College basketball starts this week, but practices have been rolling along for weeks. NBA scouts traverse the country throughout October to see how prospects are looking early in the season.
These evaluations are never written in pen at this stage, and they’re only a snapshot in time for scouts and executives working for teams. But they like to visit programs nationwide to gather intel, see how a player treats those around the program and get an impression for what they can expect once the regular-season games begin.
Luckily, throughout October, I’ve been in contact with NBA scouts, who were given anonymity because they’re not authorized to speak publicly about college players. Here’s a notebook of the intel I’ve been able to gather regarding how scouts feel about several players heading into the 2024-25 collegiate season.
Cooper Flagg isn’t Duke’s only big-time prospect
While Cooper Flagg certainly has all of the public’s attention at Duke, several scouts have been extremely excited about freshman wing Kon Knueppel. Most scouts I talk to currently project Knueppel with a lottery grade and a serious shot to rise beyond that. His offensive ability has stood out immediately to scouts who have been through to see Duke.
“He’s a great shooter, that’s obvious,” one scout told The Athletic. “But it’s not just the shooting. His IQ is great. His feel, his understanding for how to use his body to drive. He’s not a zero on defense.”
The vibe from the five scouts I spoke with who have seen Duke was that Knueppel has a real shot to lead the team in scoring. They expect Duke fans should see a relative spread in terms of scoring because of how many terrific players are on the roster. But Knueppel certainly has the most polished offensive game even as a freshman because of that ability to shoot the ball not just directly off the catch from a standstill, but off serious movement. He got to showcase that in the Blue Devils’ blowout victory over Arizona State in a preseason game, when he scored 19 points and had four assists. This was a fun two-minute stretch during that game, as Knueppel drilled four 3s from a variety of different NBA-style actions and looks.
Knueppel also passes well and knows how to move off the ball at a high level. The main concern from scouts involves his foot speed on the defensive end, but he’s gone a long way this fall toward assuaging those fears. Three of the five scouts felt like that concern was overblown because of how well Knueppel uses his frame and feet to stay in front of opposing players. His feel is also a significant standout skill on that end.
Knueppel is seen in some circles as this year’s version of Kentucky prospect Reed Sheppard: an elite shooter with an immense amount of skill who was relatively underrated by some entering the year. Like Sheppard, Knueppel will be entering an NBA that desperately is looking for shooters so that teams can up their 3-point volume. Floor-spacing for star players is a superpower in the NBA, as the Boston Celtics continue to prove. Everyone wants to go five-out. Knueppel has a chance to be a pristine fit who allows teams to do that. Plus, he plays the right way in the kind of manner that should allow him to slot into an NBA team early in his career.
“Kon is an old-school guy,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said. “Midwest, blue-collar. He might as well put his hard hat on every day he comes to the basketball court. He’s a terrific defender. He has great feel. His body is ready for the college game. And his skill level is extremely high. But Kon is very similar to Cooper where he plays very hard all the time and has feel. That’s a great combination to have.”
Beyond Knueppel, 7-foot-2 freshman center Khaman Maluach is also starting to show positive signs of being a serious impact player. Here’s one way to judge that: Of the five scouts I talked to who attended Duke practice, the ones who had been there more recently had a much more positive feel on him than the ones who were there early. He’s still seen as a bit of a work in progress because of his hands and his ability to make decisions on offense, but defensively, scouts raved about his size, his ability to impact shots around the rim and his lateral agility. I was a bit skeptical about Maluach this summer after he struggled at Nike Hoop Summit in the spring. Several NBA scouts also shared this opinion. However, don’t be surprised if Maluach takes a similar trajectory at Duke to Dereck Lively II, who struggled early on before morphing into one of the most dominant defensive bigs in the country by the time February rolled around.
Scouts were also intrigued by several other players at Duke. Returning guards Tyrese Proctor and Caleb Foster certainly have their fans league-wide — Proctor because of his adept ball-screen ability and defense, Foster because of his shooting ability. Transfer guard Sion James is an impact defender who is tough and physical. He’s draft eligible this year, and scouts want to get eyes on him to see if he has potential as a 3-and-D guard at 6-foot-5.
One player scouts were not quite as high on at this point for the 2025 NBA Draft: freshman wing Isaiah Evans. Scouts are still intrigued long-term in him as a skilled, shot-making wing with long arms. But his frame is quite skinny, and it might take him a bit of time to reach his physical potential. One scout compared Evans to former Kentucky five-star wing B.J. Boston, a projected one-and-done lottery pick who was 175 pounds for his lone season in college and ended up being selected 51st after an extremely inefficient season with the Wildcats.
