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whereinthehellami
12-16-2015, 10:11 AM
I went to see Javin DeLaurier play last night at St. Anne's-Belfield School in Charlottesville. The Saints (2-4) beat Woodbury 63-51. First off, this is your standard rural high school basketball. One of Woodbury’s best players was a 6-6, 255-ish pound center (going to Stanford as an O-lineman), who had limited skills but was not shy.

With that said, here are some of my less than astute observations:

Javin has a slight but decent build, easily 6-8 with long arms. Looks like he could put some weight on. He moves well for his size but is not quick laterally, though he is a quick jumper. Gets above the rim quick.

Javin had about 24 points, at least 10 boards, and a handful of steals, assists, and blocks.

DeLaurier had a few dunks in the game. A couple in the lane with some traffic, undersized traffic but still it was good to see him send it home. He had a Sportcenter dunk where he came flying in from the sideline. He also missed one trying to be too flashy towards the end of the game, when the game was still close. He wanted alley-oops all game long but no one on his team was really able to connect with him.

Javin’s shot looks okay, decent lift, keeps the ball high, has decent rotation, nice follow thru but seems to lack touch and that easy flow that natural shooters have. His shooting results were mixed in warmups and in the game. He hit a nice 15 foot baseline that looked amazing but missed a 5 footer where it awkwardly hit the lower side of the rim. The vector was all wrong on that one Victor.

He moved around the court on offense, even brought the ball up some. Brought the ball up the court quite a bit after a rebound. Better handles than Jefferson but not as good as Hood. Maybe had 3 TOs handling the ball, not really sure why their coach had him doing it as much as he did. Scored mostly off of passes and garbage around the hoop. Javin did try to create some O off of the dribble but the results were so-so. A couple of nice interior passes at the end of the game. He had a couple of hands TOs where he didn’t handle the pass well, like Jeter.

On defense they played man-to-man. Due to his size and reach he was effective but I think he would struggle staying in front of his man at the next level. Was effective rebounding due to his size and reach advantage but struggled some in traffic due to the lack of size/strength in his lower body.

He was the best player on the floor but didn’t dominate the game as much as I would have expected versus that level of competition.

Javin seems like a nice kid though. Has a stoic on the court demeanor. Tried to be vocal on the court. Seemed well liked by teammates.

All in all seems to be what you would expect from a top 40-ish recruit. Nice size, decent skills, and the potential to get to another level. Going into the game I was hoping to see someone who could provide some frontcourt depth in 2016. Coming out of the game I see a guy who in my mind is on a Chase Jeter type of path.

English
12-16-2015, 11:54 AM
...Analysis...


Thanks for the solid analysis. That's roughly where I'd anticipate him to be, given his recruiting rank and precedent. Your descriptions of the game are very colorful and useful for those of us who haven't seen Javin play at all.

One quibble--Chase Jeter was a top-12 to top-15 recruit. Although this past recruiting class has been described as down, expecting DeLaurier to be appreciably better than Jeter coming into college is inflating expectations beyond reason. Especially since the HS-to-college transition is almost universally more difficult for bigger guys than guards.

I'm going to continue to look forward to Javin competing and contributing in practice, and consider myself very pleasantly surprised if we get anything out of him next year.

SupaDave
12-16-2015, 11:56 AM
Sounds like what you would expect from a 4-star player. He wasn't ever starting over Giles, Jeter, Tatum, or Luke in the first place. No telling what Robinson and Obi come back as next year. We will check in on Jav's development more this summer.

Henderson
12-16-2015, 12:52 PM
St. Anne's-Belfield vs. Woodberry Forest School.

In basketball.

Sorry, that was the punchline.

whereinthehellami
12-16-2015, 01:17 PM
Thanks for the solid analysis. That's roughly where I'd anticipate him to be, given his recruiting rank and precedent. Your descriptions of the game are very colorful and useful for those of us who haven't seen Javin play at all.

One quibble--Chase Jeter was a top-12 to top-15 recruit. Although this past recruiting class has been described as down, expecting DeLaurier to be appreciably better than Jeter coming into college is inflating expectations beyond reason. Especially since the HS-to-college transition is almost universally more difficult for bigger guys than guards.

I'm going to continue to look forward to Javin competing and contributing in practice, and consider myself very pleasantly surprised if we get anything out of him next year.

I was more trying to say that I was hoping that Javin could provide some consistent frontcourt depth in 2016, as I think depth could be an issue next year and after seeing him play, I see him in more of Chase (this year) kind of role. Very sporadic minutes. Which one would expect from a top 40-ish recruit on a Coach K team.

whereinthehellami
12-16-2015, 01:32 PM
The last somewhat local recruit I was able to watch was Josh Hairston. I saw Josh play 3 times in HS, when he was with Courtland HS. The level of competition seems about the same to me. Two things that stood out to me after watching Josh play was that (1) while he was the best player on the court i didn't think he dominated the low level of competition as well i would have expected and (2) how few dunks he had despite his size and the size of the competition. As to Javin, (1) applied to him last night but (2) didn't, he had no problems playing above the rim and wanting to mix it up inside.

Another thing I remember from Josh that carried over to Duke was how much of a leader Josh was. He talked to every player on the court and all the officials. Very vocal and demonstrative. I remember some posters on this forum wondering why Josh got as much PT as he did. But Josh totally had the intangibles of a player Coach K loves: vocal, leader, unselfish, hard worker.