Recruiting Report: Sam Barnes (2018)
**Photo Courtesy of Think Stewartville**
Stewartville might be a sneaky top-10 type team next season. If the Tigers live up to that kind of expectation, Sam Barnes will be a big reason why.
Barnes, a 6-foot point guard, heads into a senior year knowing that this upcoming season is what he and the rest of his teammates have been building for for a while now.
“We’re returning four starters from last year’s team and we have solid players,” said Barnes. “We also moved down from Class AAA to AA so instead of teams like Austin, we’ll be playing some smaller schools that are closer to us in size. We’ve got a lot of guys with multiple years of varsity experience. So we’re really excited.”
Barnes didn’t play AAU this past spring and summer but he did put in significant time with his high school team, playing in various tournaments and summer league.
“I didn’t play AAU this summer but our school ball team got together and played a number of times throughout the summer,” Barnes said. “It went really well too. I feel like we got a lot better. I worked on parts of my game that I needed to improve and feel like I accomplished that.”
Barnes may fly a bit under the radar because he’s tucked away down south in Stewartville, but several colleges have taken notice and are showing interest.
“LaCrosse in Wisconsin has shown a little bit of interest,” Barnes said. “University of Northwestern in the cities too. I visited LaCrosse earlier in the summer and it went well. I’ll visit Northwestern in early September. So I’m excited about the process. I kind of want to see how the season goes and go from there.”