Coach’s Take: Iowa Intensity 17U (Part I)
For several years now, Iowa Intensity’s 2018 group has been establishing themselves as one of the best grassroots teams in all of Iowa. At first, they were a surprise team, then they became somewhat of a sensation, by the end of last spring — especially after their defeat of a stacked Martin Bros 17U — it was clear that the team was indeed an elite one in Iowa. We’ve written plenty about the guys on that squad, and Garrett Sturtz and Zaine Leedom are among the highest-rated guys in the 2018 class. Here, we start a series that gives Intensity founder and 17U head coach Chris Hansen a chance to sound-off about his guys.
Tanner Foster, 6’4 F (Lynnville-Sully)
“He’s got a lot of height, and I’d say his main strength is his shooting ability from the outside. Probably his best game of the year would have been against the Martin Brothers; we tried and make him a mismatch, so he could use his shooting ability and he was able to do that to bring us back and eventually win that game. Ont thing that I’ve worked on him with is getting after on more of defense. I know that’s one thing that he could use some improvement on, so he’s been working on that. He’ll be a big asset to the Lynnville-Sully team. He came from Grinnell a year ago and switched over to Lynnville-Sully. And he probably would have been one of the better Grinnell players had he stayed there. But he thought that Lynnville-Sully was a better fit for him.”
Brevin Hansen, 5’10 G (Lynnville-Sully)
“I would say one thing that makes him good and what helped our team most is he brings energy and heart every time he goes out there, in games or practice. And he’s kind of a gym rat, which kind of influenced the other players to be gym rats too, I thought. And that’s a reason why we were a good team because we could handle the ball and shoot well. We didn’t always have the height, but because the kids got in the gym a lot, we were able to hang with those really good teams. The reason I started the program was because of Brevin. He started with Kingdom Hoops back in 4th and 5th grade and then in 6th-grade we just started our own thing; mainly because we didn’t want to do all of that driving, and we knew we had some good players around the area that we could put a team together with. Brevin was always known as a good outside shooter, and he’s been working hard at becoming better off the dribble, and he’s an unselfish player too. He could try and score a lot more, but always keeps a team attitude, and was instrumental in helping Lynnville-Sully get to state last year.”
Zaine Leedom, 6’4 SF (East Marshall)
“He’s almost like a son to me, I’ve worked with him a lot over the years. He’s ultra-athletic, I think his vertical is something like 35 inches or something crazy. He’s got long arms and can handle the ball and shoot outside. We’ll put him in the post if he’s got a height mismatch, and he blocks shots, he’s got great timing on those things. He’ll usually block a few shots early in the game, and they’ll start thinking twice before trying to shoot over him. I think between him and a couple other guys on the Intensity team, East Marshall will have a really good shot at being down at Wells Fargo Arena next year. I think he’s been talking to Wayne State a little bit, I’m not sure if there’s any others at this point, but there’s definitely some D2 interest with Zaine.”