Santa Clara forward Allen Graves (22) is defended by Gonzaga's Graham Ike during an NCAA college basketball game in Santa Clara, Calif., Saturday, Feb. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
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Three years ago, Randy Livingston told nearly every Southeastern Conference basketball program about Allen Graves, a high school player whom Livingston coached with the LivOn AAU program. No one besides Texas A&M showed much interest, not even Louisiana State University, where Livingston and Graves’s brother had played. Tulane University, another Division I school in Graves’s home state of Louisiana, didn’t prioritize Graves, either.
Instead of staying in the area, Graves ended up 2,200 miles away at Santa Clara University, a program in northern California’s Bay Area with a strong reputation under coach Herb Sendek of identifying under-the-radar players and developing them. Graves is the latest example. On Tuesday night, the 6-foot-9 forward is expected to be a first round pick in the NBA draft after redshirting two seasons ago and coming off the bench this past season.
“I think anybody would be lying if they said when he first got to Santa Clara almost two years ago, ‘Oh, he’s going to be an NBA player after two years in college,’” said Scott Garson, a former Santa Clara assistant who is now at UNLV. “Nobody would have thought it would have come that quickly.”
Graves is likely to become just the sixth Santa Clara player chosen in the first round. The others include future Hall of Fame point guard Steve Nash in 1996, as well as current Oklahoma City Thunder guard Jalen Williams in 2022 and Golden State Warriors guard Brandin Podziemski in 2023. Like those players, Graves did not enter college as an elite prospect, although he came from a basketball family and understood what it took to succeed and continue to improve.
Marshall Graves, his older brother and a 6-foot-4 guard, was a walk-on at LSU for two years before earning a scholarship his final two seasons and graduating in 2020. Amoura Graves, his sister and a 6-foot guard, played 29 games at Auburn in the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons.
Allen, meanwhile, showed some promise as a sophomore at Ponchatoula High School but was far from a finished product.
“He was kind of a big puppy in a way, just arms and legs and didn’t quite know what to do with it all yet,” Ponchatoula coach Tom Taylor said.
As a junior, Graves improved and became one of the best players in Louisiana. He led Ponchatoula to the Non-Select Division I state title, the first championship in program history. In the title game, Graves had 23 points, 16 rebounds and five blocked shots and was named the most outstanding player.
By then, he had also joined LivOn, an AAU program that Livingston started that competed in the prestigious Nike EYBL circuit. Livingston, who played in 203 NBA games in 11 seasons with nine franchises, reached out to his contacts across the country to tell them about Graves, who was receiving scant attention from most major schools. Santa Clara, though, was intrigued.
When Sendek was an assistant at Kentucky in the early 1990s, he recruited Livingston, who was then among the top high school players in the nation. Although Livingston ended up at LSU, he always respected Sendek. Santa Clara signed the 2021 Louisiana state player of the year in guard Carlos Stewart Jr., a two-time All West Coast Conference (WCC) selection, so Sendek and his assistants started tracking Graves. They liked what they saw. Graves committed to Santa Clara in June 2023 heading into his senior year at Ponchatoula, where he was named Louisiana’s player of the year and led the team to another state title.
“All of the AAU coaches and his high school coaches, we knew he was good,” Livingston said. “It’s just a matter of harnessing and developing that talent, and sometimes it takes a keen eye to see that. Santa Clara did a good job. You’ve got to give them that credit.”
Said Taylor: “Coach Sendek is phenomenal…Some coaches, they love the microphone. He’s just simple, low-key and very humble. That’s right up Allen’s alley.”
Still, Garson noted that in this revenue sharing, Name, Image and Likeness and transfer portal era, top Division I programs are less likely to recruit high school players unless they can make an immediate impact. That leaves players such as Graves in a difficult spot.
“It’s getting harder and harder, in some ways, to evaluate what freshmen you want to take at some of those places because you’re used to getting that ready-made guy who has spent three years already in college basketball,” Garson said. “Their loss was our gain.”
During the fall heading into Graves’s freshman season, Santa Clara decided to redshirt him. The Broncos returned starters in 7-foot junior center Christoph Tilly and 6-foot-9 forward Johnny O’Neil, as well as an important reserve in 6-foot-7 senior forward Camaron Tongue. As such, Graves would not get much playing time, so the coaches thought it would best for him to practice, get stronger and preserve a year of eligibility.
