UW Receives Basketball Commitment From King's Player, Looking for Another Kispert
Tyler Linhardt committed on Friday to the University of Washington from the class of 2022, a confident move on his part considering the state of the Husky basketball program right now, with players and assistant coaches coming and going nonstop.
Who knows what it will look like when he arrives.
A 6-foot-7 and 210-pound forward, Linhardt hails from King's High School north of Seattle, the same place that sent Corey Kispert, also 6-foot-7, to national runner-up Gonzaga and to a first-team All-American career with the Zags.
Linhardt primarily was a regional recruit and chose the Huskies over Washington State, Boise State and Eastern Washington after initially receiving an offer from then-UW assistant Dave Rice late last year. Rice, of course, left the program on Thursday.
"I like to fancy myself as a three-level scorer," Linhardt said, comparing himself favorably to Kispert in the video. "I can get it down from anywhere on the court."
He joins 6-foot-10 Jackson Grant, an incoming forward from Olympia High School in the Class of 2021, as local recruits committed to the UW.
Linhardt said he looks forward to being part of a Husky turnaround under coach Mike Hopkins.
"I trust in Hop," he said. "I'm a big Coach Hopkins fan. I have been for awhile. I believe in him. I know Hop wants nothing more than to win basketball games."
Linhardt has played just one high school season, as a sophomore in 2019-20, because of the pandemic, but it was a productive one.
He led the 14th-seeded Knights to the Class 1A state championship and was named state player of the year for that classification. He averaged 21.8 points, 12.3 rebounds and 3.5 assists per game.
While he runs the floor well and uses both hands, the big thing for King's latest major-college recruit is how well he can make the jump from one of the lower levels of high school to Division 1 basketball. Yet at the same, he has played with and against high-level competition for the Seattle Rotary AAU team.
Kispert had no issues with this, while Cole Bajema, a 6-foot-7 forward from Lynden Christian High School, has developed at a slower pace after a year at Michigan and another at Washington, but still holds considerable promise.
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