Jordan Hughes is a beacon of hope amid the carnage of a 10-game losing streak for the Werribee Devils in the Big V basketball men’s championship division.
Related: Werribee Devils a chance to turn it around
The young guard has lived up to the challenge of taking the reins of a struggling team and was recognised for his work on a league-wide scale with player of the month honours for April.
“It was a real good honour,” Hughes said. “I was up against some pretty stiff competition.
“There’s good players in the league that are putting up some big numbers so it was good to be recognised. But it’s obviously no substitute for winning games.”
Hughes has turned it on in a variety of categories.
The 23-year-old from Werribee is averaging 21.1 points, seven rebounds, 3.2 assists and 1.4 steals per game for the season. To top it off, he is shooting a confident 35 per cent from beyond the three-point arc.
It is the rebounds that show that he is not afraid to get among the tall timber in the paint to earn his possessions.
“It’s not great to hone yourself in one area of basketball – you’ve got to be able to do a lot of different things,” Hughes said.
“I’ve got good anticipation of where the ball is going to go off rebounds, so it’s probably a strength of mine.”
Hughes is no stranger to being in charge of running a team’s offence. He did it right through juniors and even when making his way through the senior grades.
The transition from a division 1 player to the championship was the biggest step in his career to date. Three years in, he is showing he is comfortable at the higher level.
“I’ve always felt like I belonged but now I think I’m proving it with the way I’m playing,” Hughes said.
Hughes has been a Devil since his junior days. He left the club for one season to play for the Melbourne Tigers juniors but quickly returned home.
The next time he departs the Ballan Road club, he wants it to be to a higher level, with South East Australian Basketball League basketball on the menu and the National Basketball League still a dream he wants to live.
“I want to play SEABL eventually,” Hughes said. “Whenever that will be, I’m not 100 per cent sure at the moment but I definitely do [want to] because I know I am capable.
“If I can even get a shot at the NBL, I’d certainly take it. The SEABL is one [league] under the NBL and if you can play well and put up numbers in that, teams will probably come calling.
“The job for me is once I get in there just to do as well as I can and hopefully make it happen.”
A topical sidebar to the Hughes story is that he is coached by his dad, Mark.
Father-son coach-player relationships have been put in the spotlight by Doc and Austin Rivers at the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers.
Hughes admits it might look strange to an outsider to see a father coaching his son in senior basketball but it’s a non-issue for him and his teammates.
“It’s different but it’s something that I’m used to really,” he said.
“He did a fair bit of it in the juniors as well, so I’m certainly used to it now.
“It can be a bit testy at times, as you can imagine, but it’s fine.”
