IU Basketball Recruiting 2020 Names to Know: Justin Powell

It has been an interesting year for Goshen, Ky.’s class of 2020 guard Justin Powell.

After playing his sophomore year at Louisville Trinity High School, he decided to make the leap to a national prep school.

Prior to his move to Montverde Academy in Florida, Powell was the No. 51 ranked player nationally in the 2020 class.

Just months after his move to Florida, Powell was back in Kentucky and forced to sit out his junior year due to the state’s high school transfer rules.  He now attends North Oldham High School just outside of Louisville.

Until AAU play started this spring, Powell hadn’t played competitive basketball for nearly a year, and his national ranking has plummeted to No. 224 according to the 247Sports Composite.

But the 6-foot-5, 180-pound Powell can still play.  And he erased a lot of doubts in his first game on the Nike EYBL Circuit’s first stop in Atlanta in April.

Playing with the Indiana based Indy Heat AAU program, the shooting guard scored 26 points and made all six of his three-point attempts in his first competitive game in nearly a year.

A big a versatile guard, Powell can do a lot of different things on the court and plays anywhere from point guard to the wing.  In the game we watched him play in Westfield, Ind., Powell showed that he wasn’t afraid to mix it up and he has the quickness to play at the high major level.

Powell’s recruitment intensified after that strong showing on the Nike EYBL’s first weekend in Atlanta, with a number of new schools entering the mix.  One of them was Indiana.

Powell has been in contact with IU and he is planning to come to Bloomington for a visit soon.   You can hear him discuss that more in the video below.

Overall on the EYBL Powell is averaging 13.2 points while shooting 50 percent from the field and 55 percent from behind the three-point line.  He has added 2.8 rebounds and 2.6 assists in 26.8 minutes per game.

Powell has an injury right now and is not playing this weekend in Texas.  That injury has created an opening for Fort Wayne’s Luke Goode to move up and run with the U17 Indy Heat.

Powell has offers from a number of power five schools including Auburn, Georgia, Tennessee, Georgia Tech and Cincinnati.

A Kentucky native, it seems clear based on his comments below that interest from the home state Wildcats carries a lot of weight.  He has told reporters that he plans to decide on a school prior to his senior year at North Oldham.

(You can read more about Powell’s last year here.)

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