MLive is following the top 2021 boys basketball recruits in Michigan. Each weekday, we’ll feature a new athlete and get updates on their recruitment, goals and more. Today, Iron Mountain guard Foster Wonders is featured.
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Bio
Height: 6-foot-5
Primary position: Shooting guard
Secondary positions: Point guard, small forward
Graduation year: 2021
Recruit ranking: No. 7 on MLive's list of top 2021 recruits
Scholarship offers: Western Michigan, Central Michigan, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Toledo, Miami (OH), Oakland, Wisconsin-Green Bay, Southern Illinois, South Dakota State, Wright State, UNC Wilmington, Cleveland State, Rice and Northern Michigan
Schools showing most interest: WMU, Toledo, Southern Illinois, UNC Wilmington and Wright State
2019-20 stats: 27.4 points, 7.8 rebounds, 2.4 assists and 1.9 steals per game
2019-20 accolades: AP first team all-state in Division 3, BCAM Best of the Best team
2018-19 stats: 24 points, 7.5 rebounds, 2.7 assists per game
2018-19 accolades: AP first team all-state in Division 3
Click here to see Wonders' junior-year highlight tape
Iron Mountain's Foster Wonders pops up for a jump shot during the first half of the Division 3 boys basketball state semifinal between Iron Mountain and Detroit Edison on Thursday, Marc 14, 2019 at Michigan State University's Breslin Center in East Lansing. (Jake May | MLive.com)Jake May | MLive.com
Finding the right college fit
Wonders received his first college scholarship offer from Division-II Northern Michigan before he played a minute of high school basketball, and that's when the dream started to become a reality.
"It kind of surprised me a little bit, but I saw that I was making good strides and really improving, and that momentum kept going into high school, and I earned a few more scholarship offers," Wonders said.
Wonders is now up to 14 offers, including the initial one from NMU, where his parents, Matt and Julie, were both 1,000-point scorers during their college basketball days.
That his older brother, Carson, also plays for the Wildcats gives the Marquette-based school some recruiting pull, but Wonders said he doesn't have any leaders in his recruitment just yet.
He added that he's thinking about narrowing his list down "in the next month or so," with the goal of picking his college destination no later than August.
Among the schools Wonders has visited are WMU, Toledo, Wright State, South Dakota State, Wisconsin-Green Bay, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Southern Illinois, Loyola-Chicago and Dayton, and when he eventually chooses his path, it's going to involve a program with a family atmosphere.
"I'm looking for just a great culture and kind of family atmosphere where I feel like I belong with the other guys on the team and have a great relationship with the coaches," he said. "Just pretty much a family feel."
Iron Mountain's Foster Wonders (00) drives to the basket during a Division 3 MHSSA state semifinal game at the Breslin Center on Thursday, March 14, 2019. Iron Mountain defeated Detroit Edison 60-57 and advances to the finals. (Mary Lewandowski | MLive.com)Mary Lewandowski
Competing against the best
It's not very often a kid from Michigan's Upper Peninsula gets to compete against and play with some of the nation's fastest rising hoops stars, but that's how Wonders spent his 2019 summer as a member of the Milwaukee-based Phenom University AAU team, which competes on the prestigious Nike Elite Youth Basketball League circuit.
Among the players he'd face in practice were Duke signees Jalen Johnson (No. 12 nationally in class of 2020) and Jaemyn Brakefield (No. 40 in 2020), Virginia commit Reece Beekman (No. 64 in 2020), Georgetown commit Jamari Sibley (No. 100 in 2020) and the No. 2 player in the class of 2021 Patrick Baldwin Jr.
"I've been around basketball and played at the collegiate level, and to see this, it was like watching ESPN on a Tuesday night between Duke and North Carolina," said Matt Wonders, who is still eighth on NMU's career scoring list at 1,538 points. "The kids can shoot, jump out of the gym, and everyone is 6-foot-7."
To be able to run with such an elite group of athletes, Wonders had had to work as hard as he could, and the fact that he was a year younger than most of them didn't make things easier, but it made him a better player.
"For him, practice was his best competition," Matt said. "In his practices, he'd play against Pat Baldwin, who is 6-foot-10 and ranked No. 2 in the country by ESPN, and I think that's how he got better this past stretch. If you're 6-foot-5 and can't jump out of the gym you have to be crafty to get your shot up, so there were some great lessons that summer."
"Playing against those guys was a really eye-opening experience for me and made me a lot better in the long run," Foster added.
This summer, Wonders will play alongside Saginaw Heritage's Parker Day, Ann Arbor Huron's Julian Lewis, Walled Lake Northern's Kevyn Robertson and Troy's Brody Parker for the Detroit-based REACH Legends team, with the team's debut scheduled for the Brawl for the Ball on July 17 in Grand Rapids.
Iron Mountain's Foster Wonders fights for possession of a rebound with Detroit Edison's Bryce George during the first half of the Division 3 boys basketball state semifinal between Iron Mountain and Detroit Edison on Thursday, Marc 14, 2019 at Michigan State University's Breslin Center in East Lansing. (Jake May | MLive.com)Jake May | MLive.com
Ready to open some eyes as a senior
Wonders' work against some of the nation's best set the stage for a strong junior season, in which he increased his point and rebound totals and led Iron Mountain to a 21-1 record before the season was canceled due to the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic.
