Five Takeaways from the Dakotas Top 250
Here are five things we took away from the Dakotas Top 250 Expo at Augustana:
1) There was a lot of great shooters
There was a great showing at the Elmen Center at Augustana for the Dakotas Top 250 Expo last weekend. Among all of the players, there was one consistent thing that stood out above all, how great of shooters they were. There were big guys stepping out to the arc and draining three’s and the younger class wasn’t afraid to let it fire from deep against some of the older kids. It was a great display of talent and how different the game has changed over the last couple of years. On every kid, I took notes on I consistently put “good shooter” or “has a sweet shot”.
2) The underclass came out and showed out
42 underclassmen from the classes of 2021/2022 showed up to the Expo at Augustana. Most of these kids are playing year round whether its school ball, travel teams or just spending time in the gym working on their game. There were several underclassmen that stood out among the older kids like 2022 Kolin Ray, 2022 Tristian Nielson, 2021 Mason Gravseth and 2021 Hayden Muirhead to name a couple.
3) These kids love to play basketball
The Top 250 Expo was held in Sioux Falls, SD at the Elmen Center at Augustana. To some people that was just a short drive to the expo but for some kids, they drove four-plus hours to be able to play in the expo. Dawson Paulson and Dylan Pourier drove five hours from Rapid City, Cameron Van Dam drove down from Fargo, ND and Austin Bonn drove from Madison, MN. As a coach, you want players that love the sport this much on your team. They came from all over to play basketball from 12-5 for no trophy or anything just because they loved the game of basketball and are hoping that they can extend their playing careers in college.
4) SD Class AA has some athletes
Class AA has been the talk of SD basketball with superstar Matthew Mors breakout season, but they might not have an easy path to repeating as people think. A couple teams might give Yankton a run for their money like Huron with Kobe Busch, and Rapid City Stevens with Dylan Pourier and Dawson Paulson. SF O’Gorman had some good underclassmen like 2021 Kade Moffitt, Hayden Muirhead, and Cole Schilling to name a few. Harrisburg Nick Hoyt’s little brother Nathan Hoyt, who is in the 2021 class, showed some good tendencies at the expo.
5) Don’t count out the ND players that drove all the way down to Sioux Falls
Like I said before there were several kids who drove a long way to attend this expo and some of those kids were from Fargo (2020 Cameron Van Dam, 2020 Cayden Rickard), Grand Forks ( 2020 Kobe Springer, 2021 Alex Barbot, 2021 Mason Love) and Bismarck (2021 Carson Rohrich) to name a few. Those guys are willing to drive across state lines to play basketball and potentially get their name out to college scouts.