Prospect Spotlight: Caleb Butts (2019)
There’s a big debate in scouting between all levels of basketball, between looking at production and potential. You heard about it so many ties in the NBA draft, and scouting for colleges have the same issues at time.
While leaning toward upside and potential has panned out many times, the best steals at most levels come from taking a guy who may be undersized, positionless or overlooked, but are very productive. This spring, the guy who has made waves in that regard is 6’4” forward Caleb Butts of Deep Creek and Team Loaded 757.
After playing his freshman season at Alliance Christian, a small private school in the Hampton Roads area, Butts was said to be transferring to North Carolina because of a job his mother was going to get. While I’m not quite sure what happened, Butts appeared out of nowhere at Deep Creek High School in Chesapeake, and quietly was one of the most dominant sophomores in the area.
“We had a great season at Deep Creek last year,” Butts said. “Head Coach Leroy Ricks took me under his wing, it was my first year at public school, so he said ‘Hey private schools and public schools are a little different, so I’m going to teach you the ways.’ I ended up grabbing First Team All Conference and Region, so it was a good year for me.”
What makes Butts so good for both Deep Creek and his Team Loaded 757 group is that he may not check off everything at first glance, but he can do a lot of different things on the court. At 6’4”, he’s listed as a power forward, but he’s more of a hybrid guy that has shown he can do whatever his team needs him to do, and he can be one of the best players on the floor regardless of what they need.
Butts has been one of the most productive 16U players in the spring.“I’ve heard it before production, production, production,” he said. “I try to be an all around player, a plug-and-play dude that can do whatever you need me to do. If you need me to bring the ball up the floor, I’m going to do that. If you need me to shoot, I can do that. If you need me to go inside and bang with the big 6’9” guys, I can do that as well. I think it’s just an aggressive spirit I can bring.”
While he’s just now starting to get recognition (I will freely admit that our initial ranking of him at 81 is way too low), he isn’t content with being where he is now. A great student of the game and in the classroom (he has a 4.2 GPA as a sophomore), Butts knows that he needs to continue to work on multiple things in his game if he wants to get where he needs to be by the time he graduates.
“I feel like I need to get to be a 3 guard at the next level. I need to continue to improve my handles, improve my jump shot and just continue to get better so I’m ready when the time comes.”
While he still has work to do, many scholarship level programs have taken notice. Schools were just allowed to start calling sophomores a couple of weeks ago, and since then his AAU Coach Lamar Claiborne told me Butts has heard from Longwood, Radford, UMBC, Campbell, South Carolina State and Fayatteville State, just to name a few.
When asked why college coaches should recruit him, Butts had a simple, yet very real answer.
“It’s all about the spirit I bring to the team. I’m always going to be a leader, I’m always going to work hard and I’m going to give you 150% every time I step on that court.”
With his work ethic, energy and production level, there’s no doubt that Butts stock will continue to rise, much like his ranking will for us come July.