Two years of hard work from Florida’s coaching staff paid off on Thursday as their top target in the 2021 class Kowacie Reeves Jr. announced his commitment to the Gators. Florida first offered Reeves back in May of 2018 and ever since has been making him a priority and finally landing him is a cause for celebration. The 6’6” combo guard from Macon, Georgia is the 67th ranked player in the 2021 class, though it’s nearly certain he’ll climb in upcoming rankings and some services have him as high as 32nd.
Reeves ultimately chose the Gators over Stanford and Georgia Tech, and those final schools speak to how focused he is academically which played a role in his decision to come to Florida. Some other schools that were after him were Georgia, Arkansas, Clemson, Alabama, and North Carolina but none were able to beat the pitch put forward by the Gators.
In Reeves the Gators are getting a multidimensional scorer who you can play on or off the ball with great success. With the ball in his hands he uses a quick first step to burst past his check and his length to finish around shot blockers, and that’s if he doesn’t decide to dunk all over them. He’s been described as one of the best athletes in the class, and for him to be that explosive while also being so skilled you can see why people are excited about him. When he was first offered by Florida in 2018 he was still 6’2”, and some analysts were describing him as the best shooter in the class. Now he’s 6’6” and the shooting stroke remains and that makes him easily projectable as an elite SEC talent.
With his size and skill he’ll be expected to contribute right away and that’s likely something the Gators will need as they stand to lose some valuable pieces in the same height range with Scottie Lewis and Keyontae Johnson expected to depart following next season. It’s clear that after the Gators were lacking wings for number of years they have made that position a priority by landing Samson Ruzhentsev and Niels Lane in the 2020 class and now Reeves in 2021, something that will help them when they take on the wing-heavy teams in the SEC as well as regular rival Florida State.
Reeves is the first player to commit in the class of 2021 and that should really help in the recruitment of any future targets. He’s got a great personality off the floor and loads of talent on the floor, both traits that will help attract future talent. It’s unknown how many players the Gators will be looking to sign in the 2021 class due to the fact that they don’t stand to graduate any players but they will almost certainly lose some to the NBA draft, but it’s good to know that whatever happens they have Reeves in the bag.
The graphic for this article is courtesy of Hype South Media, a company owned by Kowacie Reeves Sr. who provided it back in 2018 when I first interviewed Reeves Jr.