When Vic Searls entered the transfer portal last spring, one school stuck to the front of his mind, a school that he already had so many ties to before ever stepping foot on campus: Ohio.
Searls, a 6-foot-9 graduate transfer from Hilliard, Ohio, played high school basketball at St. Charles, just over an hour from the university where his dad was a manager on a men’s basketball team featuring current Ohio coach Jeff Boals.
“Basketball has always been a big thing (in my family) because of my dad,” Searls said. “He was a manager here at OU when coach Boals was on the team, so he brought me and my brother up … around basketball, watching basketball, playing basketball.”
Growing up about 20 minutes from Columbus, where Boals was an assistant coach for Thad Matta’s Ohio State team from 2009-2016, that relationship stayed strong. Along with the Boals family, including the son of Jeff Boals and walk-on at Ohio, Chase Boals, Searls also had a friendship with Ohio’s All-MAC forward AJ Clayton dating back to high school.
Coming out of Ashland, it wasn’t initially Jeff Boals who found Searls, but the connection certainly helped cement his eventual commitment, which was announced March 24.
“Coach (Kyle) Barlow is actually the one that saw me in the portal … but then once Coach Boals and my dad started talking, there was obviously a connection there,” Searls said. “AJ Clayton was here with me on my visit … (and) Chase was from Columbus. Already knowing so many people here just made it a good environment for me.”
Searls' four years at Ashland were more than enough to earn him a spot on an NCAA Division I roster. In his junior and senior seasons with Ashland, an NCAA Division II program, Searls earned All-Great Midwest Athletic Conference second team. In his senior season, Searls averaged 15.4 points on 68.0% from the field, along with 7.5 rebounds per game.
Although not nearly the same stage as Division I, Searls’ time and patience at Ashland paid dividends.
“My recruitment out of high school was kind of weird,” Searls said. “It was mostly Division III’s but Ashland was the only Division II that offered me a scholarship so I decided to go there. My first years, I didn’t really play much, but I developed with the help of the coaches there.”
That development was key for Searls, whose playstyle has also changed, much like his path through the world of college basketball. Searls is now a reliable back-to-the-basket scorer, who sets hard screens and does the dirty work on the boards, but it wasn’t always that way.
“When I was little, I was a guard, because everyone’s a guard that loves basketball when they’re little,” Searls said. “Especially since high school, I’ve really been working on developing as a post player … they know their stuff about post-play at my high school and that really got me off on the right track.”
In an alternate universe, this development was done at Ohio. Searls considered walking on to the team straight out of high school, which is a familiar path with players who have ties to Jeff Boals. Chase Boals is an obvious example; he walked on with aspirations to join his father’s coaching staff. Former walk-on redshirt sophomore Ben Estis is the son of Chad Estis, who played on the same Ohio team as Jeff Boals, which was coincidentally the same team Searls’ father helped manage.
Regardless of when Searls arrived on campus, he will now look to play a key role on the Mid-American Conference’s projected top seed; an Ohio team that already has the footprints of a family legacy etched into its home-court floorboards.
