When Canadian wing Emmanuel Akot committed to Arizona in March for the class of 2018, the coast looked pretty clear.
The Wildcats will probably lose players at all positions next spring, and Akot’s five-star talent and versatility suggested he could have stepped into a prominent role during the 2018-19 season.
He still might do just that. But once Akot decided this month to skip his senior season at Utah’s Wasatch Academy and instead play for Arizona next season, the landscape changed a bit for his freshman season.
At age 18, he’ll find himself battling older NBA prospects such as Allonzo Trier and Rawle Alkins for playing time, while fellow incoming freshmen such as Brandon Randolph and Alex Barcello will be right there with him.
Akot awaits the challenge.
“That’s what I want — competition,” Akot said Tuesday via telephone from Utah. “I’m going to compete every day against guys like Rawle and Allonzo. We have a great team, but I’m going to work hard and do what I can.”
That’s good news for UA coach Sean Miller, who was able to get extra versatility and depth on his talented 2017-18 roster by moving the 6-7, 200-pound Akot up a year.
He might even get a long-term point guard out of it, too.
“He can play a lot of positions, and he’s an adept passer — as a matter of fact he’s one of best passers his size I have seen,” Miller said. “That’s an exciting quality, and defensively the sky’s the limit.”
Akot said he expects to start playing the wing positions at the UA and helping defensively, then maybe move into point guard as his career progresses. He said he models his game after big point guards such as James Harden.
“I’ve been playing point guard my whole life, at Wasatch and for my AAU team,” Akot said. “My size doesn’t bother me. I can handle it. I’m a confident ballhandler.”
Wasatch coach Curtis Condie said he mostly used Akot as a wing and backup point guard, taking advantage of passing ability he said jumped out at him immediately when Akot arrived as a sophomore in 2015-16.
“When he came here I was told he was a four (power forward). He’s not a four,” Condie said. “He played the point, he played the wing and sometimes he’d play the four if we went small. He has great vision.”
Miller said Akot will have a chance to compete for time at point guard along with expected starter Parker Jackson-Cartwright and incoming freshman Alex Barcello, while saying junior wing Allonzo Trier could also slide over to the point.
Akot is “very young right now but his future might be at that position one day,” Miller said. “Allonzo Trier can slide over there as a veteran, somebody who continues to work to be adept at passing and scoring, and the thing about Allonzo is he has a total command of our system, and he’s a great free-throw shooter. So a lot of time you want the ball in (the hands of) a guy like that.”
While Trier will turn 22 midway through next season, Akot won’t even turn 19 until next season’s NCAA Tournament rolls around.
By then, he will have experienced a big jump in competition, no matter where it leaves him in the playing rotation.
“I think any time you replace your senior year of high school with coming into a college program like ours, from a development perspective it’s going to be sped up astronomically,” Miller said. “I think he’s going to really gain a lot through our strength and conditioning program, and getting a college education.”
The academic side might appear the other big adjustment Akot will have to deal with, but it isn’t. Akot said he was ahead academically when he left his hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba, for Wasatch Academy in 2015-16, while Condie said the school brought him up to speed by not enrolling him in “fluff courses.”
Akot finished his core courses this year and had been thinking for several months about reclassifying so that he could play college basketball next season. He said he found out a couple of weeks ago that he could qualify to graduae, then told the UA staff he wanted to go ahead with it.
Knowing the value of quality depth especially after absences plagued the Wildcats most of last season, Miller said he welcomed Akot into doing it. Akot effectively took the Wildcats’ 13th and final scholarship spot for 2017-18.
Akot then quickly made plans to enroll in a UA bridge summer session course in mid-June, gain at least 15 pounds in the offseason, and start competing with his new teammates.
In college.
“Graduation on the 27th and I’m done with high school,” Akot said. “I have two finals. It’s not stressful.”
Allen works out
for Lakers
Former UA guard Kadeem Allen auditioned for the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday, saying it was his seventh team workout. He said at the NBA combine that he had plans to appear in front of 15 teams, an ambitious predraft schedule. “Been through a lot of workouts and flying,” Allen said on a Lakers.com video. “East Coast to West Coast, your body gets tired. It’s just a grind, but everybody’s trying to get to the NBA so it’s something we have to do.”
