The biggest misconception about Gradyn is that he’s just a shooter. There is a lot more to his game than just the elite shooting. His size at 6’5 mixed with the high motor and skillset allows him to be an effective rebounder and versatile defender. The rebounding is a part of his game that will be better this year. The staff has challenged him with being a more high-level rebounder, which will result in more coast-to-coast opportunities. Gradyn in the open floor is as good as anyone in the conference.

Gradyn plays with maximum effort every possession and has upped his physicality this summer. Teams put a lot of emphasis on running him off the line, but he’s improved on attacking closeouts and touching the paint more. His athleticism is an underrated aspect of his game as he flushed multiple dunks during the workout session. Coach Morris told me they want Gradyn to be more consistent with the ball in his hands as a playmaker. The more well rounded he is, the better the Eagles will be.

After coming off a successful freshman campaign, expect him to push for 20+ points per game this year. That’s not just an opinion of mine, but the staff says they’re going to need him to take over that role as a scorer due to how much of a mismatch he is.

This is a kid that is starting to really become a consistent high level producer and it’s directly translating to team success. With Harvest Development 16u, West is comfortable operating in a variety of spots as he has legit athletic pop, outside touch, and the ability to create his own shot from different areas of the floor. He’s got good positional size at this stage already and is starting to embrace contact more when attacking. He still has even more fine tuning to his game but on this trajectory, it feels like he knows what he’s doing in terms of his development. He is a consistently improving high level young wing that also happens to be a lot of fun to watch.

West is a guy we’ve seen a lot from early on after a really strong Freshman season at Grace Christian where he showed consistent flashes of high level ability. As a wing with some size and athleticism, West possesses legit outside touch and just a natural high level of self belief in his overall game at this stage of his development. As he continues to add strength to his frame and garner more high level experience under his belt, I fully expect the evolution of West to continue as he’s a very intriguing member of this 2029 class. Those rankings will drop soon and it’ll be interesting to see where West stacks up in the first drop of this stacked class.