THROWING HIS WEIGHT AROUND
Gym rat will give Aztecs inside presence with sweet shooting stroke next year
“He’s a big, big body. I think it will be a lot different next year when he gets around bigger, stronger guys and officials let them play a little bit more.” Ray Portela • Saunders’ high school coach
The Amazon packages kept arriving at their two-story home in Phoenix. Elijah Saunders would collect them and disappear into his bedroom.
“I would hear all this commotion upstairs,” says Andrea Saunders, his mother. “I was like, ‘What is going on up there?’ He would come out drenched in sweat, just drenched. He was working out on his own.
“He took my purple yoga mat, too.”
School had gone remote during the COVID-19 lockdowns — no gyms or fitness clubs, either — and the 6-foot-8 Saunders had
decided to turn life’s lemons into lemonade, ordering resistance
bands and who knows what other home workout equipment from Amazon that he could use in the bedroom of a suburban home.
He couldn’t work on his game. He could, though, work on his body.
“The first part of quarantine I was lying in bed, not doing much,” Saunders says. “Once I got out of that, I got back into training. I tried to do stuff to keep me busy and not lie around all day. Push-ups, sit-ups, crunches, leg exercises, everything. Just trying to get stronger.”
That’s when things changed, when the light bulb flickered on, for the future San Diego State basketball signee, part of a twoplayer class of four-star prospects that also includes 6-6 Miles Byrd from Stockton. The Aztecs recruited Saunders for his basketball IQ and team-first mentality and an incongruously silky 3-point stroke for his NFL body, but mostly for his raw work ethic. They like gym rats. Saunders is a gym rat, even when the gyms are all closed.
Once school reopened, he moved the workouts inside Sunnyslope High’s gym and weight room before class and regular practice with the basketball team in the afternoon. Usual recruiting trips to visit a prospect entail attending practice, then maybe dinner. With Saunders, it also involved an oh-dark-30 alarm to be at his daily 6 a.m. workout. (Chris Acker drew the short straw.)
Saunders always had a big, wide frame. Now he was adding bulk to it — 200 pounds, 210, 220, 230. He’s approaching 240 now.
His nickname: “Baby Blake,” after 6-9, 250-pound NBA veteran Blake Griffin.
Saunders played flag football as a kid, and it seemed only natu
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ral that he would transition into the version with helmets and pads in high school, a 6-8, 240-pound tight end with agile feet running crossing routes for the Sunnyslope Vikings.
Andrea shook her head. “It really just boils down to safety,” she says. “He’s really bright, and I never wanted his brain to get hurt.
“He told me his senior year he was going to play, because he could make his own decision and sign up himself. He would come and say, ‘Mom, you don’t understand. They need me, they need me.’ I would throw little things in there like, ‘Yeah? It’s only 107 degrees tonight. Just imagine being out there on the field right now.’
“Just to make him think that it might not be so glamorous playing football. He ended up not doing it, thank goodness. … I don’t want anybody getting hurt, and not just him. He could hurt somebody else. He’s strong.”
Being 6-8, 240 on a high school basketball court might seem like an unfair advantage, and sometimes it is. Saunders averages 21.6 points (or 35 percent of his team’s scoring), 9.2 rebounds and 2.6 assists for the 16-2 Vikings. He’s had games of 35 and 36 points this season.
Last month, the night before SDSU played Saint Mary’s in Phoenix, three Aztecs assistant coaches landed at the airport and jumped in an Uber to watch Sunnyslope play at Mesa High. Saunders had six points and four fouls against a team of 6-0, 150-pound guards.
He grabbed a rebound, turned around and knocked over a Mesa player. Whistle. He set a screen. Whistle. He bumped a guy running down court. Whistle.
Breathe on somebody. Whistle.
“They just bounce off me,” Saunders says.
“Elijah will do nothing, and they’ll call a foul on him,” Andrea says. “Then kids will have, like, a piggyback ride on him, and they will call nothing. They’ll be three people literally hanging on his body, and they won’t call anything.”
Ray Portela, Sunnyslope’s coach, is used to it by now.
“It’s tough,” Portela says, “because I don’t think some of these officials know how to go ref a guy like him. That’s something I try to say in the intros. He turns, and kids are obviously looking for flops. He’s a big, big body. I think it will be a lot different next year when he gets around bigger, stronger guys and officials let them play a little bit more.”
That’s part of the talent evaluation in college recruiting, separating players who are good in high school just because they’re big from those who will be good in college because of they’re big and agile.
Saunders was a different player on the AAU circuit with the powerhouse Compton Magic, playing with and against bigger, more physical competition. His 3-point stroke, rarely featured in high school because he’s in the post, becomes a weapon because he can stretch the floor with more size on the court. (During his recruiting visit to SDSU, he casually started shooting corner 3s — in sandals — and made 14 straight.) In that respect, the college game should suit him better.
His list of finalists also included Notre Dame, Miami, South Carolina and Virginia Tech.
“If you’re a big in high school, it’s like you’re playing on eggshells,” SDSU coach Brian Dutcher says. “You don’t really get to use all that size and strength. As much as people might think a big, strong kid in high school gets his way, it’s not really like that all the time because you’re surrounded by little guys. Every time he turns around, they’re faking a charge, they’re falling down. He goes up and gets a rebound, and they’re calling over the back because the guy he’s getting it over is 6foot tall.
“That’s why the adjustment is sometimes so great when they come to college, especially for bigs, because now they’re allowed to play with great physicality and it’s a big change. But from what I’ve seen of Elijah — and that’s why we like him so much — he’s comfortable facing the basket and shooting, and when he goes inside, he’s extremely strong. I think the transition for him will be fairly swift and easy.
“Because the body is ready.”