Prospect Spotlight: AJ Becker (2019)
Last season, Maquoketa’s 6-foot-3 guard AJ Becker put together one of the finer junior seasons of anyone in Iowa.
He established himself as one of the Hawkeye State’s best shooters while doing so.
“I’ve been working on my shot for a long time, trying to make it quick. And when I’m out there on the court it’s really nice to be able to spread out the floor for my teammates,” Becker said. “My coach has a lot of confidence in me out on the perimeter, and allows me to shoot it from wherever.”
Becker was the the main-man as a junior for the Cardinals, and averaged 18.8 points per game while connecting on 88 3s at a 44 percent clip.
Next winter, Becker’s role will be much the same on a Cardinals team that returns six of it’s seven leading scorers from a season ago.
“We had a young team last year, we ‘re not losing many guys that actually played. So, my role is going to be a lot of the same, to be that guy that can score,” said Becker, who says his guys have been working hard this offseason.
“The offseason has been good. I’ve been using my offseason trying to become more explosive. We really have big goals this upcoming season, so we we’re all trying to get better at team camps.”
Becker will spend his July playing with the Iowa Mavericks in three live period weekends. He’s started to see his recruitment take shape of late, Wartburg, Clarke, Loras, and some schools from Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois have been showing interest.
“I haven’t gotten any offers yet, but this last month I’ve been getting a lot of interest,” said Becker. “My coaches have been telling me they’ve been talking to coaches about me.”
AJ Becker is ranked by Prep Hoops as a top 100 prospect in his class. To see the full ranking of Iowa’s 2019 class, click here.