Meet LC State’s leading scorer, Alton Hamilton

It was lunchtime on the first day of Lewis-Clark State’s new student orientation in fall 2023 when Porter Schulte asked Alton Hamilton if he could sit next to him.

Why did Schulte ask Hamilton specifically?

“He was tall, it was cool,” Schulte said. “I assumed he played basketball.”

Standing at 6-foot 8-inches, Hamilton is the tallest member of the LC State men’s basketball team alongside fellow 6-8 forward Josh Salguero.

Schulte’s hunch that Hamilton played basketball was correct and the two quickly became good friends. It wasn’t long before Schulte, a former basketball player at Bonners Ferry High School, became the Warriors’ student manager.

“He’s the tallest person I know,” Schulte said. “He’s also a sweet guy.”

A force on the court

Hamilton leads the Warriors in scoring (17.1 points per game), rebounds (9.7 per game) and blocks (18 total) this season.

However, when Hamilton arrived in Lewiston his freshman year, the Fontana, Calif., native and Etiwanda High School alum was out of shape.

“Didn’t come in his freshman year in like the best of shape and he knew that, and so he worked his tail off to get better,” LC State junior guard John Lustig said. “Once he got his body right, it (was) over.”

Hamilton began his college career on the bench, playing no more than 15 minutes per game for the first four games of the 2023-24 season.

On Nov. 24, 2023, he hit double figures for the first time in his career with 17 points and 16 rebounds in 26 minutes. The Warriors won 75-67 over Montana Western.

LC State’s starting center at the time suffered an injury soon after, leading to Hamilton making his first career start against Northwest on Nov. 30, 2023 — an 83-72 LC State win in which the first-time starter scored 10 points.

Hamilton started the 27 remaining games of the season to finish with 11 points and 6.4 rebounds per game on his way to the 2024 Cascade Conference Freshman of the Year award.

In 2024-25, he has scored six more points and grabbed three more rebounds per game and was recently named to the Small College Basketball Bevo Francis Top 100 Watch List. His 17.1 points per game are second in the Cascade Conference.

“He’s a hard worker, great teammate,” Lustig said. “He’s always the loudest guy on the bench, one of the loudest guys in practice.”

Hamilton said his vocal leadership style reflects his extroverted personality.

It’s a trait LC State coach Austin Johnson loves to see and has encouraged Hamilton to take further.

“The steps that I need to take and work on more as a leader is not being afraid to call out people or set a higher bar for people,” Hamilton said. “Still working on that to this day.”

Hamilton posted no fewer than 17 points through the Warriors’ first eight contests this season.

Then, opponents began to double-team him and Hamilton saw his double-figure scoring nights decline.

He went four games with as few as five and no more than nine points per game before breaking back onto the scene with 22 points at Warner Pacific on Jan. 4.

Since then, Hamilton has scored as few as 11 but as many as 20 points. LC State has gone 1-3 over the last two weeks to slip to 13-5 overall and 8-4 in Cascade Conference play. The Warriors host Evergreen State (Olympia, Wash.) at 7 p.m. Friday at the P1FCU Activity Center.

“You’re not going to control whether shots go in or whether the other guy makes that shot that they took on you,” Hamilton said. “What you can control is your effort and how hard you go to practice and just being there for your teammates.”

While it has not been a perfect season for the Warriors, Hamilton said he believes in the guys in the gym and in himself.

“When your best player is not overly emotional, when your best player has a big picture perspective, it really helps kind of settle down and calm down the other guys,” Johnson said.

Hamilton said that Johnson’s coaching style leads to blunt and honest feedback which leaves no room for excuses.

“Coaching in college is a crazy business. It’s a wild way to make a living, but when you get to coach kids like Alton ... you feel like your time is being redeemed and your effort is being redeemed,” Johnson said. “Very appreciative of him and his parents. His parents have let us coach him and coach him hard and be away from home.”

Lustig, who earned conference Freshman of the Year honors the year prior to Hamilton, said that he and Hamilton spent the summer working out in Lewiston.

Based on the work that he saw his fellow Freshman of the Year put in entering Year 2, Lustig has not been surprised with how well he has played.

“I could tell how much better he was getting, and so I knew he was gonna have a great year,” Lustig said. “I wasn’t as surprised as some people.”

Lustig said that he and his teammates can confidently run their offense through Hamilton, passing him the ball in the block for him to either hit a layup or kick the ball back to the outside.

When that’s working, the Warriors are winning.

“I want to win a national championship,” Hamilton said. “I want to go as far as possible with L-C … I think a lot of guys share that desire with me.”

“A sweet guy”

Schulte and Hamilton moved in with several teammates over the summer, including Lustig, Grayson Hunt and Taden King.

They live a short walk away from campus and host team gatherings.

When they’re not focusing on basketball or studying, the five like to play Brawlhalla, a platform fighting game on the XBOX, or cook meals, like chili dogs, together.

Lustig said the first thing that he and his teammates noticed about Hamilton was that he was going to be great to hang out with.

“It wasn’t really like the basketball stuff. It was just like, how nice he was,” Lustig said. “You could tell how he was a hard worker too.”

Hamilton said that he has appreciated the family and community he has built in Lewiston, especially Schulte for befriending him early on.

The two are not afraid to engage in frequent debates either. Both said that Schulte typically wins these arguments.

“That’s one of the biggest parts of having a real friendship, is being comfortable in your own skin and the other person being that same way, because that just builds trust,” Hamilton said. “He was a genuine person who wanted to be my friend.”

Meet Mr. Hamilton

Hamilton aspires to play pro basketball and to be an English teacher after his athletic career.

He is an education major and is the LC State Association of Student Athletes’ vice president.

“I think it’s very important to have people advocating for you, and I feel like that’s what we do as ASA, is we listen to what the student athletes need and what they desire, and we try and communicate that to the higher-ups.”

He is also a public face for LC State, attending the Cascade Collegiate Conference meetings and donating toiletries that student-athletes had collected to those in need over the summer when fire ravaged many surrounding communities.

Hamilton said he attributes much of who he is to his family. His father Alton is a California Highway Patrolman, and his mother, Jill, is a T-Mobile manager.

“My dad’s a very deep thinker and a big talker, so he challenges me to see things from multiple perspectives, and that’s allowed me to try and understand other people’s thoughts and emotions, and want to do that which makes me more of a people person,” Hamilton said “My mom is a little bit more on the emotional side, and has always told me to not push that part of myself down, which I feel like has helped me to be that friend and to be that teammate that can see if something’s going wrong.”

Hamilton’s desire to teach is inspired by the teachers, coaches and mentors he had growing up.

“There’s a lot of people who aren’t as fortunate as I am to have family and friends and coaches that are good mentors and role models for them,” Hamilton said. “Teaching is an easy way for me to be that for somebody else.”

Taylor can be reached at 208-848-2268, staylor@lmtribune.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @Sam_C_Taylor.