Kroner's Corner Season 2: The Hawke is Soarin' Again

Photo by: SMC Athletics / Piper Westrom

Kroner's Corner Season 2: The Hawke is Soarin' Again

1/7/2026 12:00:00 PM | Men's Basketball

With less than 10 seconds left in a 73-73 game at LMU's Gersten Pavilion on Dec. 28, Saint Mary's guard Josh Dent drove down the right side of the lane.

Dent found Dillan Shaw in the left corner. Shaw, who had connected on four 3-pointers in the game, took one dribble and then fed Rory Hawke, who was open at the top of the key. Hawke had gone 1-for-9 from beyond the arc this season to that point, but he didn't hesitate.

The redshirt freshman drained the trey with 3.2 seconds remaining and that go-ahead bucket helped lift the Gaels to a 78-73 victory in their WCC opener.

"In the moment, it's like a blur. It just happens," Hawke said in a recent interview at UCU Pavilion. "You're just happy that you can make a play to help win the game, but after a little bit of time, you sort of reflect and you get a lot of notifications on your phone from family and friends saying how cool it was.
"It was kind of a cool moment, and you don't get many of those in your career, so you have to really cherish that."

Considering how long it took Hawke simply to get on the court for the Gaels after playing a mere six games over 2-1/2 seasons, he cherished that dramatic 3-pointer probably even more than most players would.

Hawke came from Australia to Moraga in the middle of the 2022-23 season, but he was dealing with a shoulder injury and wound up redshirting. He played sparingly over six games in the early portion of the 2023-24 season and in that sixth game, a 69-67 double-overtime win over UNLV in Phoenix on Dec. 16, he suffered a torn ACL in his left knee.

Thus began his long odyssey to resume playing for the Gaels. He had surgery a few weeks after he was injured and was told the rehab process would take nine to 12 months.

That extended time away from competition can wear on any athlete in any sport.

"People like to say they had no doubts" while rehabbing, Hawke said, "but yeah, I definitely had some doubts. The rehab is long.

"Early, you can't really move your knee too much. You're very limited."

Hawke said he focused on three-month intervals during his rehab. He couldn't do much the first three months. The next three provided hope and discouragement.

"It's very monotonous and repetitive rehab," Hawke said. "You might do the same thing in rehab for a few weeks, and you might not see progress. It might be a plateau, or you even regress a little bit.
"Some doubts can creep into your mind."

As he got into the seventh-to-ninth-month stretch, Hawke did his best to keep a positive outlook.

"At that point, you've just got to look at the little wins. When you first run, that's a big win," he said. "And even getting back to on-court stuff, like dribbling up the court or shooting jump shots, things like that. Little wins like that help you overcome the doubts."

The 12-month-recovery time frame would have put Hawke back on the court approximately when the Gaels began conference play in late December of last season. However, he still wasn't feeling properly healed at that point, so head coach Randy Bennett and Hawke decided that he would continue to sit out for the remainder of that season.

"Here we are, a redshirt freshman," Hawke bemusedly said about himself.

His determination to rejoin the active roster this season impressed his teammates.

"Rory's a dawg," said Liam Campbell, a redshirt freshman swingman. "He's one of the hardest workers I've ever met."

Junior forward Paulius Murauskas called Hawke one of the leaders on the team – quite a compliment for someone who has played in only 23 games over the course of, effectively, three seasons.

Bennett compared Hawke's leadership abilities to those of a former SMC guard from Australia whose No. 4 hangs in the rafters at UCU Pavilion.

"He's wired like (Matthew) Dellavedova. He's that guy," Bennett said of Hawke. "He is doing everything he can to be a good player. He's an awesome teammate. His lead-by-example skills are great."

Hawke said he has tried to follow in the leadership footsteps of some of his teammates from recent seasons, from Logan Johnson, Kyle Bowen and Alex Ducas to Luke Barrett, Mitchell Saxen and Augustas Marciulionis.

"Picking up a bit from each of those guys," has helped, Hawke said. "I know what it's like to be on winning teams. I try to lead by example around the group: in the locker room, in the weight room, during practice."

Hawke has appeared in all 17 games this season, including a stretch from late November to mid-December in which he started four consecutive times. He had a season-high 11 points in a 78-57 romp over Portland on Friday and has made 13 of his 14 free-throw tries.

His teammates believe Hawke barely has scratched the surface of what he can do for the Gaels.

"We know what he's capable of because we see it in practice," Campbell said. "So now that he's able to do it in the games, we're all ready for it. Everyone in Moraga, they need to get ready for it."

Hawke said, "I'm in a good place now where I know what my role is: come off the bench and provide some energy and a bit of leadership as well."

Shortly thereafter – perhaps reflecting on his signature moment at Gersten Pavilion – Hawke added, "And hit a few shots if they come to me."

Steve Kroner has covered Bay Area sports for more than four decades, mainly at KPIX-TV (Channel 5) and the San Francisco Chronicle. He is in his second season working as an analyst alongside Brian Brownfield on SMC men's basketball telecasts on ESPN+.