A January 2012 video of Buford Wolves star Kaela Davis (via MaxPreps)
With all of the hype surrounding the de-commitment of Kaela Davis to Tennessee, I decided to take a visit to watch her play against rival GAC.
If you have not heard of Kaela Davis, then here’s a quick synopsis of one of the most talked about girls in the class of 2013. Her father is ex-NBA player, Antonio Davis. She’s a 6’2 guard with an array of skills and versatility. And she’s considered by many recruiting pundits as one of the top 3 recruits in her class and arguably the most dominant in her class as well.
As both teams are warming up, the college coaches start to file in one by one to catch a glimpse of this one time Tennessee commitment. Michael Cooper and his assistant, Mary Wooley, from USC were in attendance along with Matt Insell of Kentucky, Janie Mitchell of Georgia Tech and Mike McGuire from Richmond.
As the game began, it’s easy to see why so many people hold Davis in such high regard as she opened the game up with two long three pointers. But the GAC Spartans put up quite a fight and gave the Buford Wolves all they could handle as they were able take the lead on a few occasions. The play of 2014 guard Brianna Williams from GAC was quite impressive as she played with a competitive fire that kept the undersized Spartans in the game. Her continuous attacking the basket and use of her athleticism in getting a game-high 9 rebounds almost helped the Spartans pull off the upset. But the combination of Davis, Andraya Carter and the solid contribution of Emily Adams helped Buford stave off GAC, 47-43.
And even though I traveled to see Davis in action, it was the play of Carter that really caught my attention. Usually when most people watch a basketball game, especially on the high school level, they only pay attention to points or the spectacular plays. They sometimes fail to look at the minute things that really make the athlete special, work ethic, mental toughness and competitive nature. Carter, who has signed to play at Tennessee, has all of these attributes and then some; she’s also a phenomenal floor leader that hasn’t even scratched the surface of her potential.
When first looking at Carter, she’s not the most physical imposing player standing at around 5’8" but like the old adage says, “you can’t judge a book by its cover.” These words are even truer when seeing Carter play. Carter is pound for pound arguably the most gifted athlete to come around in quite sometime, male or female. And that’s not a hyperbole; she’s truly that dynamic of an athlete as she broke the girl’s basketball national record for Nike SPARQ Training with a rating of 117. Now to put this in perspective of how impressive that is, NBA MVP Derrick Rose’s SPARQ rating was 86.80 when he was tested.
I have never seen a female athlete at her size with that type of exceptional athleticism and explosion; mind you, this is after coming back off a torn ACL. She did things that a 5’8” guard is simply not supposed to do; there were a few times where her teammates were throwing her post-up lob passes. Again, I reiterate she‘s the point guard. And sometimes her teammate’s passes were off kilter as some of them were thrown slightly above the rim and Carter just simply would pluck the ball out of the air. It literally was eye popping some of the things that she could do and what’s scarier is that she will continue to get better.
Now getting back to Davis, she’s a very smooth and talented player. Her game is very reminiscent of Tracy McGrady in that she has playmaking ability and a very good jumpshot but sometimes settles for it too much. And there were times in the game where she wasn’t as assertive as she could be and you wanted her to just take over the game. All in all, Davis had a very solid game of 16 points and 9 rebounds.