September 30, 2015 Off the heels of a huge junior season with Central Decatur, and a summer playing with an ultra-talented Kingdom Hoops 17U Elite squad, Peyton Pedersen is seeing some serious NAIA and JuCo interest come his way. “I went…
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Off the heels of a huge junior season with Central Decatur, and a summer playing with an ultra-talented Kingdom Hoops 17U Elite squad, Peyton Pedersen is seeing some serious NAIA and JuCo interest come his way.
“I went and visited Morningside and they’ve been reaching out a lot. I went and visited St. Ambrose and SWCC. Quite a bit of D3s have been reaching out out too, like Central, Simpson, Coe, and then some Minnesota D3s,” said Pedersen.
“I think I’m going to visit Central, they want me to come visit, but other than that I don’t have any plans to take any others right now.”
“I would say Morningside and SWCC are the two recruiting me the most.”
While playing with Kingdom Hoops Elite 17U, Pedersen says his aggressiveness and ball-handling improved.
“I came in off the bench and my shooting started out slow towards the beginning of the summer but I ended the summer hitting a lot more shots, and I started driving a lot more. Where I improved the most was being more aggressive and my ball-handling,” said Pedersen.
“I still need to improve my ball-handling, and I’d like improve with my rebounding. Getting 10 rebounds per game this season is a goal of mine.”
The 6-foot-4 guard averaged 20.7 points and 5.1 rebounds per game last season as a junior — he also connected on 42 percent of his 3-point tries.
“I don’t think my role will change too much this season,” said Pedersen. “Our sophomore point guard will pick it up a lot and score a lot more, and we should definitely have a pretty good season. I’ll still be playing everywhere from inside, and out to the wing.”
“I definitely would like to see us winning the conference again and going undefeated just like last year would be nice. I really think if we play right and practice hard we can get to state this year.”
January 13, 2015
Kingdom Hoops had a vision for its 2016's last summer, play them up and prepare them for a varsity season where they could flourish as juniors.
So far, so good.
One of the players who played with the 16U Kingdom Hoops Red team at the 17U level was Central Decatur guard Peyton Pedersen, who is flourishing averaging 22.5 points on 54 percent shooting while leading his team in steals and assists.
“Kingdom Hoops has been a good experience, and I’m friends with a lot of the guys from Kingdom Hoops like Jaylan White from I-35 and Shammond (Ivory) from Perry,” said Pedersen. “We’re really close and we played 17s all summer as a 16U group and that really got us ready for the varsity experience heading into our junior year.”
Pedersen’s success has translated into wins for his Cardinals who have raced out to a 9-1 start and are turning heads around southern-Iowa.
“We did have high expectations, we haven’t had as good of a team as we do this year in a long time and we talk about that everyday,” said Pedersen, PHI’s 56th-ranked 2016. “But we’ve played a lot of close games that shouldn’t be close, so we're happy with the start, but we’re not satisfied.”
The 6-foot-3 shooting guard is having his way with opponents this year, his 22.5 points per game is fifth best in 2A, and he’s doing it from everywhere.
“Right now I don’t think anyone can handle me in the post or outside, a lot of my scoring has been coming from the post, but if a post gets on me I’ll step outside and make shots,” said Pedersen.
At 6-foot-3 the talented junior is big for a guard at the 2A level and just recently he’s begun to take advantage of that extra height.
“I’ve been a guard my whole life but I’ve always put a little bit of work in at the post and I haven’t really worked in the post until this year and it’s working out for me so far,” said Pedersen.
“I think footwork is a lot of it, at 6-foot-3 I’m not that tall, but footwork really helps me out down there.”
Although his recruitment hasn’t lifted off just yet, he has heard some, and even has a teacher at his school with the inside track on him.
“I’ve gotten a couple letters but not much more than that from Luther College and a little bit from Graceland which is 15 minutes from here,” said Pedersen. “Luther is just wishing me a good season this year and some recruiting things and a little bit about their program and stuff.”
“And Graceland’s assistant actually teaches at my school (Wendell Smith), so he talks to me,” said Pedersen. “He’s always wondering how my season’s going and tells me where to get better and stuff.”
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