Ace Bailey, left, and Dylan Harper will make Rutgers must-see for NBA scouts this season. (Wendell Cruz / Imagn Images)
Rutgers becomes hub of scouting community
Rutgers coach Steve Pikiell and company did a fantastic job with their 2024 recruiting class, bringing in two potential top-five picks in Ace Bailey and Dylan Harper. Rutgers has hosted a significant number of scouts throughout the pre-draft process looking to get eyes on Harper and Bailey early. So far, the returns are excellent.
We’ll start with Bailey. He has been the most consistent answer to this question in the preseason: “If Cooper Flagg isn’t the No. 1 pick, who is?” Why is that? He’s listed at 6-10, and scouts feel quite confident he’ll come in right around 6-9 without shoes at the NBA Draft Combine. He pairs that size with serious shot-creation ability. It’s hard to find players at this size who can string together multiple moves and get into their pull-up game quite like Bailey can. He can also make the shots after he creates them. Everything looks smooth and polished when he’s trying to get to those shots. He has special coordination at this size, as well as a serious level of explosiveness. He has the look of a potential star wing shot-creator, an archetype every single team in the NBA would love to get into their organization.
What are the concerns? First, Bailey doesn’t really make anything easy for himself right now. Everything is a tough shot.
“He settles too much in the midrange,” one scout said. “At the practice I went to, I think every shot he took was a contested midrange jumper, and that has typically been my experience when I’ve scouted him before.”
Scouts also noted that Bailey looked the part of a freshman on the defensive end, too, but that’s not as big of a deal this early in a player’s first college season. Bailey needs to prove to scouts that he can generate easier shots for himself. Oftentimes, I feel as if he plays a bit too upright, as I noted when I broke down Bailey’s first preseason game against St. John’s, where he scored 25 points largely off pull-up jumpers. It feels like his handle gets a bit loose when trying to drive all the way to the basket, and he has to stop in that midrange area.
Bailey has every chance to be the No. 1 pick if all of his tools come together this year, but there’s some work to do, and there might be some games where the shot isn’t falling and things look a bit rough. Typically after attending practices, the feedback from scouts was that Harper is a bit ahead of Bailey right now in terms of impacting winning college basketball consistently. The reason for that is Harper’s tremendous feel for the game. He might not have the natural tools athletically that Bailey does, but Harper is a dynamic ball-screen operator who can get into his own pull-up game, pass the ball and create his own shot. He has also consistently brought it on defense for Rutgers as a point-of-attack, on-ball defender. I think I would be surprised if Harper went No. 1 for reasons we’ll get into momentarily, but you can’t rule it out right now if he has a big season and the team drafting at No. 1 needs a lead creator.
The concerns for Harper are largely athletic. He’s not particularly explosive, and you can see that around the rim. Even though he’s about 6-6, Harper is largely a below-the-rim finisher who can sometimes throw up some wild ones. He’ll need to keep ironing out his footwork and learning to use his physical frame to shield defenders. As a finisher right now, there is a little bit of Cade Cunningham in him where the great finishes look terrific and give you flashes of what could be, but the overall results don’t always match because of heavy contests. Still, scouts are very excited about Harper. While I wouldn’t say it’s unanimous in the scouting community to have him in the top five like it is for Flagg and Bailey, he’s certainly in the top group of players on a consensus basis.
The Scarlet Knights are ranked No. 25 to start the season in the AP Top 25 poll, but I didn’t get the impression scouts were enamored with the team’s chances at being that successful this year with the talent around this duo — particularly because of questions in the frontcourt. Pikiell has worked magic with his teams on defense before, so you can’t rule them out. But don’t be surprised if it takes some time to sort out the rotation around Bailey and Harper.
Egor Demin’s name is on the tip of scouts’ tongues
Another name I’ve gotten extremely positive feedback on from scouts is Russian guard Egor Demin, a 6-8 guard who will play this season at BYU after a late commitment. It’s hard to overemphasize how positive the feedback has been given that quite a few sources had questions about him following his decision to take the collegiate route. The 18-year-old has real point guard skills at that size, with a tremendous ability to run ball screens as a playmaker. He can really pass the ball, and all four of the scouts I spoke with who attended BYU practice were extremely impressed with his poise and comfort level attacking defenses.
“I absolutely love him,” one scout said. “I went into their building having watched clips of him (beforehand), but I wasn’t sure what to expect in person. He has elite positional size for his role and is a tremendous playmaker out of ball screens. He shot the ball really well. I was told after that he hasn’t been a great shooter in Europe, but he definitely made them the day I was there, and I thought the shot looked good. We’ll see what happens when the games start, but (BYU coach) Kevin (Young) and the rest of the staff were glowing when speaking about him. He looks the part of a lottery pick.”