“Allen and his family agreed to it right away,” Garson said. “They loved the plan. They loved the idea.”
He added: “We would have never done it if we didn’t think he was really good. If he wasn't good enough, we would have allowed him to just play and move along.”
That season, Livingston visited Santa Clara, attended two practices and reconnected with Graves.
“I was in awe of how well they had taken care of his body and how good he looked,” Livingston said. “They also told me, ‘After he plays one year, I don’t know if we have enough money to keep him.’ They knew.”
This past season, Graves started just four of 35 games, but he averaged 11.8 points and 6.5 rebounds in 22.6 minutes per game and shot 51.2% from the floor. In Santa Clara’s final 19 games, he averaged 14.6 points and 6.6 rebounds in 22.7 minutes per game, made 55.2% of his field goals and scored at least 10 points in all but one game.
Graves made first team All-WCC and was named the league’s freshman and sixth man of the year. He was the third best player in the WCC, per metrics from respected analysts Ken Pomeroy and Evan Miyakawa. Graves had the 16th-best offensive rating in Division I, per KenPom, and the 13th-best offensive season in the nation, according to Miyakawa’s Offensive Bayesian Performance Rating.
“He’s an incredibly hard worker, very coachable,” Sendek said. “He really changed his body. Every practice, every workout, he just gives his best. We saw him improving through his first year, and then even this past year, the second half of the season, he took it up several levels. He just continued on a really impressive trajectory as the season went along.”
In the NCAA tournament, Graves had 17 points on five of 12 shooting and seven rebounds in an 89-84 first round overtime loss to Kentucky. Soon after that game, those around Graves knew his life had changed.
“My phone started ringing off the hook with NBA scouts, guys asking questions, all sorts of things,” Taylor said.
In all, 14 NBA teams have reached out to Taylor. He keeps notes on his cell phone about who called, so he can joke around with his high school coaching friends.
“I’m like, ‘Hey, have talked to the Dallas Mavericks today? Have you talked to the New York Knicks today?,’” Taylor said. “They’re all, ‘No.’”
Besides declaring for the NBA draft in April, he also entered the transfer portal, keeping his options open. Graves told ESPN’s Jeff Borzello in May that he had conversations with LSU and Duke, both of whom made him a top priority. He reportedly could have made upwards of $5 million if he stuck in college, but late last month he decided to stay in the draft.
ESPN’s Jeremy Woo projects the San Antonio Spurs selecting Graves with the 20th pick in the first round, while The Athletic’s Sam Vecenie predicts the Charlotte Hornets choosing him 18th overall. Vecenie wrote that he’s heard the Spurs and Toronto Raptors at No. 19 are also interested in Graves.
Graves’s path reminds Garson of Russell Westbrook, a player Garson coached at UCLA. Westbrook played only nine minutes per game as a freshman before becoming a starter as a sophomore and the No. 4 pick in the 2008 draft. Westbrook just completed his 18th NBA season and should someday be in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. While Graves may never reach those heights, Garson said Graves’s mentality is similar to other NBA players he’s coached.
“It’s amazing the difference between the guys that make it and the guys that don’t,” Garson said. “Allen’s got all the qualities of the guys that make it. He's serious about his nutrition. He's serious when he gets on the court to work, about going hard every single rep. He’s just very mature.”
Back home in Ponchatoula, about 50 miles north of New Orleans, Taylor plans on hosting a draft party next week. He joked he may have to rent out a hall because everyone in the town of 7,000 people is proud of Graves, whom Taylor said is “Mr. Everything right now.” Graves, who turns 20 on July 28, will be the first NBA player from his home town, where his parents still live.
Livingston compared Graves with Boris Diaw, a 6-foot-8 forward who played 1,064 games in 14 NBA seasons. Graves is versatile and able to play on the perimeter and down low, shoot 3-pointers, block shots, pass and rebound at a high level. More than that, Livingston sees Graves’s demeanor and work ethic as a major selling point to the 25 NBA franchises Livingston has spoken with in recent weeks.
“He’s super mature – that’s a testament to his family,” Livingston said. “They’ve done an incredible job with him, but also you’ve got to give Allen a lot of credit. We talk a lot about how well Santa Clara developed him, but that doesn’t work if Allen doesn’t buy in. I think he can fit in anywhere.”
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