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By Devin Heroux - Sports Information Student Assistant

Saskatoon, Sask. - Barry Rawlyk's favorite colour must be green. After coaching the green and white Holy Cross Crusaders for 20 seasons, he now heads to another shade of green and white, this time with the University of Saskatchewan Huskies as the newest assistant coach. Huskies head coach Greg Jockims couldn't be more thrilled with this announcement as he is well aware of what Rawlyk has accomplished at the high school level.

"Barry has great amount of experience, success and knowledge; his Crusader program, under his guidance, became the envy of most other high school programs in the province. In addition to this, he has close ties with a lot of former Crusader players on our current roster. We expect that Barry will immediately impact the success of the Huskie program in a positive way."

A quick glance over Rawlyk’s resume shows a long list of achievements over the years, as well as a large amount of experience as a coach. Coaching experience includes working with a variety of BSI Provincial team programs, and the Basketball Canada Centre for Performance, as well as having extensive experience as a clinician at a variety of excellent summer basketball camps.

Having won 11 City Championship titles, three Provincial titles, as well as three BRIT (Bedford Road Invitational Tournament) titles puts Rawlyk in a category all by himself. While all the accomplishments are nice, Rawlyk still remains as humble as ever as he prepares to join the university ranks.

"It’s exciting for me and I look at this as a great opportunity. I will be able to work with elite level athletes as well as a quality coaching staff. Year in and year out Greg has found a way to make the Huskies competitive, so this will be a good chance for me to develop as a better coach."

One has to wonder however, how difficult it will be for Rawlyk to leave a school and a team that he watched grow and develop into an annual contender, to jump to the highest level of basketball in Saskatoon in the Huskies.

"This is a whole new level of play, and every player out here was an excellent high school basketball player; that said, I will have to tweak my strategies as a coach and really know what I want to bring to this team," says Rawlyk. "Not only is this going to be a great learning experience and a chance to reacquaint myself with players I coached before, but also with players I coached against; I’m really looking forward to it."

So while it won’t be the same on game night at Holy Cross high school without Barry Rawlyk patrolling the sidelines, fans of basketball in Saskatoon know that the Huskies just received a lot of help on their sidelines. One can only hope that the success Rawlyk enjoyed wearing Crusader green, will rub-off just a bit on Huskies green.

The Huskies went 23-20 overall this year, finishing third at the Canada West Final Four for the second straight season. The Huskies finished second in the Central Division standings before winning the Central Division Championship on the road against Alberta.

Saskatchewan can return eleven players from this year's team, including all five starters, in 2007-08. Guard Sam Lamontagne was the only fifth-year senior on the squad.