The Jr All-Star Featured40 National Combine visited Minnesota on Saturday. In the first year of our National Featured40 National Combine, we are visiting Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, Florida, and Georgia. However, due to increased COVID-19 guidelines, the Colorado event had to be canceled. Players from all of these states have the opportunity to play games in front of our Jr All-Star analysts and go through a “NBA Draft-like” combine, with measurements including: Height, Wingspan, Hand Length, Standing Reach, Vertical Leap, 3/4 Court Sprint, Lane Agility Drill. After extremely successful events in both Wisconsin and Minnesota, we are looking forward to the remaining events in Florida and Georgia and are excited to bring this event to several more states in the future. Here is a recap of the Minnesota Featured40 National Combine & a look at our event MVP.
The Minnesota event went off with two sessions and was a mix of 140+ players from the classes ranging from 2021 to 2028. Each session had eight teams with 7-9 players on each. Each game played was a twenty-five-minute running clock. There were impressive scoring outputs during these games. One of the teams dropped 73 points in the 25 minutes after hitting over 15 3-pointers.
The coaches for some of the names were some notable names that fans of NCAA women’s basketball would be familiar with from their playing careers. Jenna Smith, The University of Illinois Graduate, and Killenda Zackery, who played at South Carolina and Rutgers in her playing career. Both also have had long careers playing overseas and had a wealth of knowledge to give to the players they were coaching.
Another aspect of the event was the “NBA Draft-like” skills combine that both sessions participated in and included measuring the player’s vertical jump, their sprint time, their wingspan, their lane agility, and their hand measurements. It was exciting to see just how athletic and mobile the players in Minnesota Girls Basketball are currently.
Overall this is an event that Jr-All Star was thrilled they were able to pull off and hope to bring this must-attend event all around the country.
Featured 40 MVP: Kyla Overskei- Class of 2022
Throughout the day, there were plenty of players who were knock-down players from the perimeter. There was plenty of good shooters in the gym and then there was Kyla Overskei. She was unconscious from 3-point range and must have felt like she was throwing a beach ball into the ocean. She finished one of her games going 7-7 from 3-point range. She hit them from left-wing, right-wing, from the corners, and both off the catch and shoot and dribbling into her shooting motion. Part of me thinks if Kyla would have attempted a half-court shot or two on Saturday, that one if not all of them might just have found the bottom of the net. That’s how good her shooting was during the Featured 40 and what powered her to being named the Featured 40 MVP.
