Raegan Beers
Lauren Betts has held strong to the No. 1 spot in the ELITE 150 for 2022. *Photo by Chris Hansen.
The 2022 class is now rolling in its senior season, the finale to the youth and prep season and just months from stepping on colleges campuses. With that comes the updated ELITE 150 rankings, the first under our new philosophy and rating system.
The class of 2022 is loaded with size at the top. Led by No. 1 overall Lauren Betts of Centennial, Colorado. The 6-foot-7-inch prospect impacts the game in so many ways and has a consistent way about her that makes projecting her game to translate at Stanford seem pretty safe.
Reminiscent of the 2006 class with Tina Charles and Jacki Gemelos at the top, the No. 2 ranked player, Kiki Rice of Bethesda, Maryland, could just as easily been slotted in the top slot. She is continuing in a line of elite guards going to UCLA in the Cori Close era that got rolling with Jordina Canada in 2014, followed by Charisma Osborne in 2019 and now Rice, the highest ranked guard the program has signed.
Another player who has a valid argument for the top slot is Janiah Barker of Tampa Bay, Florida. The 6-3 forward is a phenomenal talent who draws all the ratings superlatives like huge upside, program changer, etc. The No. 3 ranked player in the ELITE 150 starred in one of our favorite matchups of the summer at the North Tartan Summer Jam, when she went heads up with No. 4 Maya Nnaji of Lakeville, Minnesota, an Arizona signee, in a non-viewing event. With no college coaches in the gym to be a distraction the two talented frontcourt players had a back and forth worthy of a huge crowd as they countered each other at every turn, forcing a level up.
Rounding out the top 10 are Timea Gardiner of Ogden, Utah, Ayanna Patterson of Fort Wayne, Indiana, Kyla Oldacre of Cincinnati, Ohio, Isunah Brady of San Diego, California, Ashlyn Watkins of Columbia, South Carolina and Raegan Beers of Highlands Ranch, Colorado.
Gardiner is a super skilled swing player who can play multiple positions. Patterson and Watkins could be in the running for most explosive wing-forwards in the class. Watkins put on a show in Mansfield, Texas this fall.
Beers burst on to the scene in the Spring of 2019 and has done nothing but grow her game since. She’s a post that can hurt you from the trail or the high post and we saw at the Check Me Out Showcase in Colorado, she’s a top tier leaders on the floor too.
All in all the top of this class is helping a lot of teams get better. Connecticut and Oregon State, who played each other in the 2016 Final Four, are the only programs to land two players from the top 10.
The Pac-12 as a whole loaded up with its schools landing six of the top 10 and 10 of the top 25. The ACC landed seven of the top 25, the SEC five, the Big 12 landed one and UConn signed two.
See the 2022 ELITE 150.
Note: Additional players will be added to the E150 based on the current season.
Chris Hansen is managing editor of ProspectsNation.com and serves on the McDonald’s All-American and Naismith Trophy selection committees. He was a co-founder of and the national director of scouting for ESPN HoopGurlz from 2005 until 2012 and is the director of the Check Me Out Showcase and ELITE is EARNED events. He can be reached at chris@prospectsnation.com.
