Sharpshooting JC point guard Ahmed Ali signs with Washington State basketball team

PULLMAN – Ernie Kent continues to fill his Washington State roster with junior college talent as the 2018-19 basketball season approaches.

On Sunday, sharpshooting point guard Ahmed Ali of Eastern Florida State College announced he’d signed a letter of intent with the Cougars, making him the fourth junior college addition of this class and the seventh on Washington State’s roster.

Ali (5-11, 165) is a native of Toronto, Ontario, and spent his last two seasons at EFSC in Bervard County, Florida, where he became one of the most accurate perimeter shooters in the country. He helped lead the Titans to the semifinal round and a third-place finish at the NJCAA Division I National Tournament and grabbed second-team All-American honors after scoring 17.9 points per game – on 40 percent from 3-point range – to go with 4.7 assists per game and 3.1 rebounds per game as a sophomore.

EFSC made the national title game Ali’s freshman season, when he started in 34 of 35 games and scored 15.9 ppg and had 4.9 apg. Ali shot 45 percent from beyond the arc in 2016-17.

Ali’s penchant for scoring the basketball is well-known in his home country. He’s one of just two Canadian high schoolers to have scored 100 points in a single game. Ali once scored 103, on 22 made 3-pointers.

Kent State signed Ali after his freshman season at EFSC and planned to join the Golden Flashes this fall, but the player was recently granted his release and instead chose to join the Cougars.

WSU has filled six of potentially seven available scholarships for the 2018-19 season. Six scholarship players from last year’s team have either left the program or graduated and the Cougars are waiting to see if junior forward Robert Franks pursues professional basketball or returns to Pullman for his senior season.