Floor general rewarded for staying

It’s a good thing Ahmad Newsome reconsidered.

After graduating from high school in East Lansing, Michigan, Newsome had honed his basketball and academic skills at Impact Academy in Sarasota, Florida. Now he was ready to embark on a college basketball career, and found himself on a journey to Creston to play for new Southwestern coach Todd Lorensen.

At first, he thought it might be a very short stay.

“I just took his (Lorensen) word from what he told me, I never visited here before I came to school,” Newsome said. “When I first got here, I was ready to go home! I didn’t think I could last here.”

But after a couple of days, sharing the same experience with many teammates from across the country, Newsome felt more at ease about his new surroundings.

“My teammates and I all started to feel more comfortable in the town and at school,” Newsome said. “My roommate (Josh Tolbert) is from Auburn, Alabama. Jaylon Smith was from Memphis. Then TJ (Bower) was from right around here. We kind of had a little bit of everything. But we realized it was time to focus on school and playing basketball. You don’t even realize you’re in a small town when you’re focused like that.”

Fast forward to April 21, 2016. Newsome was named SWCC’s Paul Somers Male Athlete of the Year. As the athletic director as well as head basketball coach, Lorensen presented the plaque to his sophomore point guard during the awards program.

“Ahmad is kind of the All-American kid here,” Lorensen said. “He’s a great student, he’s over a 3.0 GPA and will graduate this spring. He was a student ambassador for our Admissions Department. He was a resident assistant in the Housing office. He’s really made himself an extremely well-known guy for the right reasons on campus.”

Good fit

Lorensen had just been named head coach in August 2014 when he got word from a scouting contact in South Carolina that a point guard from East Lansing was looking for a place to land after a plan to play at a Division I junior college in Illinois fell through when that school filled that scholarship spot with a taller front court player.

“I never saw him play once before he stepped on this campus,” Lorensen said. “A guy I know from a recruiting service said he’s a stand-up kid and a really good player. He said you probably can’t go wrong in any capacity in taking him. Two weeks later he was moving to Creston, Iowa.”

While he never compiled the kind of statistics that jump off the page, over a two-year period Southwestern’s improving program reached the top five in the Division II national rankings and went 48-16 with its steady point guard serving as “the glue” on the court. Last season the Spartans opened league play at 8-0 and posted a home victory over another ranked power, Kirkwood, which went on to win the Division II national tournament.

While it was disappointing to be upset by NIACC in a home regional tournament game and watch Kirkwood go on to win the championship, Newsome said it was gratifying to be a part of the program’s revival.

“I feel like I had a part in that,” said the son of June Newsome of East Lansing and Ezra Hyland of Minneapolis. “The first couple games my freshman year, there was no one here. So to see it go from empty to almost full for that last tournament game, that was exciting. We thought we had a good shot to win the whole thing. I know there are guys like Jordan (Johnson) and KeShawn (Wilson) who want to work hard at keeping that tradition going now. Maybe now it’s a program that will be mentioned the same way as Kirkwood and DMACC.”

Role player

Over his Spartan career, Newsome became known as a distributor and defender after holding more of a scoring role in high school and on AAU teams. He averaged 4.5 assists per game over his career.

Sharing some of the point guard duties last season with freshman Calvin Chambers, Newsome averaged 6.2 points, 4.5 rebounds, 3.6 assists 1.0 steals and had a 2-1 assist-to-turnover ratio. He also was asked to guard the other team’s top perimeter player.

“I just realized here, we had enough guys who could score the basketball,” Newsome said. “We had Terrance (Smith), Jordan, KeShawn, Calvin, TJ. And we had guys like me and Jok (Kut) who could do a little bit of everything. I’ll go out there and guard the best player. If I need to get 10 assists, I’ll do that. Whatever it takes to win.”

When both Smith and Chambers were injured for the Central Nebraska game, Newsome played most of the game and finished with seven points, 10 rebounds, seven assists and five steals while guarding Central’s top scoring threat. At 6-3 and 185 pounds, Newsome was a strong rebounder for a perimeter player.

“There’s no doubt Ahmad could have scored more had he been a selfish player and taken twice as many shots,” Lorensen said. “He doesn’t have the stats that make you say, ‘Wow!’ But when you see him day in and day out, you see the leadership abilities he has, on top of his consistency. You know what you’re going to get from him every single day. I kind of describe him as a zero-maintenance type of kid.”

Academic honor

Newsome received All-Region XI honorable mention, and received the Scholar Athlete Award with other student-athletes who completed 48 or more credits at SWCC with a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or higher. The other Male Athlete of the Year nominees — Trenton Cheers of sports shooting, Seth Starks of track and field and Samuel Vega of baseball — were also on that Scholar Athlete list.

Newsome and Terrance Smith will remain teammates during their basketball life after SWCC. They are both signed to play at NCAA Division II Concordia-St. Paul, where Conner Pals of Creston is a placekicker on the football team. Newsome plans a business major.

“Their coaches were the most involved in checking on me and recruiting me,” Newsome said. “When we went on the visit, everything about the city and school just seemed right. Hopefully, being in the city and going to school will set me up for the future in business.”

Just like how he operates in the open court, looking for scoring opportunities ahead of him, Ahmad Newsome is calculating his options for a bright future ahead. That comes as no surprise to his Southwestern coach.

“Ahmad is a good example of the type of kid we want to get,” Lorensen said. “Kids who don’t have to be here for academic reasons, necessarily, but just want to increase their stock for the next level. Everything about Ahmad Newsome is positive. He’s the real deal.”