Overview:
Stephan Swenson, who ranked 18th nationally in assists at Stetson University last year, is aiming for a return to the NCAA Tournament this season with UCSB
Stephan Swenson didn’t get a good first look at paradise.
The azure of UC Santa Barbara’s seaside campus was cloaked in a heavy, gray mist last April when the graduate transfer from Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, made his official visit.
“It was very cloudy,” Swenson recalled. “It was pretty cold that day.”
But he did warm right up to the Gauchos.
Nobody is better suited to see through the fog of battle and make the right basketball play than the 6-foot-2 point guard from Belgium.
“I visited for a better reason … Coach wanted me to meet the guys and the staff, and really see the culture of this place,” Swenson said. “It wasn’t long before I saw what everyone was talking about.
“Waking up every morning to see the sun shine and do what you love best, which is playing basketball with great guys in a great culture … All that for me has been just a blessing.”
Going coast-to-coast for a change of scenery was a good move for both player and team.
He’s led the Gauchos to a win-loss record of 6-1 entering Thursday’s Big West Conference opener against UC San Diego.
Tipoff at the Thunderdome will be at 7 p.m.
Swenson is averaging 10.3 points per game on 52.9% shooting — 39.4% from three-point distance — and 3.9 assists.
He’s stepped right up as the point person that coach Joe Pasternack so desperately sought after junior Ajay Mitchell was drafted and signed last summer by the Oklahoma City Thunder in the NBA.
Swenson and Mitchell have much in common as lefthanded playmakers from the Western European country of Belgium.
“I’ve played with him and against him since I was 12, 13, 14 years old,” Swenson said. “I watched a couple of his workouts this summer and was fortunate enough to work out with him once or twice.
“What he’s built here just gives me the chills. I’m like, ‘Wow! There’s really something we can do here.’”
But while Mitchell’s fancy footwork as UCSB’s leading scorer was like something out of ABC TV’s Dancing With The Stars, Swenson’s skillset has been more attuned to NBC’s The Voice.
He’s more choreographer than score producer.
“We did a little vote about who the leader of this team is, and everybody voted for Steph,” Pasternack said. “He has a great voice in the locker room and during practice, challenging guys and being the second coach on the floor.
“That’s his personality … He’s the heart and soul of our team.”
Winning Touch
He does have a flair for the dramatic when he’s needed to score.
Swenson was just 16 and newly arrived from Brussels when he made a game-winning basket for Westminster Academy of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in its season opener at Miami’s Hoophall Classic.
By season’s end, his 10½ assists per game had led Westminster to Florida’s 4A State Championship.
“For a kid coming from Belgium, playing in an (NBA) arena where the Heat play … to hit the first game-winner of his career, you just knew where his career was going to take him,” Westminster coach Ehren Wallhoff told reporters after that year’s state title game.
“He’s just a kid that made big shots and big plays when the time was needed, and it started from the first day he got to us.”
Swenson’s minimal AAU experience as a foreign import kept him under the radar for most college scouts.
Stetson took him only on Wallhoff’s impassioned recommendation.
He wound up setting the Hatters’ all-time record of 603 assists while guiding them to the Atlantic Sun Conference Tournament championship and an NCAA Tournament berth last March.
Stetson coach Donnie Jones gave his ultimate praise, saying, “I’ve coached a bunch but I don’t know if I’ve been around a kid I love more than Stephan Swenson.”
That comment came after Swenson’s heroics rallied the Hatters from a late, 10-point deficit to beat Jacksonville in the ASUN semifinals. He scored 14 points in the final four-plus minutes, which included a pair of three-pointers in the last 21 seconds.
Swenson simply refused to lose.
“It took them a while to really recognize us and all the work that we put in,” he said of Stetson’s run to the NCAA Tournament. “But obviously we had a phenomenal season last year.
“It’s up in the history books.”
He ranked 18th in NCAA Division I basketball last season with 203 assists and 25th in assist average with 5.8 per game. He was 106th in assist-to-turnover ratio.
He also averaged 13.9 points and 4.7 rebounds per game.
