Craig Wind has written for Rivals.com along with his own recruiting service . Wind weighs in on 810 Varsity events and Kansas City metro area players through the year.

When you look at the season De Soto is having, halfway out to Lawrence off of K-10, their star senior point guard David Cobin 2024 5’10” has lead the Wildcats to a 13-3 season. He is a remarkable talent, perhaps the best ‘under six foot’ player in Kansas in the 21st century. Crafty-tough-skilled. David has quality character and is extremely gifted. His recruitment is up in the air, I know Northwest Missouri State likes him a lot. D2s can offer slices of the financial pie. So what that and NIL looks like, not sure. He could go D2 and blow up and go back through the portal and get a low D1 gig. Or he could just go to NWMS. He won’t find a better match.

De Soto has lost twice to Piper and then to Shawnee Heights. So you have to have quickness and speed and be well coached in order to match up and defend David Cobin. Both schools have what it takes. Piper sophomore point guard Derrick Jackson 2026 6’0” is long and skilled and can really guard well for a young fella. And he’s ALWAYS motivated when he goes ‘mano y mano’ with an all state player like Cobin. For five more weeks of the 2024 season, it’s ALWAYS a challenge to play vs. the De Soto Wildcats! They played in last year’s 5A state championships because of David Cobin.

Last week, I went up to NKC to watch Staley defeat the Northmen 54-50 in a tough grinder affair like you knew it would be. HOF legendary coaches Ed Fritz and Chris Neff going after it. Junior guards Avion Webb 2025 5’10” of Staley and Kamron Tate 2025 5’11” of NKC going ‘tooth & nail’ every possession. I must say however, the NKC crowd AND the announcer gave us the ‘call of the season’ and the highlight of my evening both in chant in the crowd AND over the microphone. When senior post player Samuel Dada 2024 6’8” blocked a shot or scored inside or got a dunk, the chant was … ‘Who’s your Dada?” I loved it. Great creativity Very quippy.

Three weeks back during the January basketball tournaments, Blue Valley Northwest went down to Pittsburg and lost to Owasso OK 52-41 in the Bill Hanson Memorial. Now we probably wouldn’t typically be spending much time talking about an Oklahoma team, except for the fact that this one has a Top 10 national sophomore Jalon Montanatti 2026 6’9” small forward who has 25+ high D1 offers, one of which is the University of Kansas. When head coach Bill Self coached at Tulsa, he recruited Jalon’s dad to Tulsa (didn’t get him). But they are now well connected, and trust me when I tell all the Jayhawk fans in the KC metro area, you will fall in love with Montanatti the person-player-student/athlete. Plays for MoKan during the Spring-Summer AAU season. Super skilled and long with all the intangibles. He’d be a great Jayhawk!

Finally then, I went over to Blue Valley Northwest HS recently night to see the Huskies play Lee’s Summit North HS and the Broncos star sophomore Tre Paulding 2026 6’5” is the son of former Missouri  great-Ricky Paulding. You know you’re getting old in this profession, Ricky in Michigan in 2001 and now his son Tre in 2024 in the metro KC area. Tre is long and skilled with a decent body for the game. He’s a great kid and probably too unselfish considering his options on the floor. Now he’s got a ways to go to be as good as his dad was. Not saying he won’t get there. He will (probably). Ricky Paulding could have played anywhere in the country.