By Matt Weiner (@mattweiner20) – Basketball Beat Reporter
Photo via SJSU Athletics
Trent Miyagishima’s vision for San Jose State men’s basketball remained crystal clear, even if it looked like perpetually unrewarded blind hope.
Until now.
This Saturday at 12:30, he’ll be courtside for what’s likely to be the first postseason win in program history and the grand finale of SJSU’s first 20-win season since 1981. “I’m just a gut-feeling type of guy,” said Miyagashima, SJSU’s director of basketball operations, who began as a student manager in 2011.
Led by Mountain West Player of the Year Omari Moore and Mountain West Coach of the Year Tim Miles, the Spartans enter the CBI Tournament as a No. 2 seed and will face No. 15 seed Southern Indiana in the first round.
It’s pure coincidence that Miyagishima came to SJSU as a student in fall of 2011 months after the Spartans appeared in their last postseason game – a first round loss to Creighton in the CBI – and their last winning season.
However, the mystery is why he stayed after 10 losing seasons with nine of them resulting in single-digit win campaigns.
It’s frustratingly indefinable for Miyagishima as to how or why he never lost faith and stayed committed to the thankless tasks required by a student manager, head manger, video coordinator and now a director of basketball operations.
But sometimes, his gut-feeling has been right immediately.
Miyagishima vividly remembers seeing the Spartans’ Sage Tolbert eating breakfast the morning of SJSU’s quarterfinal matchup against Nevada in the Mountain West Tournament and thinking and thought to himself, ‘I’ve got a good feeling about today.’
After Tolbert scored 20 points in the Spartans first Mountain West Tournament win in school history, Tolbert shot a glance at Miyagishima.
“He turns around and points at me at half court after the game and he was like, ‘You’re right,’” said Miyagishima, while gnawing on a piece of gum with plenty left in his pocket. It’s a nerve wracking time of year, but one he calls a “good stress.”
When SJSU’s players and coaches were dealing with the disappointment of making the CBI instead of the hoped-for NIT last on Sunday, March. 12, Miyagishima’s mind went: ‘how can I find a flight for 25-plus people to Dayton, Fl. in the middle of spring break season?’
“It becomes a routine that’s just part of your life and starts and you don’t really mind it because you want to be part of the program and want to help be a part of the change,” said Miyagishima.
When Miyagishima first stepped foot on campus in 2011, SJSU men’s basketball was in fact changing – or so it seemed. Head coach George Nessman was rewarded with a three-year extension after SJSU won two games in the WAC conference tournament and made its first postseason since 1996.
With SJSU’s all-time leading scorer in Adrian Oliver and all-time assists leader Justin Graham graduating, a step back was expected.
It didn’t seem as if the 15-year gap in postseason appearances from the 1996 NCAA Tournament appearance to the 2011 CBI would unravel.
“It felt like Nessman had things in the right place at the right time and had a little momentum and things were trending the right way,” said Graham.
The follow up seasons were forgettable for SJSU – they won nine games in back-to-back seasons leading to Nessman’s firing in 2013 – and for Miyagishima, too.
Miyagishima applied to SJSU based on a suggestion from his dad Glenn – a third degree black belt – who competed against SJSU’s storied judo team while attending Long Beach State.
“I didn’t even know where San Jose was,” admitted the Southern California native, but it was more appealing than going to a local community college or CSU Northridge.
The summer before stepping foot on campus, Miyagishima connected with SJSU point guard Chris Jones while interning at a training academy called Impact Basketball and was introduced to the idea of being a student manager.
“I would show up when I showed up. I wasn’t very dedicated at the time,” Miyagishima says sheepishly.
Miyagishima decided to “take a step back” after his freshman year and went back.
“Coming to Northern California, as a 17 year old kid, was interesting to say the least,” recalled Miyagishima.
“Your parents aren’t there with a home cooked meal and you’re kind of just figuring it out. I wasn’t the greatest student, but school was a little hard too.”
It’s understandable having difficulty being a full-time college student while tending to the hours and travel schedule required for a student manager.
However, it’s unimaginable to think Miyagishima wasn’t dedicated to SJSU men’s basketball.
When he came back to SJSU a year later after going back home and enrolling in community college classes, his vision for helping SJSU men’s basketball was born and life plan became clear. Also, helped by the excitement for SJSU’s transition into the Mountain West under first-year head coach Dave Wojcik.
“I came to the realization I want to be in this business,” said Miyagishima. “So I was like, I’m gonna dedicate myself more, I’m going to make sure all my academic schedules are online classes, so I can spend time in the office and around the coaches, stuff like that.”
