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Inside The Huskies

Huskies Should Play Up Rain Angle With 2028 Hoop Recruit

Evan Willis from the Los Angeles area has a UW basketball offer.
Dan Raley|
Evan Willis showed some enthusiasm at a USA Basketball junior national team mini-camp.
Evan Willis showed some enthusiasm at a USA Basketball junior national team mini-camp. | USA Basketball

College basketball recruiting often comes down to nuances, with coaches looking for whatever connection, no matter how small, they can make with talented players hounded by dozens of teams.

Consider what 6-foot-8 Evan Willis, a Class of 2028 player bursting onto the scene in Los Angeles, does to get himself ready for a game.

"In the car, I listen to rain sounds for 15 minutes," he shared recently.

Well, Danny Sprinkle would be more than happy to make the wet stuff in Montlake fully available to Willis, who plays for Crossroads High School and hails from Santa Monica.

This past week, the Huskies extended an offer to this 5-star player who is the son of parents who both played for USC and likes to think he set himself apart by concentrating on defense as much as offense.

"Different breed -- the Huskies saw it, too!" Willis posted on social media after receiving his UW offer on Monday. "Thank you Coach Sprinkle, Coach [Quincy] Pondexter and staff for believing in me."

As of this week, Willis, who began his high school career at Mater Dei, holds 14 offers with the Huskies, Stanford and Georgia immediately reaching out to him after he played in a U-16 Tulsa basketball event before 400 college coaches.

Willis has played serious basketball for only a couple of years after his introduction to the game didn't immediately resonate with him.

"My dad, he introduced me to it in seventh grade and I absolutely hated it," he told the Jordan Richard podcast.

What changed his mind was a growth spurt followed by concerns over opposing players going after his knees.

His size and skill set developed so quickly that Willis was invited to a USA Basketball men's junior national team mini-camp last October in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and was considered one of the leading players.

Besides his emphasis on defense, he's considered a three-way scorer able to shoot behind the 3-point line, hit mid-range shots and drive to the basket.

The 16-year-old Willis has an endearing though confident personality while he gets serious about the game.

On social media, he identifies himself as The.Evan.Willis, which would make him an ideal fit for Ohio State.

He also describes himself as the nation's top defensive player in the Class of 2028.

Meantime, the Huskies will likely work on getting Wiillis to visit the UW and Montlake, and maybe try to aim for a rainy weekend.

They can remind him that Seattle, when there were Sonics in town, once was the home of a prominent player called "the Reign Man."

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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