2022 MBCA Showcase Observations

Father's Day Weekend means the 3rd annual MBCA Showcase.  Another fantastic year with just about every notable player in attendance from Minnesota plus the top players from North and South Dakota as well.  Only 14 teams this year rather than the 16 we had last year but still over 125 kids.  With so many kids and that number of teams in a short timeframe, its always a fun challenge to determine who and what to watch.  I took the philosophy of trying to see as many of the teams as possible.  I was able to see 12 of the 14 teams play a full game, 4 of those 12 teams I got to see play twice.  That's 8 games out of 28 possible games.  Such is the challenge for a college coach and for the kids in addition to fans like me.  It can very easily happen that you don't play well when the college coach is watching or vice versa.  So with that in mind, here are some thoughts from those games. 

Friday night had the showcase game of the weekend with the 1st 2 teams playing each other.  That gave us 3 top notch matchups.  Boden Kapke vs JT Rock, Daniel Freitag vs Taison Chatman and Cash Chavis vs Nas Whitlock.  Kapke and Freitag both won their matchups and played very well in both Friday games.  Freitag with a clutch floater that would have won their other game if not for an Owen Carlson buzzer beater.  Freitag's hustle was great to see in a setting that is very offensive oriented.  Kapke continued his improved play from May into this month with a strong 20+ point game against the highly touted Rock.  Isaac Asuma very solid in his battle with Daniel Freitag on Friday night.  That included 3 triples

Need perimeter play, no problem  South Dakota's Joe Sayler (S Dakota St commit), North Dakota's Isaiah Schafer along with local AAU teammates Max Shikenjanski and Ben Kopetzki stood out with hot shooting from deep on Friday night.  Hayden Tibbits, Soren Richardson and Ibo El-Amin added to that shooting list on Saturday.  Youth in North Dakota showed well as 2025 Mason Klabo had a late 3 and a sudden death 3 in 1 Saturday game to lead his team to a win.  Myles Barnette was productive in the game that I saw him.  Jeremiah Sem may be young and sometimes a bit wild but he's one of the more entertaining players in the open floor in the midwest due to his great athleticism.  2024 Jackson Fowlkes has been behind lots of talent at Park Center but showed he's worth keeping an eye on going forward.

As for front line players, Isaac Nyakundi showed well in both his Friday night games.  Matt Bothun also with a couple solid games on Friday.  Carter Zeller from Fargo was solid on the glass on Saturday.  I also liked the activity from Owen Waldoch.  Patrick Bath had a solid Friday night outing in the 1 game I saw him and reportedly was even better on Saturday.  Saw nice upside from Molley Kamara and Aeron Stevens as well.  Grayson Grove had a quite 1st game on Friday night but came on strong in the big showcase game.