He left as his faculty’s all-time main scorer, with 1,993 points. Luka Garza is an American school basketball participant for the Iowa Hawkeyes of the Big Ten Conference. As a junior he was named a consensus first-team All-American and Big Ten Player of the Year. Garza played for Maret School in his hometown of Washington, D.C., where he was a four-star recruit. It’s not all the time straightforward to gauge the highest expertise in college basketball and decide which ones will make one of the best pros. Nowhere is that extra evident than on this yr’s draft class.
Garza has various strikes when attacking the basket, however his three-level shot is fascinating. He’s currently making 1.eight threes per recreation and is shooting 49% from deep. The senior out of Minnesota just barely made the big board on ESPN’s prime a hundred prospects for the 2021 draft.
Who’s Luke Garza?
Becoming a sturdier one-on-one publish defender and a dominant defensive rebounder like a Jonas Valanciunas-type would additionally deter him from getting performed off the floor. Garza ranks 20th in defensive rebounding share amongst our prime a hundred prospects, behind perimeter gamers corresponding to Joel Ayayi and Jason Preston . Finally, Garza is a much-improved 3-point shooter, going from hitting 29% of his attempts as a sophomore to 46% this season, on greater than three makes an attempt per sport. He can house the ground from the corners or the top of the important thing or decide and pop with a quick, smooth launch. Increasingly, he has proven the power to make pull-up jumpers in midrange spots out of isolation or when attacking closeouts, even mixing in Nowitzki-esqe one-legged fadeaways for good measure.
In more than half a century watching Big Ten basketball, I’ve not often seen anyone so maximize his pure gifts as Garza. He is going to do no matter’s necessary, like water finding a crevice in pavement. I suppose he’s going to make a roster someplace and develop into a situational player who doesn’t match into a regular rotation but can be spotted against reserve power forwards and facilities. While everyone cites the variations between the pro and collegiate game, no single participant might have ever extra embodied that contrast than Garza.
Luka Garza C #55
Only two, Frank Mason in 2017 and Jalen Brunson in 2018, were taken within the second spherical. Obviously nowhere near the unbelievable athlete Sabonis is, but a giant man with a throwback offensive recreation and defensive considerations. The Hornets at present don’t have a lot of offense coming from their middle position, which isn’t a surprise since this is the group’s weakest place. Garza is a robust big man that can rating in the paint and from behind the arc. On January seventh, ESPN’s Robbie Hummel in contrast Garza to Brad Miller, who was an undrafted free agent that was signed by the Hornets in 1998.
- Garza is the clear frontrunner for National Player of the Year, especially if he retains up this level of play.
- He might be requested to play against other marginal gamers all of whom have liabilities of one sort or another.
- Cunningham seemed to be forcing it a bit in his March Madness debut.
- Garza was initially going to enter the 2020 NBA Draft, however he modified his mind and returned to Iowa for one last season.
- Miller was a starter for most of his career; he averaged eleven.2 points and seven.1 rebounds per game.