Sports
Koa Peat is the elite college basketball recruit blazing his own trail in a football family – SB Nation
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Meet the class-of-2025 star forward who’s turned a family trend of football excellence into dominance on the hardwood
Let’s just for a second travel back in time to 2021 Hoophall West at the Footprint Center, home of the Phoenix Suns.
I would call myself an amateur scout now, but back then I was even more amateurish, and it was my first in-person scouting event. Perry High (Gilbert, AZ) stood out on the docket for the day because of prospects like Dylan Anderson (now at Arizona) and Cody Williams (now at Colorado), who were both ranked around 70th in their respective classes.
But by the time Perry took the floor, my eyes went instead to an abnormally massive freshman-at-the-time, Koa Peat. The 6’8 Peat made his presence felt that night on both ends, and has used it as one of many launching points for future success.
Freshman rankings aren’t a standard in this industry, but by the time Peat was a sophomore he was a consensus top-3 prospect in the class of 2025 alongside forwards Cameron Boozer and Cooper Flagg.
I saw Peat live a few more times over that sophomore campaign, including at the 2022 Hoophall West, and the game was clearly slowing down for him. He was starting to cut down on fouls and use his physicality in a more calculated way, improving his post-up game as a product of that growth.
Part of a big family with six siblings, Peat’s physicality can be partially credited to his football-heavy background. His father, Todd Peat, played nearly 80 games as an offensive lineman between the St. Louis-turned-Phoenix Cardinals and Los Angeles Raiders from 1987-1993. Peat’s brother, Andrus, also plays on the offensive line, totaling 95 games so far as a member of the New Orleans Saints since he was selected in the first round of the 2013 NFL Draft.
Two more brothers, Todd Jr. and Cassius, both played collegiately but not beyond that. The closest brother in age, Keona, just graduated from nearby Corona Del Sol (Tempe, AZ) and will play football at Arizona State.
Peat told me his brothers tease him about not going down the football route himself, but he believes the background helps with basketball because “they have great footwork and they taught me that. And my body’s big and that helps me a lot.”
Koa’s two older sisters are basketball players as well. Leilani Peat played over 50 games at Seattle U and Maya just finished her redshirt-junior season at Arkansas Pine-Bluff, averaging a career-high 9.0 points.
Now this summer, the youngest of the bunch, Koa Peat is building upon a decorated record in international play, earning his second gold medal in as many tries with Team USA, first in the U17 World Cup in 2022 and then in the U16 Americas Championship this summer. In the more recent showing, he averaged 17.2 points (58.7 percent from the field), 8.3 rebounds, and 3.2 assists with nearly a 4:1 assist-to-turnover ratio in six games.
Playing alongside Flagg in 2022 and Boozer in 2023, Peat tells me he uses FIBA experiences to refine himself even more, even when not playing in games: “I got better for sure, going against some of the top players in the country everyday in practice and going out there and competing for a gold medal.”
Shortly after the gold medal, Peat and three other members of the U16 team made up part of the 400-team group at Section 7, a massive showcase in Phoenix in front of college coaches at all three levels. Peat showed great control and dominance in his games leading Perry, which included a 32-point outing.
Koa Peat was tough to guard today #Section7 #TheFutureAwaits pic.twitter.com/asP5ivewvZ
One of the other things I’ve noticed about Peat’s progression over the course of the U16 tournament and Section 7 is an added emphasis on playmaking, especially in the Perry context where he, for the first time in his prep career, is without an older high-profile prospect next to him.
He told me that it isn’t something he’s gone out of his way to work on, rather that he’s “just really taking what the defense gives me. If a team is gonna double me, I’m gonna trust my teammates to knock down shots.” He noted that it’s especially true with Team USA, where the talent level is such that “when you have so many good players around you… you know they’re gonna knock it down.”
Perry has won back-to-back state titles in Arizona with Peat as a strong –but not the only– influence, winning 6A in his freshman season and Arizona’s first-ever Open Division title as a sophomore. Now going into his junior season, they’ll try to repeat as Open champions, but Peat is now alone as far as high-profile guys go, and it’s been a process, especially as projected 2024 lottery pick Cody Williams leaves to join Colorado.
“I mean I’m gonna miss those guys but we’re trying to come back and hopefully repeat again, just practicing everyday, trying to win the day everyday,” Peat told me. As a program, Perry emphasizes focusing on the task at hand. Head coach Sam Duane told me last year that he tells his players to “be where your feet are.”
Peat has excelled at every level no matter where his feet are, even as the chaos of college contacting gets underway. As of June 15, college coaches are able to reach out to 2025 prospects via whichever means necessary. This is a recent NCAA change; gone are the days of eighth graders committing before they even become freshmen.
With Section 7 being open to coaches – and it seemed like there were hundreds in attendance – plenty were getting eyes on Peat, including Arizona State head coach Bobby Hurley sitting courtside to see what the local star could do. I tried to watch how Hurley reacted, if at all, to Peat’s best moments, and a lot of the time it was a look of bewildered amazement like this one here:
It’s still much too early to tell where he’s leaning for the next step on his journey because, frankly, everyone is trying to earn his services. When I asked who was making the biggest impression in recruiting so far, Peat told me, “Every school to be honest, you know, it’s crazy.”
ESPN and 247 have both shifted Peat down to No. 4 in recent rankings updates for 2025 after an especially strong USA U16 by Peat’s then-teammate, Darryn Peterson, averaging 16.8 points (66.7% FG) and 3.7 assists per game. Peat strikes me as the kind of guy who will only use that as more motivation to show everyone how dominant he can be.
Falling from No. 3 to No. 4 obviously isn’t a massive drop-off, but it may be enough to unlock yet another level for Peat to reach. History tells us this is someone who excels at every step, so why would it be any different when he’s hearing some doubt?
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