It was mid-July and for a couple of practices in a row, Georgia freshman Asa Newell appeared worn out. That surprised the coaches, given what they knew about their prized new recruit. Newell’s unrelenting motor has always been one of his biggest strengths.
“Come to find out, in addition to weights, classes, study hall and our practices going on at the time, he was also doing three-a-days on his own with the [graduate assistants],” Georgia head coach Mike White tells Hoops HQ.
That’s right. Three-a-days. Newell was regularly coming to the gym early in the morning, before the rest of his team arrived, for an individual player development workout. And after a day packed with more basketball and weightlifting, he would often return at night to shoot on the gun or take free throws. “It was basketball all the time,” he says.
Once White became aware, he had to sit Newell down and urge him to take breaks. “We actually had to just slow him down a little bit,” White explains. “We’ve had to just monitor him pretty closely and make sure he’s not overdoing it and that he’s actually getting some rest.”
That type of dedication is the reason why Newell, a 6-foot-11 forward, has shined for the Bulldogs through the first few weeks of the season and emerged as a top prospect for the 2025 NBA draft. He may have been overlooked to begin the year — Hoops HQ writer Tristan Freeman ranked Newell first in his “Top 10 Under-the-Radar Freshmen” column earlier this month — but no one is making that mistake now.
Newell is averaging 16.8 points (on 58 percent shooting), 7.2 rebounds and 2 blocks for the 5-0 Bulldogs. His versatile skill set has drawn him considerable attention from NBA teams. “He’s an ultimate team, role, elite level guy to me,” says one anonymous NBA scout. “He’s got good size, he knows how to play, he can pass it, he’s a good shot blocker.”
Scouts will certainly be watching this weekend when Georgia takes on No. 15 Marquette and No. 22 St. John’s in the Battle 4 Atlantis at Imperial Arena in the Bahamas. It will be the greatest test yet for the 19-year-old Newell, who has made the jump to college look seamless so far.
Newell’s smooth transition makes a lot more sense once you know his background. Since the sixth grade, when he decided to quit soccer, Newell has been pouring everything into basketball. He trained with his father, Justin, and older brother, Jaden, who is now a teammate of his on the Bulldogs. Justin owned a CrossFit gym and would put the kids through rigorous, advanced workouts. And of course, Asa and Jaden constantly played one-on-one — until the games got so heated that they had to stop.
“We used to have crazy arguments after we played and at a point we had to stop doing one-on-one because it started hurting our relationship,” Asa says with a chuckle. “Now it’s to the point where we can take a loss, but it used to be really bad. That competitiveness definitely comes from my dad.”
The family grew up in Athens, Georgia, before relocating to Destin, Florida, when Asa was 10 years old. After countless hours spent honing his skills (Newell says he used to push the ball toward the rim instead of shooting it), Newell made the varsity team as a freshman at Choctawhatchee High School. Buzz about him grew during an impressive sophomore campaign, placing him firmly on the radar of Florida powerhouse Montverde Academy. Newell wanted to be pushed and this was his opportunity, so he transferred.
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Tristan’s Top Ten: You know Cooper Flagg and Dylan Harper. You’ll soon be hearing about these other first-year players.Ahead of his junior year, he joined a stacked Montverde roster that included Cooper Flagg, Derik Queen and Liam McNeeley, all top 10 prospects in the class of 2024 (Newell was ranked 13th). Guard Robert Wright III, another top 25 player, entered the mix the following summer. Even at Montverde, a program with an incredibly rich history, this team stood out.
“Like it says in the Bible, ‘Iron sharpens iron,’” Newell says. Practices would go for around three hours, sometimes longer. Newell typically matched up against the 6-foot-10 Queen, who is now starring for the University of Maryland. “Those practices were just really intense,” Newell adds. “The practices were harder than the games.”