Heading into his senior year, Mountaineers coach Bucky Johnson expects the type of season that would vault Wonders into the state record books.
"If I have anything to do with it, he's going to average 38 (points), 12 (rebounds) and eight (assists) this year," Johnson said.
Those videogame-like numbers were the result of a joke between Johnson and Wonders about doing favors for each other, but with Iron Mountain graduating four starters, including four-year point guard Marcus Johnson, seeing a record-setting season for the long and talented guard isn't out of the question.
"Since all the college coaches can't come out and watch us now, they ask for game film, so I asked (coach Johnson) to email some game film out to college coaches, and when I said I owed him one, he told me I can get him 38, 12 and eight each night," Wonders said. "I told him I'll work on that."
Those stats would also make it hard for anyone other than Wonders to win Michigan's Mr. Basketball in 2021, which would be a first for a player out of the Upper Peninsula since the award was first distributed in 1981.
But the individual accolades aren't on the forefront of Wonders' mind, even the state's highest hoops honor.
"(Mr. Basketball) would be something really special to accomplish, but also being from the U.P., it's a tough thing to do, and there are a lot of great players in my class that are unbelievable and are really deserving of it also," Wonders said. "I think it comes with team success, so we'll have to see how it goes. It won't be something I'll be thinking about all the time, and I think for anyone, it'll happen naturally and with team success."
Johnson echoed Wonders thoughts about the number in the win column being more important than the number on the stat sheet.
"We'll take it one game at a time and make sure we're doing it to win because that's what he wants to do most," Johnson said. "He gets mad when he loses a pickup game, and after the way the last two years have ended, we have some unsettled business."
Iron Mountain's Foster Wonders (00) reacts to the loss during the MHSAA Division 3 boys basketball championship game at the Breslin Center at Michigan State University on Saturday, March 16, 2019. Pewamo-Westphalia won the game 53-52 over Iron Mountain. J. Scott Park | MLive.com
Turning heartbreak into motivation
Part of that unfinished business comes from the shortened 2019-20 campaign that failed to crown boys basketball champions for the first time since World War II canceled the tournament in 1943.
But a bigger part is the way the Mountaineers had the 2019 championship game yanked from their grasp by a pair of controversial calls from the referees, which allowed Pewamo-Westphalia to overcome a two-point deficit in the final seconds and escape with a 53-52 win.
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Wonders, who received the inbounds pass that led to the controversial traveling whistle, said it took a while to shake the disappointment from that game, but it ultimately helped fuel him.
"For the first year or so after that game, it was probably more of a distraction because that's what we felt we were known for," Wonders said. "But after a while, we let it motivate us and not eat at us as much, and it motivated me to get that much better and push everyone around me to do the same so we don't have to feel like that again."
While the pandemic has limited access to gyms and training equipment for athletes in all sports, Wonders has been able to work out with a weight set and treadmill in his basement and test his game against Carson, who will be a redshirt junior at NMU in 2020-21.
"I've been working on a little bit of everything and just trying to fine-tune everything," Wonders said. "A lot of ball handling, using different moves to create space for my shots and working on my athleticism to get more open shots."
When Johnson recently saw Wonders for the first time in months, the Iron Mountain coach could immediately tell the 6-foot-5 senior hadn't been sitting around during the state's stay-at-home order.
"He looked different after three months of lifting," Johnson said. "He's looking more like a college player and less like a high school kid."
Iron Mountain's Foster Wonders (00) shoots a jump shot during a Division 3 MHSSA state semifinal game at the Breslin Center on Thursday, March 14, 2019. Iron Mountain defeated Detroit Edison 60-57 and advances to the finals. (Mary Lewandowski | MLive.com)Mary Lewandowski
Iron Mountain legacy
Michigan State coach Tom Izzo and former Detroit Lions coach Steve Mariucci both wore the Iron Mountain Black and Gold during their high school days and set quite the standard for young Mountaineers, but Wonders is likely to go down as the best student athlete the school has produced.
The state championship appearance from 2019 was the program's first since 1939, and Wonders boasts a 64-4 record as a three-year starter.
His 1,618 career points rank second in program history to former teammate Marcus Johnson's 2,076, and he should eclipse that mark sometime during his senior campaign.
"I'm not a good judge of whether a kid is a future pro or elite-level college player, but he'll be the best basketball player that's played at Iron Mountain," Bucky Johnson said.
Johnson's team will certainly have new look this winter, but with a player like Wonders leading the way, it would be foolish to discount the Mountaineers' chances of reaching the Breslin Center once again, and that type of run is the real legacy Iron Mountain's star player hopes to leave.
“In our state title run a couple years ago, the whole U.P. was behind us and was really into all the games and really had our backs, and that meant a lot to us,” Wonders said. “We wanted to win for our community, and it was nice to see how much support we had when we made it below the bridge has because it doesn’t happen too often.”
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