2020 RANKINGS: Take Five
2020 Rankings HERE
Valley Tigers
The future is very, very bright for the West Des Moines Valley Tigers. Not only do they have the state’s 3rd-ranked 2018, Blake Brinkemeyer, and two of the state’s top 15 2019s, with Trayvon Williams and Agueck Deng, but this initial 2020 installment is littered with their guys. Will Berg has a lot of buzz surrounding him right now, and the 6’8 forward checks in at No.5. Right behind him at No.6 is Braxton Bayless, a slashing point guard. Others on the list are Howard Pulley’s Jai Mukraj and Beyond Ball’s Jack Johnson. Other teams have multiple players (Ankeny Centennial and Waterloo West each have three), but not other team comes close to Valley in terms of 2020 clout right now.
Even Distribution at Top
With Xavier Foster remaining loyal to Pure Prep (presumably he was courted by several other grassroots programs), that program has its first-ever top-ranked player. And No.2, Zack Lasek belongs to Martin Brothers, a mainstay in the Iowa high school elite discussion. After that you got a pair of Barnstormers guys with Bowen Born and Even Brauns. Rounding out the top-5 is upstart program Beyond Ball’s Will Berg. Pushing it one rank further, we have an All Iowa Attack representative, Braxton Bayless, checking in a t No.6. Guys switch teams often in the grassroots world, and these guys could very well all be on the same team three years from now. But for now, we have relatively even distribution at the top.
Grassroots Breakdown
As we just noted, the distribution of grassroots teams at the very top of the rankings is pretty even. But how does it look throughout the top 50? Well, the Barnstormers reign supreme, but upstart programs like Beyond Ball and Pure Prep are really starting to make a mark — here’s the breakdown by grassroots team.
Barnstormers 11
Martin Brothers 6
All Iowa Attack 5
Beyond Ball, Mavericks 4
Kingdom Hoops, Pure Prep 3
Howard Pulley, Tryon Gym, 515 Elite, Quad City Elite 2
Iowa Prep, Sioux City Bombers, Central Iowa Young Guns 1
N/A 3
Clear-Cut No.1
Since 2014, when this website was launched, there’s been very few Iowa guys to receive several high-major Division I offers (Ryan Kriener comes to mind) and certainly no one has nabbed those offers before even playing in a high school game. It turns out that Oskaloosa’s 6’9 stretch-four was worthy of three high-major D1 offers (Iowa State, Iowa, Creighton), which he received the summer heading into his frosh season with the Indians. It was very clear then that he would be Iowa’s top-ranked 2020, and there’s a considerable gap between him and No.2. To put it into perspective, nobody else in the class of 2020 has even one offer from anyone (which isn’t abnormal for such a young group still), and Foster is sitting pretty already with three big ones.
And a Ways To Go
For the last 12 months we’ve been scouring gyms watching the class of 2020 whenever we got the opportunity; talking with high school coaches, grassroots coaches, parents and fans — and we feel like this is the best list we could have put out at this stage of these guys’ young careers. That said, it could be — and might be likely — that we’ll look back at this list in three years and laugh — at how wrong it was. There will be guys who emerge, and some of them may not bust out until they head into their senior seasons. Four months from now though, we’ll have an all new list, and there will be lots of shakeup. Three years from now, after leaving no stone unturned, we’ll have a comprehensive list of at least the best 150 prospects in this class, well-researched and accurate.