Latest Chronicle Profile: Ryan Young

Anyone who has played much pickup basketball has come across this guy: he’s slow, possibly pudgy, can’t really jump and is someone you pick because you need another guy.

And then he gets on the court and you realize no one can stop him. Either he’s so wide or so smart about what he can get away with that no one can get close to his shot. WHe can’t keep up but he somehow forces the game to be at his pace.

Ryan Young is that guy.

We watched him in the summer scrimmage videos just killing Duke’s young big men. He slipped behind them, passed around them or shot falling away from them.

That guy understands the angles.

His basketball IQ in general is really high. As the Duke Chronicle notes in this profile, he’s limited athletically, but so was Loyola’s Cameron Krutwig. We watched him absolutely filet opposing teams not through athleticism but through a keen predatory intelligence

That’s who we would, possibly optimistically, compare Young with.