Cal Poly Basketball in Review – Aleks Abrams

Aleks Abrams – Graduating Redshirt Junior – 6’8″, 240 lbs

Aleks Abrams had a career high 18 rebounds in a game this season against UC Davis. By Owen Main

By the Numbers:

24 Games

13.4 Minutes per game

2.4 Points per game

4.3 Rebounds per game

0.4 Assists per game

44.7% Field Goals

72.7% Free Throws

I saw Abrams play in one of his last high school games against Mission Prep in San Luis Obispo. His team, which featured Kenny Smith’s son, beat the Royals that night. After redshirting his first year on campus, Abrams showed he wasn’t afraid to push in the post defensively. While it wasn’t for lack of effort, Abrams, who is listed at 6’8″, wasn’t the longest big man in the world. His offensive game only developed incrementally over the past two seasons, and his effectiveness was matchup-dependent. He had 11 points and 11 rebounds off the bench in an overtime loss at home against UC Davis this past season and a four point, 18 rebound effort in Cal Poly’s final win of the season, a 90-86 double overtime victory over CSUN. 

In a conference that has gotten bigger across the board, Abrams was a somewhat undersized center.

Abrams never put up huge numbers consistently, but he had some sneaky-good defensive and rebounding games in his career and hustled and got his work done in class over four seasons at Cal Poly. 

Looking forward

As a redshirt junior, Abrams was on-track to graduate and was honored at Cal Poly’s senior night. Abrams will be a graduate transfer and eligible to play immediately somewhere else in 2018-19, if he so chooses.

On a related note, head coach Joe Callero talked after their season-ending loss to UCSB about how difficult it was to get graduate transfers into school at Cal Poly. Part of that context was that UCSB relied heavily on a few graduate transfers this season. The other part of that is that Cal Poly is losing at least 2-3 players via the grad transfer. 

Best of luck to Aleks, wherever he ends up.

*Ed note: Over the next few weeks, we’ll be recapping the season of every Cal Poly player who played in 2017-18.