Prospect Spotlight: Tosh Baker
Pinnacle High School has received a lot of notoriety recently due in large part to their underclassmen talent. Tosh Baker is one of those underclassmen who has seen his stock sky rocket within the past couple of months. The big man is a talented athlete as well as a gifted student.
Baker, who stands at 6’8 and is apart of the class of 2020, participates with the Arizona Rebels and Splash City on the Under Armour Circuit. His time with both organizations as well as with Pinnacle have helped him grow his skills substantially.
Baker’s Strengths
Baker has a decent motor that has improved since last off-season. Further, he has a soft touch around the rim, great hands, and good footwork on the block. He has a nice arsenal of drop steps and counter moves. Moreover, his strength and build are impressive considering his age and classification. He does a great job of playing through the bumps and reaches that posts typically encounter.
He also really impressed me with his consistent release point and good touch on his mid-range jumper. His versatility and shooting abilities enable him to play on the block as well as a PF in pick and roll and pick and pop situations.
Defensively, Baker does a good job of defending on the block, his strength and length make him a challenge to opposing offensive players. In addition, he has a good basketball IQ which assists him in rotating in help side and contesting shots.
Baker’s Weaknesses
Like any player, Baker has room to grow. In order to reach his high ceiling, he needs to continue to work to make plays on the defensive end of the floor. Although he does a good job, for the most part, of rotating in help side, he is still young in understanding how much length he possesses. He is capable of altering more shots and impacting more plays on this side of the basketball than he realizes.
Baker is an extremely hard worker. He is very talented at cleaning up on the glass and doing a lot of the little things that many bigs don’t want to do. However, the more and more his motor and explosiveness improve, the closer he will be to reaching his potential. If he is able to make the same game changing plays for an elongated period of time, he could be a big time asset at the college level.
Next Level Interest
As his freshman year closes, this 2020 prospect has taken care of business in the classroom as he is currently carrying a “4.2 GPA and looking for a college to further [his] academic interests.” Specifically, he is hoping to find a school that offers a Pre Med major.
There are an array of schools who will inevitably be competing for his services if he continues on this trajectory. It is not easy to find a skilled big man who is also intellectually as gifted as him.
Currently, he has received interest from, “Stanford, Montana, Northern Colorado, UC Davis, UC Riverside, University of San Francisco, Cal Poly, and USC.”
Projection
Baker still has plenty of work to do and plenty of time to do it. As of right now, he is an NCAA Division-1 candidate. It will be interesting to see how he continues to grow and progress, but he is certainly doing a lot to put himself in a position to be successful at the next level.