Australians Add International Spice To Ohlone Basketball

The Ohlone College men’s basketball team has another hearty helping of Down Under this season. Renegades head coach Steve Kline is excited to have freshmen Australian newcomers Aidan Graham and Mitch Undy in the mix, describing them as great guys and tough competitors.

Graham, for one, has blended in just fine as he tinkers with his game.

“Just fiddling with the basketball and the play, it’s been really good, very different to Australia, but the culture is very similar to Australia, which is really, really cool,” Graham says.
Graham, of Brisbane, is a “strong rebounder” as an undersized post and the team’s No. 4 scorer at 7.2 points a game. Undy, of Mildura, a regional city in northwest Victoria, has a high basketball IQ and can play virtually every position. Josh Green, of Adelaide, is another Australian newcomer who hasn’t seen playing time due to an injury.
Ohlone has had at least two Australians on the roster in each of the past five years, thanks to former head coach Scott Fisher’s deep basketball ties in Australia. Fisher was inducted into Australia’s National Basketball League Hall of Fame in 2007.
Ohlone's Aussies are just fun to be around.
“Usually off the court they’re our nicest guys,” says Kline, in his first year as head coach after serving as Fisher's assistant for five years. “They’re very nice, good guys. You can have conversations with them. They’re happy go-lucky guys and then when they get on the court, they have a certain toughness to ’em.”
The Australians have been eagerly absorbing the culture as they bond with teammates and take in the sites. In Graham’s first week here, he and Green visited the Golden Gate Bridge, “which was pretty cool,” Graham says. “It was very chilly too. I forgot to bring (a sweater).”
“They call it exploring,” Kline says of the sightseeing trips. “When they first got here, they were all over the place. They went to A’s games, Giants games. They went to San Francisco, they went here, they went there, just kind of taking it all in.”
Ohlone (3-9) is still ironing things out in nonconference play, but the Renegades got a bit of a confidence-boost with a 79-64 win over Redwoods Dec. 16 to complete the Kris Kringle Invitational.
While Graham hails from a suburban area much like Fremont, Undy grew up in a more laidback town of 60,000 or 70,000, which borders three states.
“I live right on the Murray River, which is the biggest river in Australia,” Undy says. “Very country. Lots of grapevines, orange trees and all that type of stuff.”
Graham agrees that having other Aussies around helps them overcome homesickness.
“It’s nice having the boys here, how we talk and stuff,” Graham says. “Going around the restaurants and all the ‘tomato, tomato,’ and all the stuff. It doesn’t make me homesick as much.”
Graham, who has started 11 of the Ohlone’s first 12 games, is not to be taken lightly in the lane. Even still, he thinks he needs to push himself a bit harder.
“I’m a chill guy, love to have fun too, but on the court, I just need to change that and be way more gritty,” he says.
Undy is kind of like a Swiss Army Knife player who can do it all.
“He handles the ball pretty well, he kind of fills in the cracks,” Kline says. “If we need a rebound, he’s a rebounding guy. If we need some guy to pass the ball, he’s a pass guy. If we need somebody to score, he can do a little bit of that.”
A seasoned player, Undy competed against older guys, including Americans, regularly in a semi-professional league when he was 15 years old. So not much fazes him, but the athletic ability in community college play presents newfound challenges.
“Compared to guys my own age, the competition is a lot bigger, stronger and guys are just a whole lot more athletic,” Undy says. “Skills wise, it’s not a whole lot different.”
Graham’s decision to play in the United States began to formulate when, at the age of 15, he was touring and competing against high school teams in North Carolina and South Carolina.
“My love for the game just bloomed, and I just really wanted to play American ball,” he recalls.
Fisher then recruited Graham last year in Australia, which cemented his decision.
“We talked after my game and he said he really liked how I played, just my ability to shoot the ball,” Graham recalls. “He said, ‘Why don’t you come play for me for Ohlone.’”
And the rest is history.
The Aussies are having a ball in America.