Nahziah Carter is Latest UW MBB Commitment

The University of Washington and Coach Mike Hopkins received a commitment late Friday night from New York Wing Nahziah “Nahz” Carter.

Carter took an official visit to the UW the previous weekend and it seemingly didn’t take long for him to make up his mind. The 6’6” SG/SF from Rochester, New York originally committed to Dayton but took a step back from the school after head coach Archie Miller left to become the head coach at Indiana. Carter has previously mentioned that his interest in Hopkins came from when Hop was the primary recruiter for him while at Syracuse. After getting 3 commitments from Seattle area players, this is the first sign that Hopkins will be able to leverage his own East Coast contacts to give UW a shot in overcoming the distance and draw from the Northeast.

There was talk of Carter reclassifying to 2018 if he didn’t like the offers he was getting following the de-commitment but UW had one more spot left for the 2017 class and given the timing, it looks like it will probably be filled by Carter.

This commitment is going to get more national attention than it normally would because Carter is the nephew of Jay-Z. I don’t think we can suddenly expect to see him courtside at every home game or for Beyonce to perform the national anthems but do expect it to come up on the broadcast the first time he checks into a game every single time for the next 4 years.

Carter is viewed as a 3-star recruit by most services but Scout recently bumped him up to 4-stars after his stellar play this spring. They have him as the #29 SG in the 2017 class. Fellow-UW recruit Jaylen Nowell was the 19th ranked SG. Nahz definitely has some hops though. Here’s a clip of Carter posterizing the #1 player in the 2018 class, Marvin Bagley.

Pending a confirmation that Carter will be starting in the fall, this appears to put an end to the 2017 recruiting class. The final tally looks to be SG Jaylen Nowell, PG Nate Pryor, SG/SF Michael Carter III, and SG/SF Nahziah Carter. There is a distinct lack of PF and C in the prefaces to those names. That officially leaves UW with only 3 players taller than 6’7” on the roster for next season. Hopkins has said that he doesn’t want to rely entirely on the zone during his time here but I expect to see large amounts of it next season. The Dawgs will need to rely on length on the perimeter to prevent inside penetration. Some type of 4-guard lineup with Crisp, Nowell, Thybulle, and Johnson around Dickerson will probably be the go-to crunch time look depending on whether any of the other freshmen pop.

Here are some highlights of Nahz from the Nike EYBL session a couple weekends ago.