PGH Great Lakes Kickoff: City Elite 17U

This weekend marks the start of the Prep Girls Hoops tournaments, including the PGH Great Lakes Kickoff in the Southwestern suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. This is the first of a few articles highlighting the Indiana teams participating in the 17U, 16U, and 15U divisions at the event. For 17U, we will identify each program/team with its own article and mention a few players from that team. For 16U and 15U, we will highlight the division as a whole and highlight a handful of kids from each of those two divisions. This article focuses on the [program_tooltip program_id='715528' first='City' last='Elite'] 17U team, primarily made up of Northwest Indiana prospects.   .    Lucia kind of snuck up on me at this event, and from what I understand she is a foreign exchange student this year. She came into Tri-Township and immediately helped to stabilize their backcourt. She is strong, physical, but quick with some burst. She has a solid/strong handle, good vision, and she makes a lot of high-speed, cross-body passes to open teammates who she must see out of the corner of her eye. Yes, she is a 2026 as listed, and she is considering staying for college if she can find the right fit. She averaged 9.9 points and 2.6 assists per game for Tri-Township.     From her Freshman year until now, Novea has continued on an upward trajectory. She has great length, good height to play either guard spot, but she's also fluid, fast, and she changes directions rather quickly. I feel like she's still stuck a little between being a point guard or a scorer, but she has good traits to be able to do either at the next level. She locates outlet spots, gets the ball, and pushes with aggression. She slices to the rim with some ease, but she has also improved her perimeter shooting and made that more consistent. I've also always liked how she uses her length defensively.     Olivia was solid in what I was able to see from today, and she is a prospect who could draw some good small college interest this Spring & Summer. She has a physical, strong frame, she plays hard, and she moves reasonably well in most directions. She will work for position and seek contact, she boxes out hard on rebounds, plus her feet are always active and she comes out on the floor and defends ball screens well. Most of what I saw out of her offensively was around the rim, so I'm not sure what kind of range or face-up game she has, but I liked her interior presence and her motor.     Saffy was a newcomer to Morgan Township this season, moving into Valparaiso from Batavia, Illinois. She has good size at 5-10, she has nice length, but she also has an athletic frame with some length. It's still a little early for my familiarity with her, but from what I've seen so far, she can handle the ball and attack kind of like a point forward, but she's also a very aggressive shooter/scorer looking to fill it up from all levels on the catch. With Morgan Township in a time of transition with graduates and transfers out, she stepped in and averaged 18.7 points and 9.8 rebounds per game.     I really like Lindsi and her game, and she kind of got thrust into the fire at Chesterton from day-1, but she is better for it, and I'm really looking forward to what she can do in her last two seasons with the Trojans. She has an athletically strong frame at her size, good change-of-direction movements, and she can turn the corner and get downhill on most defenders. She has some touch from the perimeter as well, but I feel like it's her ability to handle the ball and get it where it needs to go that stands out to me. She is also an effortful defender, and she is very feisty/scrappy at both ends.

This weekend marks the start of the Prep Girls Hoops tournaments, including the PGH Great Lakes Kickoff in the Southwestern suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. This is the first of a few articles highlighting the Indiana teams participating in the 17U, 16U, and 15U divisions at the event. For 17U, we will identify each program/team with its own article and mention a few players from that team. For 16U and 15U, we will highlight the division as a whole and highlight a handful of kids from each of those two divisions. This article focuses on the City Elite 17U team, primarily made up of Northwest Indiana prospects.