BOULDER – The 2017 Colorado Basketball recruiting class that Tad Boyle has brought in may be his best one yet. Tyler Bey, D’Shawn Schwartz, Evan Battey or McKinley Wright (Lazar Nikolic has yet to arrive) all bring something different to the table. But one guy really stands out, the Colorado native D’Shawn Schwartz, due to his ability to flat out get buckets.
The 6-7, 223-pound wing can shoot the rock from anywhere on the court and he makes a lot of those shots. He averaged 25.7 points and 9.8 per game while shooting 50 percent from the field at Sand Creek High School He exploded for multiple games over 40 points and one game against Thornton where he dropped 50.
“I bring a lot of skills,” Schwartz said when asked what he brings to the team. “Jump shooting and just quality minutes.”
Schwartz has been on campus for a couple of weeks and he’s still trying to get used to the big adjustment from 4A high school players to the talent he sees in practice.
“It’s definitely different than high school, definitely different,” Schwartz explained. “Just going against George [King] and Dom [Collier] and even the freshmen, it’s crazy.”
The biggest adjustment is defense because in high school, with his offensive ability, the scorer wasn’t asked to do much of anything on the other end. That’s something that doesn’t fly in college because Schwartz will be asked to lockdown some big time talents.
“In high school, I was like go score, go score, go score like saving myself on defense because we needed to win games,” Schwartz said. “It’s good for me because I need to learn how to lock up because we’re going to be going up against some big-time players.”
Schwartz played high school ball for the Sand Creek Scorpions in Colorado Springs, not too far from where Derrick White played three years of Division II basketball. Schwartz never watched when White was at UCCS but definitely started to take notice when he was at CU and showed Schwartz that it’s not easy but definitely possible if you put in the work.
“His story’s amazing. It shows that anybody can do it if they just work hard and push forward and believe in themselves, even if nobody else does,” Schwartz said about the former CU point guard. “If you just look at the pictures of how he transformed his body from Legend to now, it’s unbelievable.”
He also likes the idea of having a few more scouts at the games, “It’s a perfect situation for us as freshmen because we know there are going to be lots of scouts because Derrick just came out of here. I wish he would’ve went higher and I wish he went to the Nuggets but it’s very cool.”
With his innate ability to score the basketball, it shouldn’t be too hard for Schwartz to impress scouts. He’s got all of the talent to become the next great Buffs basketball player from Colorado just a matter if it can all come to fruition.
