Graves was not perceived as a national recruit out of high school despite winning consecutive state championships and Player of the Year honors in Louisiana. Made an early commitment to Santa Clara, just before the summer recruiting period prior to his senior year, but ended up redshirting his first-season, both because he was previously young for his grade and also to improve his conditioning. Started just four of 35 games, but still had a breakout season as a redshirt freshman in 2025-26, helping Santa Clara return to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 30 years.
About
2026 Freshman of the Year and Sixth Man of the Year in the WCC
2026 First-Team All-WCC after averaging 11.8 points, 6.5 rebounds, 1.9 steals, and 1.8 assists on 51% shooting from the floor, 41% from deep, and 75% from the free-throw line.
Opted to remain in the draft despite NIL offers out of the transfer portal that reported exceeded $5 million annually.
Strengths
Analytic darling who virtually every algorithm identifies as an outlier because of his overlap of defensive stocks, offensive efficiency (shooting splits + assist-to-turnover ratio), and offensive rebounding.
Has a rare combination of physicality and mental processing, which is ultimately what the data suggests because of that overlap of rebounding, passing, and ball security. He’s also a physical screener who can make a variety of quick, subsequent reads.
Very skilled with soft natural touch that extends to the arc (42% catch-and-shoot 3-pointers), magnetic hands, and the instinctive feel for the game to match. Should be very versatile in offensive structure and could be a role player extraordinaire.
Weaknesses
Limited athlete who tested poorly at the combine despite noticeably improved conditioning and now needs to add some muscle mass to his frame.
While his defensive playmaking numbers are very high, he was often matched up with opposing centers in the West Coast Conference, and has heavier feet when forced to move laterally on the perimeter.
The scalability of his role is debatable since it came in the relatively low sample size of just one season, primarily outside the parameters of high-major college basketball, and when coming off the bench.
Graves was selected by the Raptors with the No. 19 overall pick in the 2026 NBA Draft, Brett Siegel of ClutchPoints.com reports.
Graves averaged 11.8 points, 6.5 rebounds, 1.8 assists, 0.9 blocks and 1.9 steals while shooting 41.3 percent from deep across 22.6 minutes in 35 regular-season contests with Santa Clara in 2025-26. He started in four games in his only year at the collegiate level. Still, Graves did enough to be named the WCC Freshman of the Year and WCC Sixth Man of the Year. With that in mind, the 19-year-old will presumably come off the bench for a Toronto team that will be looking to contend in 2026-27, though he should hold a stable role at both forward positions.
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