Background
Currently ranked No. 97 in the 2014 Rivals150, Reed is a native of Mississippi who had a stop in Georgia before ending up at Burlington (N.J.) Life Center for his senior season. He is a legitimate seven footer who can run and is a kid who popped up on the high major radar early in his career.
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| Reed committed to Maryland in August. |
Strengths
It’s rather obvious, but the fact that Reed is a legitimate seven-footer is a huge plus. He’s not just tall, either. Reed is pretty coordinated, runs well, is agile in the lane he is armed with long arms and good overall athleticism.
When he’s fully involved in the game, Reed can beat other post players from rim to rim and his shot blocking allows for him to clean up a lot of mistakes. He doesn’t get frustrated when guards overlook him and he never seems to get too high or too low during the course of a game.
Areas to work on
Reed is plenty tall, but he’s equally thin. In fact, he’s so thin that there has to be some worry about exactly how much weight he can be expected to add during his first few years of college. Because of that lack of strength, he can get pushed around the lane and isn’t always able to impact the game on either end of the floor like you would hope that a seven-footer would.
The other area that needs addressing is the consistency of his effort and playing the game with more passion. At times he will make a block, hit a jump hook, a turnaround jumper or rise above the crowd for a finish that make observers shake their heads and think what if. But, then he can just as easily disappear for long stretches.
What to expect
Right now, Reed has to be considered the X-factor of the Terps recruiting class. The fact is that he was much more highly ranked early in his career because of his size and fluidity and the hope that the rest of his game would come around. So far, it has been a little slow to come around.
In a perfect world, Reed would be an ideal candidate for a redshirt so that he can add weight and adjust to the rigors of the college game. But, that isn’t very popular with kids as highly recruited as Reed and it’s just tough to sit that much size. Bottom line, much of his future is going to depend upon how much strength he can add or what he can do from a skill development standpoint to compensate for the lack of strength. There is no question that he has immense potential, it is just a matter of fully tapping into it. – See more at: http://maryland.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1569488#sthash.okMi32xM.dpuf
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