Scouting the Stateside Prospects in FIBA U18 Euros

Jayden Hodge, Christian Anderson, and others

Jayden Hodge is someone who has been popping up everywhere I scout, from scouting Dylan Mingo in EYBL as his teammate to watching the Euros U18 tournament for other prospects, only to come away infatuated with what Hodge brings to the table. Let’s take a look at his scouting report and what makes him such an intriguing long-term prospect, as well as some other quick hitters.

If you are unfamiliar with my work, this will follow the same suit of scouting reports I did before joining No Ceilings, with Tyler Kolek as an example.

Name: Jayden Hodge

Birth date: April 30, 2007

Height/Weight: 6’6/ N/A

Position: Shooting guard

FIBA Team: Germany U18

Tools: Active hands-on defense, rebounding, slashing

Background: Plays in EYBL and in New Jersey for high school, but family is Belgian, which gives him eligibility to play for the national team. He is the younger brother of Matthew Hodge, who is a rising freshman at Villanova. Could reclassify into the 2025 senior class to be on par with his age group.

FIBA Stats: 17.4 PPG 8.7 RPG 1.6 APG 2.9 SPG 1 BPG 1 TOPG on 53/25/40

Strengths 

• Thrives on off-ball actions (coming off screens, cuts, curling into post-ups, etc)

• Has a good post game and turnaround jumper

• Can make impressive defensive plays with good off-ball defense

• Sees the floor well, both out of the post and from the perimeter

• Has a good motor and will win rebounds against bigger players

• Capable finisher with both hands

• Good athlete who can explode off the ground

• Has good coordination and timing defensively with his hands to force steals + blocks

• Recognizes advantages in offensive transition, both in seeing leak outs as a passer and running past defenders as the receiver

Areas for Improvement

• Two motion shot with major push release; needs to speed the shot up and have a more fluid shot

• Shot is often inaccurate; consistency in mechanics needs to be drilled in place including keeping his guide hand still

• Needs to get stronger to finish through contact

• Plays sped up too much. Needs to let the game come to him and not force as many actions

• Needs to improve pick-and-roll defense; he is often lost after being screened out of a play and doesn’t know what to do next, leading him to sit in no man’s land

• Doesn’t have a great first step on drives

Swing Skills:

• Will the shot come around? He air-balled 7-of-33 jumpers in the tournament

• How will he overcome the lack of high-end burst and quickness in his game?

Summary:

Jayden Hodge showed out in the FIBA U18 following a strong EYBL season that wrapped up about a month before this event. He was one of the top backcourt defenders, and he showed offensive abilities everywhere aside from shooting the ball.

Defensively, Hodge is smart; he rotates well, digs deep, and has great coordination. While there are minor intricacies that he needs to work out, largely related to experience/age (seeing both the ball and his man and occasional unnecessary fouls), his defensive upside is quite high. He plays ball-handlers tight on drives, and with a nonstop motor it is rare that any criticism about him settling on the defensive end will come up in future evaluations. The main area for improvement for Hodge right now lies in his pick-and-roll defense. How he recovers from seemingly being screened out of plays will shape his defensive evaluation, given how frequent and valuable the pick-and-roll is in the NBA. As he learns to adjust on the fly and find the next rotation, as well as when/where to be after screens with more consistency, the more ready his defense will be for the next level.

However, digging into the positives, Hodge’s hands are his best selling point, given his 3.9 stocks per game. Take a look at this possession where he gets two blocks in a row. On top of blocking shots and using his coordination and timing well, he also times his digs well as a secondary/help defender on perimeter drives. No ball-handler’s drives are safe when Hodge is around, replicating many of the chaos-forcing traits Reed Sheppard recently showed off for a whole season.

As a playmaker, his pick-and-roll passing is impressive, largely in part by how he uses his floater as a playmaking weapon by selling the push shot and turning it into a pass midair. This will bode well for him as the talent pool and opposing size scales up, given how often the best playmakers in the world utilize this. Take Luka Doncic for example, who loves utilizing his push pass for his bigs out of the pick-and-roll, which makes his elite scoring/playmaking combination unpredictable for defenders stuck in a 2-on-1 near the rim. If Hodge can master this push pass with a floater as a viable weapon, his offensive upside is quite high.

Another element to his playmaking that is impressive is how well he sees the floor out of the paint. While there are exceptions (including a poor shot at the end of the third place game against Sweden), this advanced trait can often plague young playmakers if they do not possess it, especially guards playing up in competition like Hodge was.

As the game slows down for Hodge, his passing range should expand with already good court vision, helping him see the opposite side of the floor better and out of high pick-and-roll traps.

