WSU notes: Arkansas recruit maintained his skills through growth spurt

Spencer Reaves helped his younger brother, Austin, grow into a star basketball player, one who committed to play for Wichita State last week. Spencer isn’t done with his offers of assistance for the Shockers.

With Austin on board, Spencer sees an exhibition game between his NCAA Division II Central Missouri team and WSU as a natural. Spencer Reaves is a sophomore guard for the Mules. He plays with Louis Reinmiller, best friends and high school teammates with WSU freshman Landy Shamet at Park Hill (Mo.), and Brett O’Neil, who played with Shockers senior Ron Baker at Scott City.

“We need to get that set up,” Spencer Reaves said. “I told Austin to talk to coach (Gregg) Marshall. Louis was telling me a week ago, that if my brother ends up committing there, we have to get an exhibition game. There’s too many ties not to.”

Whether or not anybody pays attention to his suggestion, Spencer will pay attention to the Shockers through his brother.

Austin Reaves, a 6-foot-5 senior at Cedar Ridge High near Newark, Ark., gave WSU a non-binding commitment on Wednesday. His older brother watched him grow from a 5-foot-9 freshman point guard to a senior who averages around 32 points and and 7.5 assists. He isn’t listed in the recruiting databases for any of the major recruiting sites, which makes him as close to under-the-radar as exists.

Spencer Reaves saw this coming as he watched Austin leave clothing sizes behind without losing his ball-handling ability. The Reaves are a basketball family — Brian Reaves, his father, played point guard at Arkansas State and led the team in assists three times and foul shooting twice. Nicole Wilkett, his mother, averaged 18.9 points in two seasons at Arkansas State.

When Austin’s game held up against Jonesboro’s Kahron Ross, last season’s Patriot League Rookie of the Year at Lehigh, Spencer saw the future.

“No turnovers against Kahron Ross — Kahron was a heck of a defender,” Spencer said. “I knew he was going to be all right.”

Austin Reaves grew four or five inches during the summer of his sophomore year. The experience of playing point as a freshman and sophomore — which meant getting the ball to his older brother and other veterans on a Class 2A championship team — shaped his game.

“I used to be smaller than everybody,” he said. “All I did was faciliate the ball and assist.”

With that background, impressive dribbling skills and an improving outside shot, Austin Reaves sees WSU’s offense as a perfect style.

“They use a lot of ball screens and that’s the way I wanted to play,” he said.

Reaves sees the similarities between his story and Baker, who came to WSU as a recruited walk-on and redshirted. Both had offers from South Dakota State. Arkansas State recruited Reaves; Arkansas-Little Rock wanted Baker. Baker’s successful path from Scott City to WSU offers Reaves a road map.

“Austin thought it was a really good fit and a lot of that had to do with Ron Baker,” said Matt Hall, coach of the Arkansas Wings. “That made Austin feel really good about the program.”

Brain work — WSU’s women’s basketball team shoots for a two-game win streak against Evansville on Sunday at Koch Arena. Coach Jody Adams wants things to go not-so-perfectly for some of her players.

In Adams’ mind, she’s got a number of perfectionists on her roster. That can be good.

It can be bad when the pursuit of perfection paralyzes a player. On Friday, sophomore Diamond Lockhart scored 19 points, her first game in double figures since mid-December. She made 7 of 11 shots.

“She’s loose,” Adams said. “Just playing. I’ve got perfectionists, several of them. 4.0 (grade-point averages). To a fault, they want to perfect things. They’re tallying all their stats as they’re playing and you can’t. The game is moving too fast. Just play aggressive and compete and things will come.”

The Shockers (4-14, 1-6 MVC) can exit the bottom of the MVC with a win over Evansville (2-15, 1-5).

Worth noting — Track and Field News ranks WSU’s men’s team No. 5 and the women’s team No. 8 nationally in its dual meet rankings. Indiana State is No. 11 (women) and No. 17 (men).… ESPNU will show WSU’s baseball game against TCU on April 2 at Eck Stadium. ESPNU will also broadcast the April 30 Dallas Baptist at Bradley game. WSU starts practice on Friday.

This story was originally published January 23, 2016 at 3:04 PM with the headline "WSU notes: Arkansas recruit maintained his skills through growth spurt."