When Garrett Sim decided last spring to come to Oregon to play basketball it was barely a blip on the radar. It certainly received far less media attention than the signings of Chicago center Michael Dunigan or local product Drew Wiley in the fall.
Sure, Sim was highly rated coming off a senior season at Sunset High in Beaverton, Ore., where he averaged 22.9 points per game and 8.8 assists, earning him a top-30 ranking at his position by most recruiting Web sites, but for Sim to be the most impactful player of the freshman class come basketball season seemed a longshot to most.
But Sim has arguably been the best of the freshmen this year, as the 6-foot-1 guard has started 20 games (tied for most among the freshmen with Dunigan), and has led the team in assists nine times and in scoring twice this season.
He is second on the team in assists with 53 and second in scoring among the freshmen at 7.5 points per game.
There was also his unbelievable shooting night against Utah back in December, when he scored 28 points on 10-of-14 shooting, including 5-of-6 from three-point-range.
“He listens to everything you say, he tries to do everything exactly how you tell him to do it and he has the most consistency of any of (the freshmen) of doing it right all the time,” Oregon head coach Ernie Kent said. “That’s what I think gave him the opportunity to have so much success early on and that’s what’s going to make him, I think, one of the great point guards – like others we’ve had here.”
To those close to Sim, this early success came as no surprise. The real longshot, they say, was his decision to come to Oregon in the first place.
You see, the Sim family is about as close to bleeding black and orange as it gets. Father Tim Sim was a football, basketball and track athlete at Oregon State, while mother Amy was a cheerleader. Their sons, Garrett and his three-years-older brother, Brennan, were raised as Beaver believers.
Brennan Sim fulfilled the family legacy and is about to enter his senior season as a backup quarterback for the Beavers.
But in a family of all-around athletes, for Garrett Sim it has always been all about basketball, and the basketball picture at Oregon State throughout the last few years has been pretty grim.
Add that to the fact that former coach Jay John and his staff didn’t really recruit Sim much – if at all – and Sim looking elsewhere becomes even less surprising.
Sim settled on Cal after being heavily recruited by then-head coach Ben Braun. Sim committed early to the Golden Bears and then had his breakout year as a high school senior. When Braun was fired last spring, Sim went back to the drawing board.
“When their coach got fired I knew there might be other options for me,” Sim said. “I wanted to go through the process again and see what was out there.”
The Beavers again missed on a chance to sign Sim, as there really wasn’t a coaching staff in place yet when Sim was granted his release by Cal. He still wanted to stay close to home and, after his talent came to the fore as a senior, Oregon was interested.
“It was a little bit of a surprise just because they hadn’t really been there the first time around,” Sim said. “But it turned out to be a great fit and I knew it would be a great fit. That’s why I decided to come here.”
“We just felt like, ‘Wow, he’s still available?’” Kent said of the late signing. “Then we went back and gave him a look and looked at the tape and everything else and we needed a point guard so it was just, ‘Let’s get him in here.’”
The rest is history, as they say, and there may still be bigger things to come for Sim, who Kent compares to the likes of Luke Ridnour and Aaron Brooks with his shooting stroke and
knowledge of the game. The potential is there, Kent said, for Sim to be among the best guards Oregon has ever had.
“He still has to go through it all to reach Brooks and Ridnour and them,” Kent said. “But he’s got a chance to be really good. There are similarities there in terms of what he’s doing and what he’s done.”
For the rest of the Sim clan, having Garrett in green and yellow has been an adjustment, to put it mildly, but they are still at Mac Court for every home game. Brennan has made the drive down for every conference game, as the non-conference schedule often conflicted with his football obligations. He is deep behind enemy lines for these games, and he feels it, but it is a small price to pay to watch his brother play.
“It was kind of a shock at first,” he said. “But I support him and love to see him out there on the floor.
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