He laughed while remembering the nights spent breaking up tide pods and tossing them into hotel bathtubs then hanging the garb up to dry in the wee hours of the morning.
Or the times spent as a glorified hallway monitor on road trips.
“Me and the other manager would be out there until like 2 a.m., 4 a.m. just making sure no guys leave their rooms,” said Miyagishima.
The losing didn’t make it any easier, SJSU went 1-35 in Mountain West play after joining the conference, but friendships made along the way with fellow student managers and backup players did.
“We still talk frequently, we have a group chat and I send clips of Ivor Basor getting dunked on at Wyoming all the time as a joke,” said Miyagishima.
When the 2016-17 season kicked off, Miyagishima, now a head manager, saw his vision for what the program could be taking off under Wojcik.
The Spartans celebrated a 14-16 record, after winning just 11 games combined in the prior two seasons while Brandon Clarke was emerging as a star. He broke school records, helped lead SJSU to an upset over powerhouse San Diego State and the most conference wins (seven) since the 1995-96 season.
Those familiar with SJSU know that this would be the peak and the end of the Wojcik era as he resigned in July of 2017 and Clarke transferred to Gonzaga.
Before Wojcik resigned, he told Miyagishima that he was going to be promoted to general assistant, his first paid position while attending SJSU. But now that Wojcik was gone, he didn’t know if he’d still get the position when Jean Prioleau took over in 2017.
Unsure of his role, former director of basketball operations Ryan Cooper told him to keep showing up everyday over the summer.
“Eventually I had a conversation with Prioleau like, ‘Hey, the deal was with Wojcik I was going to be a GA [general assistant], can I be a volunteer video coordinator? Something like that. And he said, ‘Sure.’”
A year later after Cooper left, Miyagishima was officially named SJSU’s director of basketball operations, but with SJSU being short-staffed he was still doing managerial work.
“I’m all about whatever role you give me, I’ll make sure I do to the best of my capabilities,” said Miyagishima. “Just to make sure that we’re heading in the right direction.”
Under Prioleau, SJSU remained in the dregs and never moved in a winning direction.
The Spartans didn’t win more than seven games a campaign during Prioleau’s four seasons as head coach and he was fired in spring of 2021.
“All these kids work hard to want to win, right? You see them put the work in, day in and day out,” said Miyagishiama. “Every year, you know, it doesn’t matter who’s in the uniform, right? And it sucks to watch that for them.”
Since arriving in 2011, Miyagishima watched SJSU go 61-205 and only saw one season with at least 10 wins.
Through it all, his gut feeling that a change was coming remained.
“When football won the Mountain West Championship [in 2020], that was amazing,” said Miyagishima, “That was a moment where you kind’ve realized it can be done.”
Sure it was belief, but belief without proof is what some might call delusion.
That proof eventually came in April of 2021 when Miyagishima found out through Twitter that SJSU hired program fixer-upper Tim Miles to become its next head coach.
“You immediately think, ‘this is what San Jose State needed.’ Great energy, great person, but obviously, this is me from the outside looking in before I knew coach Miles,” said Miyagishima.
With Miles’ track record of flipping programs at every level of college basketball, it was SJSU’s best coaching hire since Miyaiashima arrived.
However, with SJSU’s downtrodden identity and losing tendencies there’s no guarantee history wouldn’t repeat itself.
“If you ever go into our locker room, he’s [Miles] got his pyramid in there. Right? ‘Building blocks of what it takes to be a successful program,’” Miyagishima recalled. “He’s come in, set his culture. Let the guys know, this is how we’re going to operate.”
The culture might’ve changed, but the results didn’t in the first year as SJSU finished 8-23, but Miyagishima kept faith in both his gut and Miles knowing SJSU was operating with a roster riddled by injuries.
It wasn’t until summer workouts when SJSU added transferees sophomore Robert Vaihola (Fresno State) and Sage Tolbert (grad transfer from Temple) and returners matured when Miyagishima started to see it come together.
His gut-feeling began to match reality, starting with SJSU’s best non-conference record (9-4) since 1981 which included an upset over crosstown rival Santa Clara.
“I’ve always expected that … there wasn’t like, ‘Oh, all of a sudden, there was none of that,’” Miyagishima said. “I was like, ‘Wait till people see us in action and start playing games.'”
His reaction to what he’s long wished for, but never received is more relief than jubilation.
“It’s about damn time.”
“[Trent] Miyagishima applied to SJSU based on a suggestion from his dad Glenn – a third degree black belt – who competed against SJSU’s storied judo team while attending Long Beach State”–did someone formally introduce Trent to San Jose State judo coach Yosh Uchida during the young man’s freshman year?