Recruiting Report: Ben Carlson (2020)

East Ridge sophomore Ben Carlson had a standout 15u season with D1 Minnesota and has played himself onto the lists of schools around the country. Carlson’s eight month period of basketball from November to end of July (at East Ridge High and with D1 Minnesota 15u) included a lot of success for Carlson and his teams. “I had a lot of fun traveling across the country with my team,” Carlson said of playing with D1 Minnesota. “The highlight was going to Las Vegas where I got to play in front of a bunch of college coaches and see some of the best players in the country play. “I think I improved most in my aggressiveness and my shooting during AAU this past year.” What are the next steps for Carlson and his basketball development? “My main focus will be to continue working on my three and shooting a lot more of them, and to keep getting stronger and faster.” East Ridge spent the 2016-17 season as a top ten team for most of the season and they will enter 2017-18 as a top five or six team in state this winter. With junior Courtney Brown Jr and freshmen Kendall Brown playing with Carlson the Raptors are one of the state’s best going forward. “Our goal this year is to make it to the state tournament,” Ben said. “We graduated six varsity players but we have a lot of talent returning this year. I think we will be a really good team this year and for the years to come. “My goal is to make it to state this year for high school and I want to win the Adidas Finals in Las Vegas this year as well.” Along the way Ben will be seen by college coaches regularly. This fall several programs have either came by East Ridge to see Carlson or have been in contact. Opportunity is building for Carlson regularly. “I’m in contact with Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa State, Creighton, Kansas State, and Stanford and have visited or going to visit all those schools. “The schools that have contacted my coaches about me are NC State, Butler, and Xavier, and Iowa, Indiana, and Purdue are coming to watch me soon. As for visits I have planned, I was just at Iowa State last weekend, I’m going to Wisconsin this weekend (that visit was this past weekend), and then to Stanford in November.” The Gopher staff also been in contact with Carlson consistently as Carlson’s home is 15 minutes east of campus. “(Minnesota) came to a couple of my AAU games last year,” Ben stated. “They were at open gym last week. They had a good year last year and will be even better this year so that’s really exciting to see.” Carlson scored a dozen a game last season and enters his sophomore year as a four star top 100 talent in the 2020 class.