UCLA Basketball Recruiting: Your Turn, SG Isaac Hamilton

We continue our assault on UCLA basketball recruiting by taking a look at 2013 2-guard Isaac Hamilton out of Los Angeles, CA, who has been given an offer and shows “medium interest” in UCLA. He is a consensus 5-star recruit and is ranked 14th in ESPN’s top 100 basketball recruits.

Hamilton is billed as a 6’4”, 170-pound shooting guard with a ton of versatility. Before we open our mouths, let’s look at a highlight tape or two (and, as always, we remind you to take this with a grain of salt and a metric shit-load of Tobasco sauce):

In the video, we notice a few things. The first thing that sticks out to these eyes is Hamilton’s versatility. Highlight tapes are a good indicator of what a player does well (the more highlights, the more likely they do that particular thing really well), and it seems reasonable to say that Hamilton is a solid scorer that has ample court vision to make clever passes, especially when he’s attacking the basket and using the attention that he draws to create for teammates.

What do the scouting reports say? Well, they say “yes and no” basically. While the scouting reports praise his passing skills and his ability to score, they knock him for not passing as much as he should and for being a “streaky” shooter. In fact, this seems to be the consensus across all recruiting sites and scouting reports.

These are obviously two of the most correctable things ever: Streaky shooting can be alleviated with time spent shooting in the gym (Drake reference!) while not passing enough can be alleviated with, y’know, passing more.

The criticism seems fair (not that I’d know first-hand, since no one gives me money to drive around and check out these kids), but consider that he’s an off-guard, and not a point man. The dude will likely have the ball in his hands quite a bit, but if UCLA lands a legitimate, pure point guard, there’s no doubt in my mind that Hamilton can be relegated to strictly scoring rather than being a consistent playmaker, if Hamilton decides he want to dress up in the historic Bruin Blue and Gold.

As always, we’ll keep you up to date with his recruitment until we stop caring.

GO BRUINS!!!