Prospect Intro: Sam Campbell (2021)
Oldham County seems to always have a heady lead guard in their back court who runs the team and scores the big buckets. With the graduation of Jackson Gibson, Sam Campbell looks to step up and be that next point guard for the Colonels. Sam is having a monster AAU season for Kentucky Ambition AAU and looks to continue that momentum into summer ball. Campbell is above a 4.0 student thanks to his AP courses and played a role on the freshman, jv and varsity teams at Oldham last season. This spring he has averaged over 20 points per game for Ambition, including strong showings on the Adidas Silver Gauntlet. Recently, I interviewed Sam to get his thoughts on his freshman year, his spring AAU season, and what he’s doing to get ready for a bigger role at Oldham County next season.
PHKY: Describe your game for people who may never have seen you play. What are your strengths? What do you need to improve?
SC: I would describe my game as a fundamental scorer, I take it to the basket strong, and I feel like I can shoot with anyone. I have a lot of scoring moves, floaters, different lay-ups, pull-ups, spot up shooting, etc. Things that I need to improve on would be my defense, my quickness is not there yet (working on it) to stay with some people. Also, dribbling with my left hand, I have gotten a lot better at it this last year but still have some work to do.
PHKY: Reflect on your high school season. Were you happy with your individual performance? Were you happy with your team results?
SC: High school basketball was great this season, I got to play all 3 levels freshman, JV, and varsity on a very good Oldham County team. I started on freshman and JV, and learned a lot from the 3 senior guards in varsity, playing 16 games and scored like 8 points. As a program, we did very good this year, my freshman team won our league championship, on jv we won the district championship and varsity won district, regional, and made it to the final 4 at Rupp Arena. Individually I had a good season averaging about 15 points on JV and freshman and learning my new role as point guard this year, first year ever playing the position.
PHKY: Who are you playing AAU with? How is your season going so far?
SC: This year I am playing with Kentucky Ambition in the Adidas Gauntlet and we have played decent. Our first tournament together did not go as planned and we only ended up winning one game, but at AAU state we had a great outing winning 4 out of 5 games. I have been playing a lot more aggressive this year, and scoring a whole lot more, I average a little over 20 a game right now, and have been setting my teammates up with assists.
PHKY: What can you take from your AAU season and apply to your next high school season?
SC: I am going to take my aggressiveness and things that I have learned from Coach Anthony and apply it to my high school this year. Also, my improved ball handling and shooting.
PHKY: What are your goals for your next high school season?
SC: My goals for next year are to either start varsity next year or have a valuable role on the team. I want to be able to win the regional tournament again and go back to Rupp just like we did this year. We are losing a lot of our core players but we have some good Juniors coming back and a really good coach in Coach Z (Coy Zerhusen) that can help us do well.
The 8th region is full of good young guards like Kelly Niece (Simon Kenton), Luke Morrison (South Oldham), Dayvion McKnight and Marcellus Vail (Collins) and Sam Campbell has high hopes of making his name going against those guy while lifting his team onto his back and leading them back to Rupp Arena. With his scoring ability, Campbell has a chance to perform at a high level over the next 3 seasons and show himself to be one of the top rising sophomores in the 8th region. He’s off to a strong start with his strong freshman campaign and spring AAU. Hopefully he continues his growth and keeps trending upwards both in his game and his eventual recruitment.