I’ve always had several questions about Demin’s ability to score efficiently. In Europe, he did not shoot the ball well and tended to be a bit more turnover prone than you’d like to see even in youth-level competitions like the Next Generation Tournament and in international under-16 competition. Those questions along with concerns about him on defense produced much more mixed feedback than you’d expect entering the season for a player as highly touted in Europe as Demin had been. But if scouts are proven right, he has every chance to end up being selected very highly, and BYU has every chance to be a top-25 team in Young’s first season.
Georgia fans should be excited
I talked to four scouts who went to Athens to get eyes on Georgia, a program that hasn’t been a preseason priority since Anthony Edwards departed in 2020. However, with potential one-and-done pick Asa Newell, another top-50 recruit in center Somto Cyril and a few interesting guards like Silas Demary, Blue Cain and Serbian recruit Savo Drezgić, the Bulldogs are intriguing.
Newell was the obvious target, a 6-10 forward with terrific defensive potential as well as a burgeoning perimeter game. A five-star recruit who played with Flagg at Montverde Academy in Florida, Newell has always been a great shot-blocker for his age, and he moves his feet extremely well at 220 pounds. The idea for Newell is that he can be a defensive difference-maker while also continuing to improve as a shooter. The name Taylor Hendricks, who was taken ninth in the 2023 draft, came up from two scouts.
“The athletic gifts are very obvious,” one scout said. “He absolutely has a chance to be a one-and-done. But I felt like he floated a lot both in the practice I went to and on tape. Their other freshman big (Cyril) played with a ton of energy. I want to see Newell be aggressive and attack more and not only hang out around the 3-point line. That’s what it felt like he did a lot of when I was there. Of course it makes him more valuable if he can shoot, but I don’t think he’s a good enough shooter yet to live out there.”
Speaking of Cyril, his growth was referenced as being of interest to scouts as well. A 6-11 big man originally from Nigeria, Cyril is a tough defender who is long and is a significant shot-blocker. He isn’t necessarily expected to be a one-and-done by scouts, but three of the four scouts noted that they felt like he looked better than the last time they saw him when he played for Overtime Elite.
Don’t sleep on the guards, either. Demary and Cain stir the drink, but two scouts brought up Drezgić as a guy they loved watching practice because of his fearlessness and toughness. Drezgić is coming off an all-tournament performance at the under-18 European championships in Finland over the summer, where he averaged 20 points and led Serbia to the silver medal. He’s not seen as a one-and-done. However, if he’s a bit ahead of schedule, the Bulldogs have both the backcourt and frontcourt depth to potentially be a surprise top-25 team.
Seth Trimble could be a breakout player for North Carolina. (Jim Dedmon / Imagn Images)
Other notes
• A ton of scouts have gone to see North Carolina, and while Drake Powell is certainly the name they’re there to see most (along with Elliot Cadeau and Ian Jackson), every scout has mentioned how much guard Seth Trimble has improved. He’s the breakout player to watch at North Carolina this year and looks ready to emerge into the kind of player Tar Heel fans expected when he was a top-40 recruit back in 2022.
• Xavier is not ranked in the top 25 to start the season, but don’t be surprised if the Musketeers end up there. Many scouts have gone through Cincinnati and come away very impressed with the overall talent level. Most scouts went into practice to see 6-7 sophomore wing Dailyn Swain, a dynamic defensive wing from Columbus, Ohio, who averaged a steal and nearly one block in just 19 minutes per game last season. With the NBA constantly searching for rangy wings, he will certainly be a name of interest throughout the year. However, the name I ended up getting most often when scouts left practice was guard Ryan Conwell. A 6-4 transfer from Indiana State, Conwell has the look of a serious prospect worth keeping an eye on largely because of his mix of skill level and feel for the game. Conwell is an awesome shooter who drilled over 40 percent of his seven 3-point attempts per game last season, but he’s also a sharp passer and solid defender. He reacts to what’s happening around him incredibly well. He averaged nearly 17 points per game in the Missouri Valley last season. Don’t be surprised if he ends up being the breakout Big East newcomer of the year.
• I consistently was told by scouts in the Northeast that the Philadelphia school with the most long-term talent was not Villanova, but rather Saint Joseph’s. With multi-time All-Atlantic-10 guard Erik Reynolds back next to a terrific sophomore guard in Xzayvier Brown, the backcourt should be well-handled. Both Reynolds and Brown are seen as being interesting prospects scouts want to keep an eye on, but the player who caught everyone’s eye is 6-9 forward Rasheer Fleming. Possessing ridiculously long arms and serious athleticism, Fleming has potential to guard on the perimeter as well as to be a skilled four man who can shoot. Fleming took a bit of a leap as a shooter last season, too, shooting 32.4 percent from 3 on three attempts per game. He also blocked 1.5 shots per game and shot 52.4 percent from the field overall. The length, athleticism and defensive potential give him serious upside if he can put it all together this season.
