Noah Reiser: How I Got Recruited to Play College Basketball

Noah Reiser at Pascack Valley High School

Of the more than half a million boys playing high school basketball, less than 20,000 (or about 3.5%) go onto play college basketball for an NCAA school.  Noah Reiser, a 6’1” senior guard/forward at Pascack Valley High School and D-III Marywood University commit, is one of those chosen few.

Noah comes from a family of basketball players.  Both his Mom and Dad played in college, and two of his cousins also played college basketball, including one at the D-I level.  Noah started playing basketball in kindergarten and played for several travel and AAU teams in Bergen County over the years.  At Pascack Valley, Noah played for the freshman and JV teams until his senior year, when he became a sixth man on the varsity team.  He was known for being a “glue guy,” since his role changed from game to game and he played multiple positions.  Noah views his biggest strengths as his shooting as well as his passing and unselfishness.    

I asked Noah for any advice he could give to younger hoopers looking to set themselves apart for college recruiters.  Here are a few of his tips.

Tip #1: Create Highlight Videos and Post Them Online

One of my biggest takeaways from my conversation with Noah is that you can’t just sit back and hope that college coaches will notice you.  You have to be proactive, and it’s never too early to start. 

Going into Noah’s freshman year, his parents would film his games with an iPhone from the stands, and he’d post highlight clips on his personal YouTube channel.  He admitted that he didn’t know what he was doing at first.  “My first time I made a video, I didn't post it,” Noah said.  “It was like 10 minutes long.” 

Noah began to learn more about what college coaches were looking for in highlight videos.  For instance, Noah advises that your main highlight video should be 3 - 5 minutes long because coaches have limited time.  Also, some coaches may click off within the first 30 seconds, so it’s important to put your best highlights at the beginning to keep them watching. 

But don’t just include your scoring highlights. “Coaches, they don't only care about you scoring. They want to see more, they want to see passing, they want to see defense, rebounding.  When you see all the aspects, that's going to be much more appealing to the coach,” Noah said.  To get all of these highlights, it’s important to get someone to film your entire game.

Noah added that you should provide your name and contact info in the video and that even something as small as music selection can make a difference by keeping coaches engaged.

Along with posting his highlight clips to YouTube, Noah also added a link to his main highlight video on his Next College Student Athlete (NCSA) page.  NCSA is a recruiting platform that connects middle and high school athletes with college coaches.

Noah said that there were multiple instances where a coach would like his highlight video and ask him to attend a prospect camp. “Then from the camps, you would get eyeballs on your game and be able to get [more] interest from the coaches,” Noah said.  But as Noah emphasized, it all starts with the highlight video.

Tip #2: Attend Prospect Camps

Besides high school and AAU basketball, Noah suggests that players not overlook attending prospect camps, where you get to play in front of a bunch of college coaches.  At these camps, “you would do drills, you get a tour of the college, and then you play live five on five,” Noah said.

Noah started going to these camps the summer before his freshman year.  He remembers that “the first one I went to was Johns Hopkins.  And I mean, I was completely overmatched. I was a skinny incoming freshman going against seniors, but I learned like what I had to do for this.  So I kept doing those prospect camps all the way up to my senior year.”

Like with the YouTube videos, Noah said that you should start attending prospect camps as early as you can.  He recalls meeting an incoming senior at one of these camps who told Noah that it was his first camp and that he didn’t have any interest from college coaches yet.  “He was kind of like behind the game.  He was late for it, because he didn’t start early enough,” Noah observed.

Not all camps are invite-only; some you can just sign up for.  It’s a great opportunity to have college coaches watch you play and build relationships with them.

Noah described the Future All American Camp, a three-day camp at East Stroudsburg University he first went to as a sophomore, as “the best camp I ever went to. You get to play in front of 30, 40 college coaches, and you're just playing basketball for three days nonstop” from 7 am until 10 pm. “You get to feel what it's like to live on a college campus and obviously be away from [your] parents for the first time,” Noah said.

Another camp that Noah attended was called Academic Elite, where each team would be coached by one of the college coaches.  “You get to learn from a coach how they run their offense and how to play for them,” Noah said. “But they're still monitoring when they're not coaching, they're watching anyone's games, trying to recruit,” Noah added.

Noah said that one of the JUCO coaches at the Academic Elite camp, TJ Prioleau, made one of the biggest impacts in Noah’s recruiting process.  After drafting Noah onto his team, TJ noticed that Noah could shoot, and “so he would be drawing up plays for me to shoot and trying to help me to get noticed by these college coaches,” Noah said.  Not only did Coach TJ help Noah get noticed, Noah developed a friendship with him that continues to this day.  “I still talk to him every day about not only basketball  but other sports and life in general,” Noah said.

