Oregon Institute of Technology’s season is over, but the Hustlin’ Owls junior guard and Kohala graduate Brandon Bautista had a year to remember.
The 5-foot-7 point guard was named to the Cascade Collegiate Conference All-Conference team this season. Bautista averaged 10.1 points a game and was fifth in the NAIA in assist-to-turnover ratio, averaging more than five assists per game. He was 12th in the NAIA in total assists with 164.
Bautista’s top performance of the season came against Eastern Oregon University on Dec. 21. The guard shot 9-of-10 from the field, including 5-of-6 from the 3-point line, racking up 27 points in the contest.
Bautista was an all-state selection and three-time Big Island Interscholastic Federation Division II Player of the Year while at Kohala. He helped the Cowboys win three consecutive BIIF championships from 2006 to 2009.
Kohala junior guard Kealen Figueroa was recently named the 2014 BIIF Division II player of the year and credited Bautista with setting a good example and showing him how to be successful on and off the court.
“I’ve looked up to him. It never occurred to me that I would do what he did,” Figueroa told Stephens Media Hawaii. “When he was a senior, I was in my seventh-grade year and I used to go to all the Kohala games and go over to his house and talk story about basketball and life. He would tell me that you have to give 100 percent in everything you do. If you do work hard, you will go places in life.”
Oregon Tech’s season ended with a loss in the Cascade Conference semifinals to College of Idaho, 77-57. Bautista had seven points and played only 13 minutes, well below his season average of 32 minutes per game.
Bautista had Big Island company in the locker room. Tyler Van Kirk, a 2012 graduate of Hawaii Preparatory Academy, finished his freshman season with the Owls. He played in 19 games, averaging more than five minutes per game.
Bautista is majoring in manufacturing engineering technology, Van Kirk in biology.