Boys Basketball: Facing Uncertain Future, Hudson Scroggins Focuses On The Present
Lake Forest's best player has yet to find a college home. He's not all that worried.
Hudson Scroggins held the ball at the top of the key. He intensely stared down his defender, Benet Academy’s Colin Stack, a giant at 7-foot-2.
Instantaneously, disparate scenarios ran through Scroggins's head. Wait for a driving lane and take Stack off the dribble was one. Or, he could shoot; standing behind the three-point arc a more than comfortable spot for the 6-7 Scroggins. Lastly, he could be patient, pass the ball to one of his Lake Forest High School teammates, reset the offense, and wait for the ball to be distributed back to him. Over dozens and dozens of possessions throughout the game, Scroggins goes through the same cognitive exercise, all resulting in the same possible outcomes: take, shoot, or pass. Charged with making so many decisions, and the pressure to be right almost every time, that’s the burden of being a team’s most scouted player.
Back to the action: in the second quarter of a tight game, Scroggins decides to try and take Stack to the rack. One potential pitfall of driving to the basket is the convergence of other defenders, who leave their man to guard Scroggins. But the Scouts senior is quick enough to accelerate through a driving lane, slip past the double team, and finish with a layup.
It’s one play in a game filled with putbacks, three-point shots and alley-oop dunks, eventually won by the highly-ranked Redwings. But the sequence described—Scroggins rapidly surveying his options followed by a decisive finish— is one we would not have seen a year ago, or even three months ago, when the Scouts began the 2024-25 season. It’s all part of the basketball education of Scroggins, the team’s best player, a captain (one of three) on a 20-win Scouts team that opens the postseason Wednesday night.
“The ball goes through him a lot. He gets a lot of attention and has to make the right reads,” Scouts head coach Phil LaScala said. “He’s coming along in a really good way.”
Averaging over 17 points a game while also the team’s leading rebounder, Scroggins possesses a unique natural-born characteristic, not statistical measurement but a physical trait. He’s plays the game left-hand dominate. That’s an asset in a basketball universe dominated by right-handedness.
We’ve now gotten to the part of the story where the author typically mentions the subject’s college destination. That’s newsworthy information and placed at the top of any feature write-up. But with this piece, the colllege part I can’t report. Scroggins remains uncommitted, a baffling development unless we attempt to understand how college sports is in the midst of massive change, the New Normal being uncertainty and chaos.
Hudson Scroggins happens to be caught in the middle, between the transition from the old way of doing things and what the industry is rapidly becoming.
A part of college basketball since the 1970s, Rick Pitino has seen a lot in five decades. Currently the head coach of the Top 10 St. John’s Red Storm, Pitino has regained status amongst the game’s elite. Winning tends to make old coaches more relevant.
Pitino recently went on a podcast and was asked about the current state of college basketball. He commented on the construction of his St. John’s team and how he plans to rebuild the roster next season:
You’re getting different players every year. And that’s the way it [is] with us. Now, fortunately for us, we haven’t lost our freshmen yet. Our freshmen have come back. So this year, we’re not even looking at a high school basketball player.
With that comment, Pitino, winner of over 700 games, said the quiet part out loud.
His program is not recruiting high school seniors! If St. John’s is not doing it, you better believe many others are following suit. And not just at the Division 1 level. There are over 2,000 men’s college basketball programs, counting junior colleges. What’s happening at upper level schools like St. John’s is trickling down to each level below—Division 1-AA, 2, 3, and NAIA.
Regardless of where a school stands in the college basketball hierarchy, those in charge share the same position: general apathy for high school seniors.
“Coaches are asking, ‘what do we need to do to win next year?’ At the end of the day, would you rather take an 18-year-old or a 22-year-old for one year?’ Scott Burgess said. Burgess is a Senior Scouting Director for Prep Hoops Illinois. “You’d take the 22-year-old and get another one the next year and another one the year after that.”
Burgess’s reference to 22-year-olds is, of course, a nod to the emergence of the transfer portal. Recent NCAA policy, forced by court rulings favorable to player mobility, gives all leverage to the college athlete. They can transfer to and from one college to the next without restriction as many times as they want.
When unlimited transfers became law a couple of years ago, there was bound to be a downstream impact. Burgess said one negative outcome is the underrecruitment of talented and college-level high school seniors.
“The portal is the biggest game-changer in recruiting in my 15 years doing this,” Burgess said. “For the most part, if you don’t commit and sign in the fall (of senior year), then most of the time it’s a waiting game.”