From the attention Noah received at Academic Elite, he got asked to attend an invite-only Hoop Group camp. “It made me feel good about myself, my parents were very proud because there were kids on my team that were going to Stanford,” Noah said.  “So I was playing with some of the top talent in the country.”

An assistant coach at Marywood University watched Noah’s performance at the Hoop Group camp and also saw his highlight video, and based off that, Noah got invited to the school for a recruiting visit, which ultimately led to him committing to the school.

Noah at the Hoop Group Elite Camp. Photo provided by Noah Reiser.

Tip #3: Don’t Forget to Continue Working on Your Game

When Noah was younger, he recalled that he would just go to the court and shoot around but he didn’t have a specific purpose.  “Then I started to realize that you have to focus on specific things you want to get better at,” Noah said.  “What I’ve learned from my Dad is he would say ‘attack your weaknesses. Make your weaknesses your new strengths.’”

For example, Noah said he could never hit a left-handed floater, so he spent a week just practicing his left-hand float until he got it down.  He also knew that he needed to get stronger to play at the college level since the game there is a lot more physical.  So the summer before Noah’s senior year, he and his Dad would go to his high school field at 7 am every morning and do things like ladder drills or work with weighted bands.

Noah remembered how his Dad “would tie the bands around my waist and hold me back and I’d have to run as fast as I could, which I still hate to this day.  And we’d do slides, then we’d do cone drills like at the NBA combine.”  He appreciated how his Dad was willing to wake up early and go to the track with him every day, because his Dad knew how much Noah wanted to achieve his dream of playing in college.  Noah didn’t want to train at first but, after a while, he started to see noticeable differences in his athletic ability, which motivated him.   

Noah has always tried to play to his strengths – namely, shooting and passing - but by identifying and working on his weaknesses, he has become a better, more well-rounded player.

Noah and his Dad have always shared a special bond through basketball. Photo provided by Noah Reiser.

Bonus Tip: Focus on Your Academics

Especially at the D-III level, where academic, but not athletic, scholarships are offered, good grades in high school are essential.  “The [D-III colleges] prioritize education over sports because, no offense, if you’re going D-III, you’re probably not going to be playing pro,” Noah said.  “You’re probably going into another field.”

Noah mentioned how freshman year, he wasn’t on top of his academics and his Mom talked to him about how he needed to raise his GPA if he wanted to apply to the colleges he was interested in.  “So then sophomore year, junior year, I worked my butt off, and I got it up to like a 4.2 GPA,” Noah said.  By junior year, he challenged himself by taking three AP classes.

It wasn’t always easy juggling basketball and homework, but Noah said that you have to be willing to put in the work to get what you want.

Noah before a game his senior year at Pascack Valley High School.

Noah’s dream of playing college basketball came to fruition when he recently committed to Marywood.  He recalled the special moment:

“When I got off the phone with the coach of Marywood and I told him I was committing, it took me a moment to realize this all worked out, like everything I did starting from I'd say eighth grade, every practice, every time I skipped a hangout with my friends, which obviously was hard at the beginning, because I see all my friends hanging out, like, no, I'm going to the courts to work out. Every time I didn't go to a party, every time I stayed late in school for extra help, every time I just did something, helping my game and my academics, it all panned out. And it was like, I made it, and it was it was such a great feeling to get off that call, go downstairs and tell my Mom, I just committed to college. I'm playing college basketball.”

Thank You

Noah with his parents and brother at Senior Night for Pascack Valley High School.

Noah getting instruction from his longtime AAU coach and mentor, Ozzie Osbourne. Photo provided by Noah Reiser.

Noah would like to give special thanks to his parents, Chad and Stephanie Reiser, for helping him achieve his dream of playing college basketball.  He said that his Dad was always there for him, whether waking up early for workouts or rebounding for Noah late at nights. “Without him being dedicated, I don’t know if I’d be playing college basketball next year,” Noah said.  Noah appreciated how his Mom always drove him to his showcase camps and AAU tournaments across the East Coast and always put basketball over her weekend plans.  Noah also singled out his AAU coach Ozzie Osbourne for instilling confidence in him.  “He believed in me, no matter what.  Even if I was playing a very bad game because he knew what I could do,” Noah said.

Here are a few more moments from Noah’s basketball journey: