program. While the Gaels didn't have a scholarship to give him, Kuhse still saw the opportunity as the best environment for him to grow and become the best player he could be.
"I knew I wasn't going to be treated as a walk-on here. I knew I would be treated like a player and given a fair shot."
When Kuhse arrived as a freshman, the forte of his game was scoring. He was a big-time scorer in high school but quickly realized that as a walk-on, he was probably not going to be the go-to bucket-getter on the team. Kuhse instead saw that he would best be able to help the team as a distributor and playmaker—someone who was able to get other guys on the team quality shots and make everyone around him better.
During his freshman year, he was buried on the depth chart under one of the program's best backcourts of all-time, Emmett Naar and Joe Rahon. Although the two upperclassmen received the lion's share of the playing time, Kuhse stayed late on game days long after the crowds had dispersed in then-McKeon Pavilion to put up shots and continue to craft his game.
Doing the Work
"There's a lot of guys working really hard in this program and if you're not one of those guys, you kind of stick out like a sore thumb," says Kuhse.
On top of the intense work ethic at Saint Mary's, Kuhse felt that he still had to work twice as hard as his teammates because he was further behind on his development due to spending much of his youth on the baseball diamond. He redshirted his first year on campus and played limited minutes during the 2017–18 campaign. But he continued putting in work and biding his time.
With the graduation and departure of Naar in 2018, a void needed to be filled in the starting lineup. Redshirt freshman Kristers Zoriks was projected to fill out the backcourt alongside Jordan Ford, but an unfortunate ACL injury to Zoriks during the preseason would leave the job up for grabs. To begin the year, Saint Mary's moved Tanner Krebs from his usual wing position to help fill in at guard. And while the team jumped out to a 3–0 start, including an impressive win at New Mexico State, the offense wasn't clicking at full efficiency. The Gaels soon after hit a wall and lost their next four games, averaging just 7.25 assists during that span.
It was then that Bennett decided to make a change to the starting rotation to help with the Gaels' lack of ball movement. Kuhse got the nod to start against Cal in the team's next contest, and Krebs slid back over to his natural position. Saint Mary's went on to tally 18 assists in the game, six coming from Kuhse, and were walloping the Golden Bears by 24 before putting in the reserves for the final four minutes of the contest.
"It was definitely a surreal moment," said Kuhse when reminiscing on that first start. "But at the same time I knew I was only going to be there if I performed. Fortunately, we won a couple games in a row and I was kept in the lineup and it allowed me to grow as we were winning."
Final Minutes Against the Zags
After a rocky start to the season, the Gaels went 19–8 with Kuhse in the starting lineup, and they finished second in the West Coast Conference standings. At the conference tournament in Las Vegas, Kuhse played all 40 minutes and scored eight points in the Gaels' upset over No. 1 Gonzaga to help SMC secure a spot in the NCAA Tournament. Kuhse's circus shot in the final minutes of the game proved to be a dagger to the Zags and put the Gaels up by nine with two minutes to play.
In addition to helping grease the wheel on the offense, the coaching staff lauded his defensive abilities, awarding Kuhse the Gaels' Defensive Player of the Year Award at the end-of-the-year banquet. Although he was just a redshirt sophomore walk-on, Kuhse was often tasked with going up against the top guards from opposing teams and managed to hold his own.
Last season, the Gaels added three talented guards to the roster in transfer Logan Johnson, a fully recovered Zoriks, and freshman Alex Ducas. Despite the logjam, Kuhse still managed to record the fourth most minutes of anyone on the roster and led the team in assists by a wide margin.
Of the 353 Division I teams in college basketball, no walk-on played more minutes or started more games than Tommy Kuhse during the 2019–20 season. He was undoubtedly the best walk-on in the nation.
Of the 353 Division I teams in college basketball, no walk-on played more minutes or started more games than Kuhse during the 2019–20 season. He was undoubtedly the best walk-on in the nation. Heading into his final season, it's a title he will no longer be able to defend, however, as Bennett and his staff awarded the redshirt senior a full-ride scholarship this summer.
According to Kuhse, receiving the scholarship wasn't a grand surprise like you sometimes see on social media. Staff had been chatting with him about the possibility for some time, "but when it did actually happen, it was obviously a 'wow' moment for me," said Kuhse. "It was something I worked towards for four years and to finally have that to come to fruition was pretty special to me."
With the 2020–21 season on the horizon, the Arizona transplant will have a new role on the team this year. Not to do with the fact that he's now on scholarship—he's extremely adamant that the team never treated him any differently as a walk-on—but as the Gaels' only senior this season. As they do before each season, his teammates democratically voted him as one of their leaders for this year, and it's a new job he's more than ready to take on.
"When you think about all the things you've been through in the program, you have all the experience and knowledge that you don't even realize you had. I've just been trying to pass that knowledge on to the younger guys and getting them ready to go as soon as possible because we're going to count on a lot of these guys to play this year."
The upcoming season will be the final stage of Kuhse's incredible collegiate basketball metamorphosis. From a late high school bloomer with little prospects, to walk-on, to starter, to full-fledged leader and face of one of the premier basketball program's on the West Coast, Kuhse's story is one for the ages.
Gael fans and Kuhse alike can only hope that his rags-to-riches story has an equally exciting and memorable fairytale ending come March.
THE STORY CONTINUES: From August 2022, read Tommy Kuhse Agrees to Contract with San Antonio Spurs.
Story formatting updated June 26, 2023