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Weber State basketball coach Randy Rahe has a little party planned on Thursday. The Wildcats are coming over for dinner at Rahe's home and then plan to watch the NBA draft on television.
"I'm nervous," the coach admitted. "I'm anxious. I'm excited. You get all those emotions. When you've had a guy here for four years like that, he's a family member."
The Wildcats expect forward Joel Bolomboy to be the first Weber State player drafted since Damian Lillard in 2012 and the 16th ever overall from the Ogden school.
The 6-foot-9 Bolomboy is projected to be taken in the second round of Thursday's draft. But the uber-athletic Bolomoboy has done his best to impress teams in hopes of moving up a little higher.
"Every workout I go into, I have a chip on my shoulder," he told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel after working out for the Bucks earlier this summer. "… Coming from Weber State, there was some talk that I can't play with the higher competition. I think I've proved a lot of people wrong. But there's still a bit of doubt there, so I'm coming into these workouts ready to play against anybody."
After giving scouts and executives a taste of his talents at the NBA combine in May, Bolomboy has spent the summer crisscrossing the country, working out for the Hornets, the Nuggets, the Lakers and the Sixers among others.
Rahe praised Bolomboy's athleticism. His 37.-5-inch standing vertical leap was the best at the combine. "I have never had a guy at that size with that athleticism," the coach said. But Bolomboy's tenacious rebounding (he holds the Big Sky's all-time rebounding record) and his improved outside shot make him a viable draft pick.
"He's got a lot of improvement to go," Rahe said. "Somebody's going to get a guy with great upside, who's going to do what it takes to reach it."
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