Smith was hands down the best shooter I saw on Saturday in the 16u division. The six-foot-one sophomore was cooking on Saturday night, burying six triples, some of them from NBA range. Smith is unguardable when he is in a groove like he was last night. Brayden has great confidence, but has even better mechanics with his footwork and release to get shots up in a hurry . Smith has developed other parts of his game, as I saw him make good passes to teammates in transition and in the half court and consistently make 1-2 pullups from the midrange. A prolific scorer already at Elkhart Lake- Glenbeulah, Smith will continue to climb the scoring leaderboards in his school history, and in the state if he continues his pace.

It wasn’t the best showing for Mammoth Basketball in a loss to ABC Young Lions , but Brayden showed flashes of just how dangerous he can be from beyond the arc. Early on in the game he made his defender pay for letting him catch in too much space, putting three points on the board in the blink of an eye. Brayden is constantly moving off the ball trying to find pockets of space, because he’s one of the best pure shooters in the state’s 2028 class. Knocked down a handful of threes, but also dished out a couple of assists to his teammates cutting to the rim.

Brayden erupted for a career high 46 points on Saturday. Shooting 16/19 from the floor (84.2%) 7/10 from 3 Point (70%) and 7/7 from the FT line. He added 10 rebounds and 5 assists and had an EFG% of 102.6 and a VPS of 3.78.

The word is out on Smith. When you shoot 45 percent from three-point range, making 91 of 202 attempts from outside the arc, people tend to take notice. So now opponents are trying to make Smith beat them in other ways. Though he’s capable off the dribble, Smith likely will need to round out his game going forward. That isn’t at all unusual for such a young player, particularly one who excels in shooting like Smith. Almost 70 percent of Smith’s field-goal attempts a year ago came from outside the arc and shooting from deep was what he did at the Sophomore ID camp as well. The results from deep are obviously very, very good. His next step will be to keep defenders off balance with his ability to get into the lane to score.