July Wrap-Up: Utah Mountain Stars Gold
The Utah Mountain Stars have an elite club program that performs at an extremely high level. They demonstrated that much and more throughout July. In fact, their Gold team participated in the inaugural Las Vegas Big Time event and performed…
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Continue ReadingThe Utah Mountain Stars have an elite club program that performs at an extremely high level. They demonstrated that much and more throughout July. In fact, their Gold team participated in the inaugural Las Vegas Big Time event and performed exceptionally well.
In addition to participated in the Las Vegas Big Time, they went 4-0 at the West Coast Elite Summer Classic Live Period event. This team showed many why colleges should spend more time recruiting in the state of Utah. Below are three takeaways from the Utah Mountain Stars Gold July.
1. High Basketball IQ
This team has a number of guys who understand how to play the game. Not only do they put themselves in spots where they can be successful, but they understand how they can make their teammates better as well.
While most coaches are screaming at their players to make the extra pass, this group does it at will. In fact, some times they were too unselfish and tried to share the basketball too much.
In fact, Trevan Leonhardt stood out to me as quite the intriguing pass first point guard prospect. He makes great decisions with the basketball and shot it at a high level from deep. In addition to creating for his teammates, he is lengthy PG who understands how to run the offense and makes game winning plays. He was frequently crashing the glass which led to putbacks and quick transition opportunities.
While Leonhardt stood out the most in this category, Baylor Harrop Baylor Harrop 6'4" | SG Fremont | 2020 State UT , Taft Mitchell, and Drake Allen also caught my eye.
2. Versatile
Often times, Utah prospects are labelled as not being versatile enough due to athletic concerns. While there were few high flying moments in the games that I observed, many of them showed an understanding of angles that would allow them to guard multiple positions at the next level.
Further, they have good length and strength. Also, needless to say, but I will say it anyways; they can all shoot the basketball extremely well. Harrop is as accurate as they come from deep while Leonhardt also cashed in quite a few.
Both of these guys have good size at the next level which will allow them to play multiple positions.
3. Shooters
It wouldn’t be an article about a Utah team if shooting was not mentioned. Anyone who has had to square up with a team from Utah or has observed a team from Utah knows to expect three things: Shooters, discipline, and toughness.
These guys mimicked those stereotypes well as they did not make dumb decisions with the basketball, they competed on every possession, and they shot the lights out of the gym. As far as toughness is concerned, Trevon Snoddy is second to none.
As far as shooting is concerned, ask any team who felt like they had to play a zone against this team how that went. While playing with 4 guys is never optimal, one team got stuck in that situation.
This group made sure that they paid for that. On multiple occasions, the opposing team remarked, “These guys don’t miss”. While in-bounding the basketball. Unfortunately for him, it wasn’t an extageration. At one point in the game, the Utah Mountain Stars hit 11 out 14 threes.
Harrop is the most popular shooter in the group, and for good reason. However, the rest of the team showed that they can let if fly as well.