Fresh off of [being named to the 2022 McDonald’s All-American team,][1] Kansas basketball signee Gradey Dick has followed that up by earning recognition as a national semifinalist for the Naismith High School Boys Player of the Year Award.
Given annually to the best high school player in the country, the Naismith honor is the smaller-scale version of the same award given out at the college ranks.
On Thursday, The Atlanta Tipoff Club announced 10 semifinalists for this year’s award, which included Dick.
A senior at Sunrise Christian Academy and native of Wichita, Dick signed with the Jayhawks in November of 2021 after committing to KU in March of the same year.
After spending his first two seasons of high school at Wichita Collegiate, Dick transferred to Sunrise for his final two seasons and has seen his game explode. Coming off the bench for a team that featured seven Division I signees a season ago, Dick has starred in a starting role for Sunrise throughout the current season.
Dangerous on the perimeter and nasty near the rim, the 6-foot-7, 195-pound wing was a four- and five-star prospect throughout his final two seasons of high school. He played with current KU forward Zach Clemence last season and was a member of the Team USA 3-on-3 team that won a gold medal in Hungary.
Through mid-January, Dick was averaging 19 points and 5 rebounds per game for Sunrise, while shooting 45.8% from 3-point range and 50.5% from the field overall.
He is joined on the list of Naismith semifinalists by three players headed to Duke and one each from Arkansas, Baylor, Kentucky, Texas and UCLA. There is also one uncommitted prospect on the list.
Current Gonzaga star Chet Holmgren won the award during the 2020-21 season. The current list of 10 was trimmed down from a 25-man midseason list, with the finalists and a winner still to be announced in the weeks to come.
[1]: http://www2.kusports.com/news/2022/jan/25/future-jayhawks-gradey-dick-mj-rice-ernest-udeh-na/
