Recruiting Report: Cameron Steele (2020)
Be honest, did you expect Minnetonka to be 8-4 right now? Junior Cameron Steele believed they would be in this position. Steele is scoring 23.2 points per game for the Skippers having a brilliant season. “I think this is where…
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Continue ReadingBe honest, did you expect Minnetonka to be 8-4 right now? Junior Cameron Steele believed they would be in this position. Steele is scoring 23.2 points per game for the Skippers having a brilliant season.
“I think this is where we expected to be playing at,” Steele explained after scoring 31 in a win over a good Moorhead team last Friday. “A lot of people didn’t really expect that but we are really playing well as a team and we are shooting the ball well right now and we have good chemistry which is good.”
Players have stepped up. Steele is scoring 23 a game, Gavin Patton has grabbed everybody by the chin and scored a matching 23 a night. Lyric Radford, Riley O’Connor, and Marvin Lee have each played above what many thought they could do.
The Skippers are firmly in the race for the “Section of Doom” which is 2AAAA. And that wasn’t thought to be the case this year so it helped motivate the Skippers.
“I think that was a motivation yeah,” Steele said of the expectations others had for them. “Especially when you place against Hopkins and all the Lake Conference teams, we always have that chip on our shoulder because we are always projected last in the league so that just gives us motivation because we think we can compete with those teams, and we can.”
Tonka has wins over teams like Moorhead and Mayo and they’ve beaten many teams that they were expected to.
“We get after it practicing every day, lifting a couple times a week, and we’ve spent a lot of time in open gyms and doing workouts. We’ve also done yoga. We did a lot of this as a team over the summer and fall. All of it built chemistry.
“Right now the goal is to play as well as we can right now. That’s the main goal. Go into every game and play our best. We have a tough schedule but we need to go out there and give it everything.”
At 6-foot-8 Steele has a pretty shooting touch that was developed at an early age. That shooting touch has range and consistency not to mention Steele is crafty in the ways he scores the ball. Add in the fierce elbows and a big desire to win and you have a top 20 prospect in the state’s deep junior class.
“I think I’m finishing at a higher rate inside,” Steele said. “‘I’ve improved dramatically finishing inside actually as last year I was down around 40 percent, so that improvement is good. Strength wise finishing over players, and scoring over tall guys as I can finish through contact more. You have to have strength in this league because there are guys that are 6-foot-10 and 6-foot-11.”
Schools like St. Cloud State, William & Mary, North Dakota State, South Dakota, and Concordia St-Paul (offer) have all been recorded as reaching out to Steele in the past 5-6 months. More are in contact as well.
“Right now a lot of schools around here are in contact,” Cameron said. “St. Thomas, UMD a lot, Minnesota State-Moorhead, and some IVY League schools. And recently Northern Iowa too.”