Dakotah Euton is on a scoring spree in Las Vegas at the adidas Super64 Tournament, but unlike the other premier players, Dakotah is not drawing many looks from college coaches.
That’s because Dakotah has already committed to Kentucky. “He scored 33 yesterday, along with 12 rebounds,” said Dakotah’s dad, Clay, “Last week he scored 28, 36 and 28 points in the Harley Davidson Championships. He is really scoring in buckets.
Today, Dakotah dropped in 17 points against a very good Playaz Basketball Club, helping to bring his Ohio Basketball Club back from a 13 point 2nd half deficit to win and advance his team into the final day of play. He coolly iced the game with free throws down the stretch.
Dakotah has a sweet outside stroke, no doubt. He has a real nose for shaking off opponents and getting open. He also has a nice motion catching the ball and sending off a long-range shot in one easy motion, usually with positive results.
“I sort of copied the shooting style from Larry Bird and Scott Padgett,” said Dakotah, “those were two pretty tall guys that could shoot pretty well.” Indeed.
But not everything in Dakotah’s game is as sweet as his shot. Defensively, Dakotah has a long way to go and he is not as athletic as many of his teammates, areas that he readily admits needs improvement.
“I need to work on my footspeed and my leaping ability,” Dakotah said, “I know that. And defense. Coach Gillispie has stressed to me many times that I have to play really strong defense.”
Areas of improvement aside, Dakotah has great size and poise for a young man that just turned 16 in March. And as Dakotah points out, by committing early, he will not have the recruiting process to distract him from what he needs to do.
“The only thing we worry about is, now that he is committed, I don’t want him to let up,” the elder Euton said, “Coach Gillispie has made it clear that Dakotah needs to continue to work hard and improve. He knows it, and he is going to do it.
Dakotah fun fact:
Clay Euton was watching an old western film on television one night and became attached to the name “Dakotah” which was a character from the movie. The name stuck and that is what he named his son. We are only glad he wasn’t watching “Dances With Wolves” that particular night.
For much more on Dakotah Euton, check our KSR’s September issue of its magazine, which will hit the shelves mid-September.