Shot chart from the tournament:

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Other quick hits:

Julius Price, Guard, Sweden (Team Why Not EYBL)

At 6’3, Price does almost everything the ideal guard at his size should do on offense: he has slick handles and clever self-creation moves with his quickness, he finishes well at the rim, and he sets his teammates up well by using his gravity. The way he sets his teammates up by using his dynamic self-creation moves is advanced for someone in his grade, even as an older rising junior, while playing a year up in the U18s as a 17-year-old. Some examples of this are how he uses his stepback and other creation moves, as well as how quickly he goes into live dribble passes against pressure. His overall point guard play is impressive, knowing how to balance score-first and pass-first possessions. Another trait that impressed in the U18s was how he split through two defenders; whether it be in transition, through traps, or in the pick-and-roll, he sneaks through defenses well—which usually gives the offense a numbers advantage. 

Add in a capable shooter that quickly plants his feet while separating from defenders, Price’s offensive upside is impressive. Additionally, his touch near the rim is excellent for a guard, let alone a 6’3 guard. He made 31 of 45 shots at the rim (69%) with multiple and-1 finishes, showcasing soft touch off the glass and knifing through defenders in both the half-court and in transition. He needs to become more efficient from the mid range to earn the label of a prospect with three-level scoring, but the upside is there given his threat to get to the rim while being able to creatively score off the dribble on drives. In FIBA U18 play, he shot 5-18 (27.8%) from midrange this year; that should improve with more reps and as the shot diet becomes less difficult.

Defensively, Price has a lot of work to do, and this is the red flag of his game. Guards at his 6’3 size or shorter are fighting an uphill battle defensively, and thus have a slim margin for error. With Price, his pick-and-roll defense is rough. He rarely overcomes playing from behind ball-handlers, has poor screen navigation, and desperately needs to add strength to avoid getting swallowed by and knocked down by screens. Price fell to the floor too many times in the U18s after even mediocre screens, which can be fixed with a great strength & conditioning program in college.

Even with his defensive concerns, his offensive upside is high for a slightly undersized guard. He projects to be at least a capable guard in college basketball, should he stay stateside after high school. 

Nojus Indrusaitis, Guard, Lithuania (Iowa State)

Nojus Indrusaitis strikes me as a guard who will be tough to keep off the floor for coaches, regardless of current depth. His creative playmaking for himself and others, his dynamic spin move going both right and left, and motor to win putbacks off his own misses are valuable traits in a physical Big 12. A clever pick-and-roll guard, Indrusaitis can attack defenses off of switches out of screens, using his floater as a viable weapon, along with shifty ball-handling to potentially score at all three levels. Take a look at three spins leading to scores just from the Germany game:

The biggest concern for Nojus at this point offensively is how he shoots over long contests. He shoots with too much arc, almost a moonball with poor accuracy (he shot 3-of-16 on contested catch-and-shoot jumpers in the tournament). While this alone is a problem, he also rushes his mechanics and has a different shot when given time to plant his feet and shoot over defenders compared to how he shoots over lengthy contests. He can forego his follow-through and overcompensate for the height differences between him and the defender by having too much arc, which causes his accuracy to often go out the window. 

Defensively, he makes some smart off-ball plays, but his size and athleticism leave a bit to be desired on-ball. He also has an issue of making reckless fouls, either being overly physical and grabbing the ball-handler as he gets beaten, or making too hard of a leap toward a shooter, which plagued him against Germany. Iowa State had the number one defense in 2023-24, so limiting avoidable mistakes defensively will be a key factor in Indrusaitis earning minutes right away in Ames. He is likely to be a multi-year prospect, but is worth monitoring over time. 

Christian Anderson, Wing, Germany (Team Melo EYBL)

While Christian Anderson has shown some impressive scoring tools and recorded good efficiency as the leading scorer on the German team, his shot selection may scare teams off if his decision-making doesn’t improve in a low-usage role. With splits of 46/33/83, he can get away with some bad shots, but the other end of this approach is that he could be even more efficient with more controlled and calculated shots. 

That being said, his scoring arsenal is impressive. He has a difficult shot diet that includes isolation scoring, creative transition finishing, and pick-and-roll creativity for both himself and others. In this, he can weave through traffic and draw fouls, thanks to a beautiful head fake to get defenders up in the air. Anderson’s ability to quickly and accurately decide whether to lean into the defender for a foul or to go around the defender for an open look is impressive and a trait that ultimately helped him be one of the most efficient finishers (20/26 on at-rim attempts, per Synergy) at the rim in U18 play. If his defense can continue to develop as his body develops, Anderson could be one of the best long-term prospects on a strong Texas Tech roster.