Manuel

CORVALLIS — Until just about a month ago, Kendal Manuel had plans to head to a college preparatory school this fall.

An NCAA Division I men’s basketball scholarship offer had not yet materialized, and a year working on his game looked like the best chance to make that happen.

Oregon State was high on the wish list for Manuel, a 6-foot-4 guard from Skyview High in Billings, Montana. Beavers coach Wayne Tinkle had recruited him for nearly three years, and Manuel played with Tinkle’s son, Tres, an incoming Oregon State freshman, on an AAU team the previous two summers.

But the Beavers did not have a scholarship to offer. That was, until Victor Robbins was dismissed from the team in early June following a suspension that stretched through the final 16 games of last season.

Manuel visited Oregon State in mid-June hoping for an offer for 2016. Instead, he went home having accepted a scholarship for the coming season.

“I’m at the spot I wanted to be, playing for the coach I wanted to play for with the guys I want to be with. It’s a blessing to be here,” Manuel said last week, a few days after arriving on campus for the long haul.

In Manuel and Tres Tinkle, the Beavers landed the top two players out of Montana for the 2015 class.

Manuel led Skyview High to the Class AA state title last spring while averaging 19.7 points, 5.6 rebounds and 3.9 assists. He turned up his game this past AAU season, drawing increased attention from Oregon State and other Division I schools. Those others, like OSU initially, were looking at Manuel as a 2016 recruit.

“Coaches aren’t going to go out of their way to go watch some kids in Montana,” Manuel said. “That just doesn’t happen. Playing AAU basketball, that helped so much because it could put me out there in front of those coaches.”

Wayne Tinkle was the first to recruit Manuel, going back to his freshman year of high school. Manuel and his Skyview team attended Tinkle’s camp in Missoula, and the youngster caught the coach’s eye.

“The job isn’t done because I didn’t have a scholarship offered, but my hard work was paying off,” Manuel said. “It was a sign that I just had to keep working harder so that I could have more interest coming in. That’s what I continued to do, is just work hard.”

Soon after he was hired at Oregon State in May 2014, Tinkle called Manuel to let him know he would continue to recruit him.

That meant a lot to Manuel, knowing he was still in the picture even though Tinkle had moved on to a bigger school.

Tinkle saw Manuel continue to improve and blossom this past spring at the AAU level. With a scholarship available, Tinkle thought it would work just as well to have Manuel at Oregon State for the coming year as opposed to sending him to a prep school.

“We feel like we’re getting a young diamond in the rough, so to speak,” the coach said. “At the end of the day, we’re like, ‘We need guys that can make shots.’”

Manuel’s climb up the basketball ladder has allowed him to join a list of successful players in his family.

His father, Paulo Manuel, played at Rocky Mountain College in Montana and on the national team of Mozambique, where he was born. Kendal’s aunt, Clarisse Machanguana, played collegiately for Old Dominion and reached the Final Four, where she was named to the all-tournament team. Paulo’s mother, Kody Hert, was also a good player.

But it is Manuel’s extended family in Mozambique, where Kendal spent a few years early in life, that provides his true motivation. He often receives calls and texts from them, reminding him of their pride in him and their excitement about his new possibilities.

“I wanted to maximize my ability and try to do the best I could to get to this level,” he said, “because I know that’s exactly what they would want to do with this opportunity.”