“He got better a lot of the days in practice just going up against [Queen],” Montverde assistant coach Shea Feehan tells Hoops HQ. “It felt like if there were six practices in a week, those guys would outplay each other three times each. Going against those guys and getting under each other’s skin, I think that really helped accelerate his development.”
According to Feehan, Newell would often leave a challenging practice and go straight to the gym in his hometown, about 20 minutes away, for an additional workout with his trainer. Just as Mike White would later do at Georgia, the Montverde staff eventually had to tell Newell to pump the brakes a bit. “He’s a kid that just wants to work, wants to get better, and that’s just his motor,” says Feehan. “That’s who he is.”
All that hard work paid off for Newell in his senior year, when the big man averaged 11.4 points and 6.7 rebounds while shooting 67 percent from the field. Montverde went a perfect 35-0 and was the consensus No. 1 team in the country. Queen wound up at Maryland, Flagg at Duke, McNeeley at UConn, Wright at Baylor and Newell at Georgia.
Newell announced his commitment at the beginning of the season, becoming Georgia’s second highest-ranked recruit ever (per ESPN). He had ties to UGA, having spent six years of his childhood living near campus— his grandmother, Jacqueline Mitchell, served as an administrative assistant in Human Resources at the school — and Jaden was already on the team. But Newell’s decision was much deeper than that. He wanted to uplift a program that hasn’t made the NCAA tournament since 2015. He trusted White’s staff to help get him ready. And he believed that White’s system would allow him to best showcase his skills.
“The offense we run is a really good offense for the frontcourt to make reads and decisions — having the ball in my hands in pick-and-roll or pick-and-pop situations,” he explains. “Their philosophy is to [draw] two to the ball, create an advantage and find the open read. So I just felt like it made the most sense for me to be playing in the offense where I can showcase my abilities to make reads.”
Newell’s assist numbers are low, but he has flashed an impressive passing ability. He keeps the ball moving, rarely forcing the action. He stays within his role — a unique trait for a high-profile freshman and one that carries over from his time at Montverde.
“Offensively, he continues to develop,” White says. “He shoots it well. He’s becoming a better passer and playmaker. He’s adding more to his package in the paint, with an ability to score with either hand on different types of shots.”
Defensively, Newell has the size and lateral quickness to guard multiple positions. He can switch onto perimeter players and hold his own. With his length and explosive athleticism, Newell is also an elite rim protector. He already has multiple games with three or more blocks.
But what separates the rising Georgia star from other players, White says, is “his relentless work ethic and motor. When that ball’s tipped, he goes, goes, goes. He’s got really good wind. He’s a really mentally tough kid that just fights through fatigue, plays the right way, makes winning plays, doesn’t take plays off. He’s just ultra-intense and consistent.” That intensity never wavers, even when Newell isn’t being featured heavily on offense. “He will go get a hard rebound after he hasn’t touched it a couple trips up and down the court,” White continues. “It doesn’t matter to him. It’s about the next play.”
Newell needs to get stronger for the NBA, which is one of the primary focuses of his development at Georgia. As one NBA scout tells Hoops HQ, his ceiling will be largely determined by how well he progresses as a shooter. Through five games, the lefty has shot just 50 percent from the free throw line. He missed his first 10 attempts from behind the arc, but he has buried his last two and continues to take them with confidence. According to White, Newell shot it well throughout the summer and occasionally lit it up in intrasquad scrimmages, going 5 of 7 or 6 of 8 from deep. The scout doesn’t see any mechanical issues with Newell’s shot; it just needs to go in on a more consistent basis.
“I was really impressed with the fluidity in it and how good it looks off the hand,” Feehan, a former college player and sharpshooter himself, says of Newell’s shot. “His shot is very easy to work with. I’m really tough on the guys with their jump shots and I think he was one of those guys where it was like, I don’t really want to touch anything with this. It doesn’t need to be critiqued. It just needs reps.”
If that’s the case, it shouldn’t be a problem for Newell. He is always happy to put in more reps — at least until someone forces him to rest.