Burgess watches over 150 high school games a season, either online or in person. He said almost all the calls he gets now from college coaches are not about high school juniors or seniors but about current college players who Burgess scouted when they were in high school. “They’ll ask, ‘He had a huge game last night. What AAU team does he play for? We need to know if he’s open to going into the portal,’” Burgess said. “They don’t care about high school recruiting right now.”
Asked about Scroggins, Burgess said he reminds him of a face-up power forward the likes of a Kevin Durant, “who can put the ball on the deck and shoot and do a little facilitating as well…he’s efficient around the basket and solid as a rebounder and post-defender. He’s a well-skilled offensive player.”
He views Scroggins as a Division 1-level player, in the low-to-mid-level range. Five years ago, he’d likely have committed by now to a Missouri Valley Conference-type team, according to Burgess. But the competition for those roster spots are no longer other seniors finishing out their high school careers in Wisconsin, Iowa or other parts of Illinois. They instead are grown men already in college, having banked many more years of life and basketball experience.
“There’s not as much development as there used to be and Hudson is the perfect example of that,” Burgess said. “The day and age of colleges taking guys like that and taking time to put strength on and get used to the college game is rare.”
The data supports Burgess’s position. Just take a glance at the state of Illinois Class of 2025 rankings via 24/7Sports.
Of the top 13 players listed (that could be seen without subscribing), only two are high major (Big 10, Big East) commits. Four remain uncommitted. For context, of the Top 13 players in the 24/7 Sports Class of 2023, seven received scholarships to high-major programs.
One of those was Asa Thomas of Lake Forest, now a sophomore at Clemson.
‘What’s happening to these high school kids is terrible,” LaScala said, 20 seasons in as Scouts coach. “They all want the 20-year-olds, they want big bodies, they want experience. It’s killing the high school kids.”
We’re deep into this story and we have yet to hear from the subject. As you’ll find out, he’s the least interested person in talking about his future.
Here’s a simple, yet savage, truth: college athletics is a business and winning is good for business. Coaches are ruthlessly binary in their evaluations of prospects: can this player help us win or not?
That reality can be a harsh one for teenage athletes. For those with college aspirations, the difference between a pollyannish dream and factual intelligence is the ultimate arbiter of one’s recruitability: the marketplace.
Due to a combination of factors ranging from serendipity or just plain old luck, the point in a career when an athlete gets placed on a scouting list curated by subjective evaluators is often out of their control. When they decide to pursue loftier ambitions, like college, that’s an action in which they have full agency.
Scroggins remembers a few games into his sophomore season of 2022-23 when the “I can do this!” light bulb went off.
“We played Niles North and I played 25 minutes. We beat Carmel in the sectional semifinals and I remember getting a few offensive rebounds and steals,” Scroggins said. “That’s when I was like, ‘I need to get serious in the off-season.’”
His rise happened to coincide with a banner stretch in the history of Lake Forest boys basketball.
With three postseason wins this February and March, the Scouts will earn a berth in their fourth straight sectional championship game. Two years ago, Scroggins’ first as a varsity contributor, Thomas was the unquestioned star. Last season’s North Suburban Conference championship team saw point guard Tommie Aberle in the alpha role, with Scroggins taking a supporting yet more prominent position.
Having played with both Thomas and Aberle informed Scroggins’ view of what being a leader should look like. Aberle’s style was more direct while Thomas preferred a more mindful approach. Scroggins was inspired to implement a blend of the two during a recent Scouts practice.
During a passing drill, senior point guard Luke Sawant threw the ball into a crowd of defenders.
“I told him, ‘don’t throw the ball right in the middle, have me outside the zone. Be a little quicker with the ball,” Scroggins said, giving instructions to Sawant with a high five and affirming tone.
“I always encourage guys but do more than just tell them to ‘pick their head up.’ I want to remind them they have this option or another option,” Scroggins said.
That form of dual leadership—affectionate and actionable—only works if the player giving the instruction knows what he’s doing and has the respect of his teammates. With almost 100 games of varsity basketball under his belt, Scroggins has logged the minutes necessary to be a coach-on-the-floor figure. His production has purchased plenty of equity: earlier this season, Scroggins surpassed 500 career rebounds.
