Full Scouting Report: Three-star G Brooklyn Hicks

Brooklyn Hicks posted earlier this week he would be announcing his college decision on October 19. Well, today is October 19, so let us take a look at Brooklyn Hicks, the player.

Hicks is a 6-foot-3 off-guard at Lacey (WA) Timberline High. The three-star announced a final four of Washington State, UNLV, Rice, and Nevada.

Hicks played this summer with the Seattle Rotary program on Nike’s EYBL Circuit. He averaged 12.2 points, 4.9, and 2.5 assists, with a 48.8 effective field goal percentage.

Hicks is opportune

When evaluating Brooklyn Hicks’s offensive game, you don’t point at any one attribute he excels at. However, you see the collective whole as an efficient output. For starters, Hicks does not do anything he cannot do; a lot of his offense comes in straight lines to the rim.

Hicks’ explosion allows him to excel in transition. He fills the lanes with a purpose and huts the rim when he gets out and runs. When the three-star pushes the break, there is no dancing with the ball; his purpose is to put pressure on the front of the rim.

Hicks is also opportune with 50-50 balls. The loose balls or the errant passes throughout the course of a game that could go either way. Hicks breaks on the ball quickly and attacks the possible extra possession. He does the same thing in the half-court with offensive rebounds.

Hicks is thin, and he will need to add weight. That will help him in all facets, but especially in the paint as he gets to the basket. It will also help him on the defensive end, which we will touch on later. The jump shot will also need more consistency. He only attempted 1.7 per game in 22 EYBL games this summer, so he does not take many. But that goes back to the early statement that he does not do what he cannot do.

Hicks shot 47.4 percent from the field and scored 0.749 (74th percentile among his peers) this summer. If Hicks is able to at least make the jump shot a threat, it will open up more in his offensive game.

The explosion

We eluded to it before, but Brooklyn Hicks’ calling card is his explosion. It is the takeaway you have, walking away from this game and what you notice from the very start of warm-ups.

Hicks’s quick-twitch athleticism gives him a lot of advantages on the floor. It helps on the offensive boards, it helps when guarding on or off the ball, and helps when filling the lanes in transition. His explosion is unique in that it is both quick, laterally, and bursty, vertically.

This burst and explosion also allows the 6-foot-3 guard to play bigger.

Hicks has defensive upside

Upside is a word that is used when there is an attainable ceiling in sight. In the case of Brooklyn Hicks, he is blessed with a naturally lengthy frame and burst, but he currently gives inconsistent outputs on the defensive end.

His quick twitch-twitch athleticism should give him no problems moving his feet and guarding the opposition for the majority of the court. However, the 6-foot-3 guard gave up 0.702 points per possession (38th percentile among his peers) to his man this summer.

Hicks is blessed with a lengthy frame. We have touched on his explosive athleticism already. There is a clear upside, once he learns how to play defense, for him to at least be an adequate defender at the next level.

On3s Recruiting Prediction Machine

Brooklyn Hicks is set to announce his college decision today, October 19. The final four schools he is choosing between are Nevada, UNLV, Washington State, and Rice.

On3s Recruiting Prediction Machine (RPM) gives UNLV a 99.7 percent chance of landing the three-star guard.

The On3 engineering group teamed up with Spiny.ai to create RPM, the industry’s first algorithm and machine learning-based product to predict where athletes will attend college. Starting from the ground up, On3 built an entirely new product that utilizes data, human expertise, and machine learning.