Davison has an offer from Nebraska and continues to receive strong interest from the Gophers.
Brad Davison, a 6-foot-2 rising junior point guard from Maple Grove (MN) High, is considered one of the Minnesota’s top players from the Class of 2017. Davison, who recently picked up his first high major offer, has shined this spring for the Howard Pulley AAU program.
Davison is an admitted gym rat who watched plenty of college basketball on TV this season, especially former Howard Pulley guard Tyus Jones at Duke.
Davison’s mother said that Minnesota head coach Richard Pitino teased him about his viewing habits and said that he would not look good in blue.
Davison helped lead Maple Grove to a 23-4 mark this past season, losing to Wayzata 77-62 in the second round of the Section 6, Class AAAA playoffs, despite a career-high 42 points. He averaged 16.7 points, 3.7 rebounds, 8.6 assists and 3.5 steals per game. Davison had 20 double figure games this year with ten games of 20 or more points.
Gopher Hole recently caught up with Davison to learn the latest on his recruitment.
Gopher Hole: You picked up an offer from Nebraska since the last time we talked. Were you surprised by that and how long had you been talking to them?
Brad Davison: Yes, sir. They had been to a couple of my games, high school games, and
I decided to visit down there. I don’t know if I was surprised, but I was really honored and excited when it happened.
Gopher Hole: You have some good mid major offers, but that was your first major offer. How does that make you feel?
Brad Davison: Yes, sir. It is very humbling and exciting just to know that the hard work is paying off and they believe that I can play at that level, because I believe that I can, too.
Gopher Hole: Does that make you want to work even harder to get some more major looks?
Brad Davison: Yes, sir. Definitely, for sure. Just keep it going.
Gopher Hole: What offers do you have right now?
Brad Davison: South Dakota, South Dakota State, Northern Iowa and Nebraska.
Gopher Hole: What other schools are you hearing from besides those schools?
Brad Davison: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Virginia, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Creighton and Drake.
Gopher Hole: What are you hearing from the Gophers?
Brad Davison: They have been talking to my AAU coach and my high school coach and I went to a couple of games during the season. Went to a football game with the coaches.
Gopher Hole: Which basketball games did you attend?
Brad Davison: I went to the Wisconsin game and I went to the Nebraska game. I think those were the two.
Gopher Hole: What things have you really been focused on to continue to improve yourself as a player?
Brad Davison: I think that the biggest thing is I moved over to shooting guard this summer playing for our team, so it is just kind of a new mindset. You have to be able to be a scorer. It took me awhile to get used to that. I have really been focusing on coming off screens, catch and shoot and scoring for my team.
Gopher Hole: Do you think that it helps you become a more versatile player because everyone knows that you can pass the ball?
Brad Davison: Yes, sir. I think that it hopefully is going to take my game to another level. It adds more dimensions to my game, so I can do more stuff.
Gopher Hole: How about your play so far this spring and summer? How pleased are you with that?
Brad Davison: I am pretty pleased. It took me awhile to get in the swing of things because I actually went on a mission trip for ten days, so I missed the whole first part of the season, but just getting used to the “2” guard and getting better every tournament.
Gopher Hole: Where did you go on your mission?
Brad Davison: To Jamaica for ten days.
Gopher Hole: What was that experience like?
Brad Davison: Unreal. It was the best experience of my life. We were at the schools with two to five-year olds for six days and then we went to orphanages for two days and helped them build a hospital. It was a lot of fun.
Gopher Hole: Was that the first time that you had ever done something like that?
Brad Davison: It was my first mission trip. My whole family went on one last summer, but I couldn’t go because it conflicted with football, so I got to go with our school this year. It was a lot of fun.
Gopher Hole: Are you going to do anything like that in the future?
Brad Davison: I’m not sure yet. I’m open to it. I’m not sure yet now.
Gopher Hole: Maple Grove had a very good season this past year. You are in the same section as Champlin Park, who made it to the state title game, but lost a lot of the key players to graduation. What are the expectations for you guys?
Brad Davison: Our expectation, we had already set it, our goal is to win the state championship. That is what our mindset has to be, but there are going to be a lot of good teams and we just have to be focused, starting now and get in the gym and get ready to work.
Gopher Hole: How about football? You started last year at quarterback and had a good season. Have you done much football-wise?
Brad Davison: Yes, sir. We have had Monday-Tuesday, Thursday-Friday, we are in the weight room before school and we have conditioning on Wednesdays, so I am doing a lot of football stuff. I am looking forward to it. We have a lot of people coming back. We are going to have to rebuild our defense, but we have a lot of offensive weapons coming back, so it should be a very, very fun year for football as well.
Gopher Hole: Do you always see yourself playing football and basketball during high school. A lot of players wind down to just one eventually.
Brad Davison: I think that I am going to try to keep playing two sports. I think that it adds more dimensions to both games and it gets you skills that you can’t get from just working out with basketball. That way that I look at it, is that I want to go to college to play college basketball and then become a college basketball coach, so basketball is going to be my life for a long time, so I might as well have a couple of more years of football.
Gopher Hole: I know that it is still a ways from picking a college, but what are going to be the main factors that are going to make you pick School A over School B or C?
Brad Davison: I think that the main thing is going to be the relationship that I have with the coaches and the players and the relationship that the coaches have with the players that are already there. I think that will be one of the main things.