S-I Chooses Seattle's Paolo Banchero to Its All-American Team
His mother remains one of the University of Washington's greatest women's basketball players while his father was a gritty reserve tight end for the Huskies football team.
Rhonda Smith-Banchero stands 6-foot-2 and Mario goes slightly taller at 6-3.
From this matrimonial union emerges O'Dea High's 6-foot-10 Paolo Banchero, one of the nation's leading high school basketball players and elite recruits for 2021.
Sports Illustrated, releasing its initial schoolboy All-American team in stages this week, selected Banchero to its third team, making him one of the country's top 15 players. And he's still just a junior.
"He checks off every box," S-I analyst Jason Jordan said of a player gifted with height and playmaking skills. "He's a guy you can't really put into a position. He competes at both ends of the floor."
With this physical package, family genes and national attention all wrapped into one, Banchero not surprisingly has every top college program pursuing him.
He's taken official visits to Duke, Gonzaga, Kentucky, North Carolina and Tennessee, according to 247Sports. Kentucky coach John Calipari was seated courtside at Seattle Pacific University to watch Banchero play a late-season game.
With his family connections, Banchero also has Washington listed among his choices, but he's feeling no in-house pressure to stay put. The college choice is his alone.
Rhonda Smith, who graduated as the UW women's all-time leading scorer with 2,948 points since surpassed, was inducted to the Husky Hall of Fame in 2004. She gives her son plenty of room to consider a college destination.
"My mom and dad don't push me to go to Washington," the big man said. "They don't push me to go anywhere else either."
As a sophomore in 2019, Paolo Banchero averaged 20 points and 7 rebounds while leading O'Dea to a state basketball championship, earning most valuable player honors. He upped those numbers to 22 points and 11 boards this past season for a state runner-up finisher.
His father Mario attended the same Seattle high school and shared in a state football title for O'Dea in 1991, making it a family of winners.
The younger Banchero is the latest in a long line of big men from the greater Seattle area, joining Steve Hawes, Spencer Hawes, James Edwards, Jawann Oldham, Petur Gudmundsson, Blair Rasmussen, Christian Welp and Curtis Borchardt. All were eventual NBA players.
Banchero's college choice might not matter all that much. Analysts project him to be a first-round draft pick in 2022, following a single season at the college level.
