Inside The Huskies

Husky Hoop Team Offers 15-Year-Old SoCal Prodigy

Brandon McCoy Jr.'s recruitment has begun eager and earnest for this young phenom.

Dan Raley

In this story:

Most teenagers can't wait to put 15 in the rearview mirror. At that age, they find themselves dealing with growth spurts, complexion issues and confidence factors just as they're entering high school.

Brandon McCoy Jr. won't forget that timeframe anytime soon — practically overnight, he grew into a must-have basketball player.

Just a ninth-grader, the slender 6-foot-4 swingman missed the first half of the 2022-23 season for St. John Bosco High School in Bellflower, California, with an unspecified injury before he was cleared to play the final 15 games.

Coming off the bench, McCoy was instrumental in the Braves' 62-55 upset of Harvard Westlake, scoring a team-high 11 points on 4-for-5 shooting as the opposing Wolverines lost for only the second time in what would be 35 outings.

His 15-game sample was enough to bring him scholarship offers from Arizona State, Oregon, Louisville, UCLA, California and the Huskies, one after another, most of them this week.

People already are calling him a top five player for the recruiting class of 2026, if not the top recruit from California that far out.

All from a 15-game high school sample, plus ensuing AAU outings that have been nothing short of sensational.

McCoy drives through the key with clever moves, wind-mill dunks and hits the outside jumper with a high percentage. 

As he built a big basketball reputation, McCoy gained a big following or regained it — on social media, he has an old photo of him as a very young kid with Seattle resident and retired NBA standout Jamal Crawford and then a current image of him and Crawford's son.

"You have a fan in me for life, young king," Crawford wrote in a post.

McCoy finished that inaugural St. John Bosco season of his by averaging 8.6 points, 4.5 rebounds, 3.6 steals and 1.3 steals and assists per game.

It was all more than enough for a lot of college basketball programs to suddenly want and offer him, including the Huskies. 

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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