Recruiting Report: Jake Kettner (2019)
One of the top small school prospects to watch this 17u season will be Jake Kettner of D1 Minnesota Rise, a 6-foot-3 junior talent that was on the D1 MN Rise 17s last year.
Kettner is the player that will have college coaches coming to the Rise games in solid numbers especially after he gave his high school team 22.4 points, 7.8 rebounds, and 5.5 assists a game this year.
“I thought things went very well this winter, we learned a lot about ourselves,” Jake said of his 17-win Minnesota Valley Lutheran team. “Our playoff run didn’t go as far as we wanted but I thought the sophomores Jace Marotz, Dunwa Omot, and Mason Cox really stepped up and started playing with confidence and that was huge for us. I can’t wait for next season to hopefully get a chance at state.”
The young players on MVL aren’t the only guys that improved. Kettner became one of the better players in Class A this year and will be one of the top 30 or 40 seniors in this class overall.
“I think my defense and rebounding skills have really improved since my freshman and sophomore years,” Kettner said. “My rebounding average has almost doubled in the past two years and I’m starting to play defense more unselfishly.”
Now Kettner is focused on playing his 17u season with a collection of D1 Minnesota Rise players that are among the best in south-central Minnesota.
“This spring/summer I am playing for MN Rise,” Jake said. “We’ve just started practicing and I think our team has a lot of potential to compete with some of the top teams in the state and win a couple tournaments.”
College coaches will be in regular attendance at the events the Rise will be at. Jake is starting to hear from several college programs.
“I have been in contact with a handful of NSIC schools,” Jake said.
Those schools appear to be Minnesota State-Mankato and University of Sioux Falls who both attended Jake’s games this winter plus St. Cloud State and Winona State have both been in contact.