After three straight seasons of averaging 25 wins, this winter could have morphed into a transition year for Lake Forest. Graduated from 2023-24 were nine seniors, replaced by a roster filled with varsity newbies. With more size than in previous seasons—along with the 6-7 Scroggins, the Scouts start a 6-10 center in Grant Mordini, feature a 6-4 scoring two-guard, Grant Mordini, a 6-6 sophomore in Rory Haas, with Fin Graf (6-5), Charlie Engelberg (6-3) and Charlie Markee (6-2) all contributors—LaScala switched up the offense to fit the personnel.
It worked, as the Scouts again won 20 games, were one game out of the NSC title race, and when the postseason seedings came out, they were awarded a No. 2 spot in the Class 3A Antioch Sectional.
“It’s a totally different style we have to play,” LaScala said. “To have two bigs on the floor, it’s a smaller court and there’s advantages and disadvantages. You have to be able to guard and that’s not easy when you have (size).”
With so much emphasis on perimeter shooting and teams playing more “five-out” (five guards), size no longer correlates with placement on the floor. In today’s game, all players, regardless of height, must shoot the basketball and force defenders to guard outside the paint. Players who create match-up problems on the offensive side and on defense, guard in the post and along the three-point line, are at a premium.
Scroggins checks all the boxes.
“He’s a stretch four with good length, can shoot the ball, switch 1-to-5 (guard all positions) and he’s a rebounding machine. I always thought he was a Division 1 basketball player,” Dantae Johnson said, Scroggins’ travel ball coach with Fundamental U.
Johnson, also an assistant coach at Evanston High School, agrees with the theory that Scroggins’ underrecruitment is a function of morphing industry norms (“five years ago, he’s not sitting around at this point of the year”) and cites an earlier mentioned conference as an example of the transactional nature of men’s college basketball in the year 2025.
“Look at the (Missouri Valley Conference) best teams (last year). A lot of those guys are not in the valley anymore. They left,” Johnson said. “That’s part of it, (Scroggins) recruitment has been hurt by that.”
But coaches are not just gun-shy taking an 18-year-old project over a proven commodity three years older. There’s more to it than that.
According to Johnson, there’s also a buyer beware concern amongst college coaches, who don’t want to fall into the trap of developing high school recruits only to see them jump to another program.
“What if he comes in and does well? We develop this kid and he leaves. What do we get out of it?” Johnson said.
Burgess added: “Part of this is on the player’s end. They go to a school and don’t play as a freshman and say, ‘I’m going to transfer.’ The colleges feel like they wasted a year when they could have had a transfer come in.”
As documented in this article, nearly everyone associated with basketball has an opinion on the current state of the game. And there are plenty of coaches and analysts with an opinion on Scroggins and his recruitment.
When asked to give his global opinion on college basketball and its unlimited roster movability, the player himself agrees about the portal and its influence.
“College basketball really wants older players and good experience at the college level and not kids out of high school,” Scroggins said.
Responding to a follow-up question about the pace of his personal recruitment and how much of it is daily top of mind, Scroggins deflects with a sense of hyperconscious centeredness: desirous to stay in the present and not wanting to divert attention away from his current team, yet with full knowledge he has much work to do over the coming weeks and months in regards to secure his future.
“I’m not too worried about that. I’m taking it pretty slow, focus on one day at a time and try not to get stressed about next year,” Scroggins said.
That’s a healthy mindset for what can be a stressful time for high school seniors. Unlike the majority of his peers who will retire from competitive athletics at the conclusion of their final prep season, Scroggins can still pad his resume once he’s done playing for the Scouts.
He will play for Fundamental U this spring once the Scouts’ season concludes. By then, the portal will have opened, college teams will know what their needs are for 2025-26 and be on the hunt for players.
“That’s definitely something that could help him (Scroggins) get in front of schools one more time,” Burgess said.
Johnson added: “There might be a school where they don’t know what they need yet. But a month from now, they may need a forward or a wing or a guard. They may not have seen (Scroggins). Now they are like, ‘we need to take this kid.’”
College offers are the currency of any high school recruit. For Scroggins, they will come. He’s learned to be patient. Until then, he’ll just keep playing ball and leading the Scouts to more victories.
“We’ve beaten some good teams. We beat Rolling Meadows (ranked 16th in the state via MaxPreps) by 12 (48-36), got balanced scoring, and that was some of the best hoops we’ve played all year,” Scroggins said.
The Scouts open up postseason play Wednesday night (Feb. 25) in the regional semifinals at Vernon Hills. Tip-off is at 6 pm.
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