Well Connected
Swenson has already established a rapport with such new Gauchos as center Kenny Pohto, a 6-11 graduate transfer from Wichita State.
“He’s a great passer,” Pohto said. “I’m a pretty good passer, too, so we get along really well.
“He’s not afraid to pass it to me because he knows it’s going to come back out. It’s a great connection.”
Swenson also has passed on his basketball knowledge to such promising freshmen as Zion Sensley, who made the all-tournament team in last week’s Mountain to the Sea Showcase at the Thunderdome.
“From the first day I got here, I’ve tried to take as much knowledge as I can from him,” Sensley said. “Last year, he led his team to the NCAA Tournament, and that’s our goal.
“He’s a fifth-year player and there’s a lot I can learn from him.”
Getting to this year’s NCAA Tournament won’t be easy.
The Big West is enjoying one of its best preconference seasons since the days of UNLV’s Jerry Tarkanian. The ranking system used by Sports Reference slotted the league as high as No. 7 during the season of 1989-1990.
The Big West came in at No. 11 nationally in this week’s Ratings Percentage Index. Ken Pomeroy’s system has the league at No. 12 — the highest it’s ever ranked the conference.
UC Irvine is undefeated (8-0) and only three of the league’s 11 schools have losing records.
Even Cal Poly, long a league doormat, has stepped up with its new coach, upsetting Stanford on Saturday.
UC San Diego (6-2) recently swept three games to win the championship of the Boardwalk Battle not far from Swenson’s old stomping grounds in Daytona Beach, Florida.
But the Gauchos’ new point guard considers UCSB’s talent to be even better than what Stetson had during its run to last year’s NCAAs.
“You come in with Kenny Pohto and his size and touch — he can pass — and with Colin Smith, who comes from the SEC (a 6-8 Vanderbilt transfer) and can do almost everything,” he said. “There’s Max (Murrell), who can shoot the three.
“There’s Jason (Fontenet II), who’s just a sophomore but who looks like a veteran senior.
“And then you have Cole Anderson and you wonder, ‘Will he ever miss?’
“It’s just so many guys who bring different attributes, it’s been amazing to play alongside them.”
Workable Parts
The work environment has been even better than what Swenson expected.
“I came here to be part of a real high-demanding culture,” he explained. “Every day has been a challenge, but the guys that coach recruited — the guys that he brought in — have been nothing but happy to be a part of it.
“We have an older, experienced team of guys who have gone through a lot to get to where we are right now.
“We understand that each and every day we have brothers that we can go to war with. That highly competitive environment has made us closer.”
Pasternack has stoked the fire by having such former Gaucho greats as Devearl Ramsey join their scrimmages in practice.
Ramsey, an ultra-quick point guard from UCSB’s NCAA Tournament team of 2021, has spent several seasons in the NBA’s G League and most recently led the Sheffield Sharks to the Super League playoffs in Great Britain.
“Coach was telling us, ‘He’s like the next guy you’ll have to go against,’” Swenson said, “but I was like, ‘I don’t know if there’s anyone better … That guy can go!’”
For Swenson, the super-charged workout was as reassuring as it was, at times, discombobulating.
“We had to build something from the ground up at Stetson, but here there’s a dynasty … There’s a legacy,” he said. “There are guys who come back who are pros and sometimes bring another level to practice.
“They bring their knowledge, and reveal everything they’ve gone through … How to go through practice, how to communicate with teammates and how to be ready for the next level.
“All those attributes, man, it makes, bar none, for an amazing experience.”
Swenson marvels at far he’s come from Belgium, and even from DeLand, Florida.
“I was fortunate to have my family come and visit me this summer for a couple of weeks and make it easier for me to acclimate,” he said.
But it wasn’t difficult to appreciate the new surroundings once the fog had lifted. They even reminded him a bit of Brussels.
“California has a lot of nature,” he said. “People walk around a lot or ride their bikes in a city like Santa Barbara, and that’s very European.
“Everything was so spaced out in Florida, you need a car to get around.
“But I see a lot of my home back in Belgium when I walk around here.
“Shoot! It’s paradise here in Santa Barbara!”
And he plans to take its team to the NCAA Promised Land.
