Laszewski Wins in Vegas
Las Vegas was the center of the recruiting world last week with as many as five major events taking place around Sin City and attracting college coaches, national media, and well over 1000 teams in the process.
The Adidas Summer Championships were perhraps the most widely covered of those events and there wasn't a player who helped their individual stock more than New England Playaz forward Nate Laszewski.
The 6-foot-9 sharp-shooter led the Playaz to the finals of both the Creator's Cup as well as the Summer Championships. He was a model of consistency from start to finish. He opened with 15 points in a win over Team Loaded North Carolina, who won the Adidas Gauntlet two weeks prior, and followed that up with 20 and 24 against Team Loaded Virginia and Compton Magic on Thursday.
As the Playaz entered the main bracket on Friday, he scored 16 in a relatively easy win over Ohio-Nova and then delivered a big 26 point performance on Saturday to help the Playaz get past Basketball University and advance to Sunday's Final Four. They knocked off Iowa Barnstormers in the semi-finals before losing a heartbreaker to Team Loaded Virginia, in a rematch from Thursday, in the final.
In total, Laszewski shot just under 50% from the field on the week along with 45% from the three-point line and 85% from the free-throw line. He also got it done on the defensive end of the floor, taking a total of 24 charges throughout the team's 9 games.
He came into the week with offers from Temple, Wake Forest, Vanderbilt, Georgetown, and, most recently, Notre Dame. All five of those staffs continued to follow him in Las Vegas but things got much busier as the week went on. First came an offer from Wisconsin, then Indiana. Virginia was next with an Arizona offer culminating the week. That wasn't the end of the offers though as North Carolina head coach Roy Williams came calling with an offer on Monday night.
When it was all said and done, the Playaz may have fallen one possession short of calling themselves the champions, but Laszewski has clearly established himself as one of the most efficient shooting forwards in the country and now has the recruitment to prove it.
Nate Laszewski