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Hershey's Painter taking time to sift through recruiting deluge

04/29/2015, 7:45pm EDT

By Jack Goodwillie

Jack Goodwillie (@JackGoodwillie)
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Hershey High School junior power forward Dylan Painter already has 23 scholarship offers that he needs to sift through, and there are still three July live period weekends left to go on the AAU circuit.

Painter has received offers from schools spanning over nine different conferences and 12 different states. He's got nine offers alone from the Atlantic 10, five Patriot League schools, three from the Big 10 (Penn State, Iowa and Northwestern) and various others.

Some have been on him for a long time, like Pennsylvania schools Lehigh, Lafayette and La Salle; Holy Cross, Boston University and Marist also offered in 2015.

Penn State offered on April 1 and George Mason a day later, a sign of what was to come in the following weeks.

Over the last 16 days, he's added 12 offers: Xavier, Duquesne, Dayton, Richmond, Hofstra, Davidson, Georgia Tech, Saint Joseph's, Yale, Rhode Island, Rice, Northwestern and most recently Iowa, who offered on Wednesday night.

He's getting calls from schools across the country who are offering on the spot.

“Northwestern was one because I hadn’t heard much from them until this weekend,” Painter said. “Georgia Tech I hadn’t heard much from. Hofstra, Davidson and Richmond all kind of surprised me.”

For a soft spoken kid growing up in a town more known for its chocolate than ability to churn out top level basketball players, nearly two dozen scholarship offers can be a lot to take in. While surprised, Painter is eager to give his all to a school that believes in him both as a player and as a human being.

“[Getting those offers] made me feel proud of all the hard work I’ve done over the last couple of years,” Painter said. “But the really good basketball teams that want me to play for them are really good academic schools too, so I’m also proud of that.”

In spite of all the offers of varying magnitudes he has received thus far, Painter has time on his side. He still has his senior season to look forward to at Hershey, where he will look to improve on a sensational junior year while cementing his status as a mid-high major power forward prospect.

Until then, Painter is allowing time for the offers to sink in and will not entertain the notion of trimming his lengthy list until later this summer. While he will be visiting the local schools first for convenience purposes, location will not be a factor in his decision as he will be taking every offer under careful consideration in order to determine what the best fit is going to be.

“I’m going to wait until after July until I start cutting it down,” Painter said. “Right now I’m in the stage where I’m doing as much research as I can on these schools and visiting some of the local places.”

One of the only knocks on Painter from a scout’s perspective is that he was largely unproven having to play against teams with players that cannot match his level of size and athleticism.

To quell this notion, Painter joined Team Final of the Nike EYBL, where he has continued to hone his game against players he is likely to come across at the next level.

In his first game with Team Final, Painter appeared to be unfazed by the step up in competition, scoring 13 points while pulling down six rebounds in what was a successful debut. Through eight games in the EYBL, he’s averaging 8.1 ppg, 5.4 rpg and 2.6 bpg.

“The competition is so much better,” Painter said. “Usually, I have a 6-5 guy guarding me, but now we’ve played a team with three 7-footers. Playing them has taught me how to use my body more effectively, and how to attack the ball instead of letting it come to me.”

Painter sizes up as a formidable big man in the low post, though his versatility is his greatest weapon. He averaged a double-double in his junior year at Hershey and can score in a variety of ways using his heralded combination of size and finesse.

Now heading into his final year of high school, he has developed a game that allows him to contribute across five categories and coaches from all over are beginning to take notice.

“When I went to Penn State, the coaches all said they really liked how I played and my toughness,” Painter said. “Other places like La Salle, St. Joe’s and Lehigh said they liked my toughness and my skill set, inside and outside.”