The first thing to notice about Ryan Andino when he stepped back onto the Hytche Athletic Center court this fall – other than a body that had shed 20 pounds in the offseason – was the brand-new digit on his jersey. For three years he had been "Agent Zero" for Maryland Eastern Shore men's basketball, knocking down key threes for some of the best Hawk teams of this generation. Now, the fifth-year senior guard was taking up the visual mantle of the role he was expected to play in his final season: No. 1.
 
"That number has always been a special number to me," said Andino during a recent interview on Hawk Talk. "In high school I was number one. When I first came here my freshman year, I wanted to be number one, but they didn't have the number available. So I took number zero, and I had a lot of success with zero. So when I wanted to switch, everybody was like, 'Why do you want to switch?' But that number's always had a lot of meaning to me."
 
After shaking off the rust that came from a year lost to a shoulder injury, Andino has battled to embody that No. 1 role for the Hawks early this season. His 12.0 points per game rank just outside the top 10 in the MEAC, and he is once again one of the top volume three-point shooters in the NCAA, rising up nearly 10 times per game from beyond the arc. With 108 points to his name already in 2018-19, Andino stands at 974 total points, just 26 shy of 1,000 for his career.
 
Andino's breakout stretch came in late November. After a lackluster pre-Thanksgiving road trip, the Fort Lauderdale native poured in a season-high 26 in Eastern Shore's Nov. 24 win over Central Penn. Three days later at St. John's, Andino knocked down 8-of-15 three-point attempts for 24 points, fueling the Hawks' strong finish and winning over the Queens crowd and a national TV audience on FS1.
 
"He is absolutely the best shooter that I've ever coached," said Hawks interim head coach Cliff Reed. "He's missed a year, and his timing is off, but he's worked hard in practice and before and after practice to get his mechanics right. He is 'The Guy,' as opposed to being the second or the third guy, so defenses play him differently. He has also had to adjust to a new coach, and what we're running, and all those things."
 
"It's been a little adjustment, but me and Coach Reed came [to Eastern Shore] together, and I was familiar with how he was going to coach, so I mentally prepared myself for how he wanted to do things," said Andino.
 
Andino got his start in basketball at age four when his father George took him to play in local YMCA recreational leagues around Fort Lauderdale. Over time he rose to the upper echelon of youth basketball in the state, playing for Florida Gold Coast and Florida Family in the AAU and earning First-Team All-Broward County honors at Cardinal Gibbons High School.
 
"Around freshman and sophomore year of high school I started getting college looks, and I was like, 'Wow, maybe I could do something with this,'" said Andino. "That was the point where I realized I could do something with this sport."
 
A partially torn patella tendon chased off the half-dozen colleges that courted Andino out of Cardinal Gibbons, so he enrolled in prep school at Fishburne Military School in Waynesboro, Va., taking the 2013-14 year to refine his skills and learn self-discipline. Andino's coach at Fishburne was Ed Huckaby, a future assistant at Maryland Eastern Shore and good friend of then-incoming Hawks head coach Bobby Collins.
 
"Eastern Shore came into the picture because of [that connection]," said Andino, who had other offers from Mount St. Mary's and Central Connecticut State after his postgrad season. "I made a phone call, came up here for my visit, weighed all my options out, and just felt that Eastern Shore would be the best fit for me, and I think I made the right decision."
 
From the outset Andino was an impact player on the court in Princess Anne. Adding a spark of youth to a veteran-heavy 2014-15 squad, Andino earned MEAC Rookie of the Year honors, leading the conference in three-point shooting (42.1 percent) and chipping in 7.1 points per game for a Hawk team that finished 18-15, their first winning season in 21 years.
 
"We were a really old team, and those guys really wanted to win," said Andino of that breakout freshman year. "Guys like Mike Myers and Ishaq Pitt, they did a great job taking me under their wing and showing me the right way to do things. They bought in, everybody bought in, and it really helped me watching those guys."
 
After remaining a top option off the bench as a sophomore, Andino got his first licks in the permanent starting lineup as a junior in 2016-17. He doubled his shot and scoring output, averaging 13.0 points per game to finish second on the team. Andino eclipsed 20 points seven times that season, including a 27-point breakout in front of 10,000-plus at Wichita State and a career-high 31 points, including nine three-pointers, in a MEAC-opening win at North Carolina A&T State. Thanks in part to Andino's scoring prowess, the Hawks finished 9-7 in league play and advanced to their first MEAC semifinal since 1994.
 
"I knew I had been here longer than anybody, so you have to be a leader," said Andino. "You have to accept that leadership role, all the coaches challenged me, and I was up for the challenge. I realized I had to come out and produce for us to be successful, so I just tried to do my best every night and score the ball for my team."
 
Expectations were high for Andino going into 2017-18, complete with a Preseason Second-Team All-MEAC selection to boot. All that came to a halt, though, when he sustained a shoulder injury during preseason practice. It would cost him the entire year.
 
"A million things were going through my mind," said Andino. "I just thought, 'Man, this was my year.' But then I felt, 'God has a plan,' so I left it in God's hands, and I tried to look for the good in every situation, and it helped me get my mind right."
 
After flirting with transferring away as a graduate student, Andino recommitted to the Hawk program once Reed took the reins last March.
 
"I felt like I was very comfortable here," said Andino. "I was here for four years, I built relationships with a lot of people, and it's hard to let that go. You're comfortable in a certain situation. So pretty much, I trust Coach Reed a lot, and I decided to come back for him. He was a big part of that."
 
"He looked forward to coming back, and he's put a lot of work in," said Reed. "I think he's a sleek, good-looking young fella. You see the work coming to fruition. He'll continue to work, and he'll get his milestone, but we want to have some W's behind that.
 
"I think he'll relish it and enjoy it more if we're coming off a really good year."
 
Now, new look and all, No. 1 is on the cusp of joining the 1K Club, likely to reach the plateau in one of the team's four games before Christmas. He would become just the 10^th Hawk to score 1,000 points at Maryland Eastern Shore, and the first since Tee Trotter in the early 2000s.
 
"It means a lot. A whole lot, you know," said a reflective Andino. "Not a lot of people get to say they scored a thousand points in college. So for me to be able to be blessed enough to accomplish a milestone like that, it's going to mean a lot.
 
"All the blood, sweat, and tears that I put into this game, and here at The Shore, to be in that class of a thousand points, it means a whole lot to me."
 
"He came back because he felt like he would flourish for this staff," summarized Reed after Andino's marquee performance at St. John's. "He was committed to us, so I told him, 'Let it fly. The next shot is your best shot.'"
 
Andino will get his latest crack at etching his name into school history when the Hawks visit Duquesne on Thursday night. Tipoff is set for 7:00 p.m. with pregame coverage on The Shore Sports Network – SFMSports.net and Fox Sports 960 AM in Salisbury – beginning at 6:45.