Enrolling at a new school will be old hat for Andre Yates by the time he moves into his Creighton dorm room next fall.
Yates, the latest addition to the Creighton men’s basketball 2012 recruiting class, will play his senior season at Dunbar High School in Dayton, Ohio, after playing his first three years of high school basketball at Trotwood-Madison. He made the move to try and win a title with some of his friends.
“It was something he always wanted to do,” said Mark Baker, Yates’ former coach at Trotwood-Madison. “He wanted to play with a group of guys he grew up with. He and I talked about it and I gave him my blessing. He just wanted to win a state championship. We both felt like with the team we had coming back that we weren’t going to be able to do that.”
Baker said that the growth Yates has made as a player will benefit his new high school team in that quest, and pay dividends for Andre when he makes the move to Division-I basketball at Creighton.
“When I first got Andre in school he was a scorer,” Baker said. “He now knows how to run a team, but he also knows when to take over a game scoring-wise.”
That description matches how Yates says his game has developed while at Trotwood-Madison.
“I’m a playmaker and a scorer,” Yates told WBR. “I’m also a good defender; I like to defend. I will do whatever coach asks me to.”
He’ll have a new coach this fall, as Yates tries to win that elusive Ohio state basketball championship at Dunbar High in Dayton. Without having coached him at local power Dunbar, head coach Pete Pullen has a good feel for what Yates will bring to his team in 2011-2012.
“He’s a hard worker, first. He plays hard and he can play the two-guard spot, which is what he’ll probably play this year,” Pullen said. “But he is a true point guard and a pure point guard. He is a great leader and he has a great attitude.
“Andre is a scorer, but he also likes to get his teammates involved. He is more a pass-first, score-second kind of player, but he knows when to score and when to be aggressive.”
Baker adds that other intangibles make Yates a special player.
“He is extremely tough, and he has a lot of court savvy,” Baker said.
Those are all traits Creighton fans might associate with another guard who shares Andre’s initials — current Bluejay guard Antoine Young. So why did Yates turn down the hometown Dayton Flyers, as well as other collegiate suitors, to commit to Creighton?
“The coaches said that once I got to Omaha that I would love the city,” Yates told WBR. “I really didn’t know a lot about Omaha but once I got there I fell in love with it. I also liked all the coaches and the guys were really cool.”
Yates said he will be working on a lot of aspects of his game before making the transition to D-I hoops as a Creighton Bluejay.
“I think the main thing I’m going to need to work on is my conditioning and the speed difference between college and high school,” he said. “I’m also going to need to get comfortable playing the point at the college level.
“But I think that I can fit in well at the point; I like the system Coach McDermott runs at Creighton.”
Pullen echoes those thoughts.
“Andre is good at everything; he is a good three-point shooter and has a good enough mid-range game. He can get to the paint, but he is also a good defender.”