Meet Charles Callison: He is DaVonté Lacy’s replacement
When Charles Callison arrived at Washington State for his first summer workouts with his new team, he was a real pain. He didn’t treat the games like regular offseason runs where dunking was more important than defense –he got into guys.
He barked, he hand-checked and let his teammates know that he would be a fun person to play with, but never against.
“That was my first thing: never show that I’m intimidated,” Callison said. “They’re just like me; they’re human. I had to earn my respect and they had to earn my respect for them, so we just got after it.”
You have to hand it to Callison, he has a way of introducing himself. His first basket in a WSU uniform was a violent dunk that belied his 6-foot stature. Just a few minutes later, he got above the rim again, this time to hammer down a two-handed alley-oop dunk off a pass from Renard Suggs that didn’t fly all that close to the rim.
His aggressive nature on both ends of the floor reveals an intense desire to prove his worth on a basketball court. The sparkplug guard, who appears likely to be the Cougars starting point guard, was not heavily recruited out of Canyon Springs High or San Bernardino Valley College, where he played his first two college seasons.
California did take an interest in Callison, but he says that a workout for Golden Bears coach Cuonzo Martin fell through because of a shortage of basketballs and not much effort was made to reschedule.
“It didn’t seem like he was very interested in me, so I just rolled with coach Kent, who was very interested in me,” Callison said. “Calling me every day. Came to my house, which was a great blessing because I’d never had a college coach come to my house like that and speak to my family like that.”
DaVonté Lacy also felt that he should have been more highly recruited, and it burned the Tacoma native that hometown school Washington didn’t show any interest.
In Callison, WSU has another player with a chip on his shoulder, and that’s just fine with the Cougars.