Well, the first Decision is over. At a press conference at his high school this evening, highly touted PG prospect Ryan Boatright has chosen to play for West Virginia next year. After a great weekend at Late Night Madness this past Friday during his official visit, the young PG from Aurora, IL decided to go after the W’s.
“He’s just a coach I’d like to play for,” Boatright said of Huggins, whose team won the conference title last year and advanced to the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament.
“He wins. He knows how to win and he put a lot of pros in (the NBA). As soon as I went down there (two weekends ago) I liked the atmosphere, but what really sold me was coach Hugs.”
Even though Keno and staff didn’t land the #36 ranked overall (according to ESPN) player, they did a hell of a job getting down to the final 2 choices. Time to move on and go after the next option.
For once, it’s actually a good time to be a Friar fan around the time of the NCAA Tournament! Keno and the Friars just landed a super talented player for the class of 2011 in point guard Naadir Tharpe from Brewster Academy. Don’t know about you, but I’m starting to get used to all these Top-100 players starting to come in!
The thought of a backcourt consisting of Vincent Council, Gerard Coleman, and Naadir Tharpe in two years should get Friar fans very very excited. Kudos once again to Keno Davis and his hardworking staff. We have continually been hearing about them going after the top local players, and it’s absolutely great to see that hard work pay off.
I guess it’s time to start talking about Keno fleeing to the Iowa job! He’s building something here folks.
One of New England’s brightest stars in the class of 2011, Naadir Tharpe, ended his recruitment on Wednesday night with a verbal commitment to Providence College.
Coleman had UConn, Louisville, Kansas, and others. Tharpe has Boston College and UNLV with Arizona, West Virginia, Indiana, and others involved….Also, don’t discredit these kids’ ability to get other local kids to want to come and play with them. The first few are always the hardest to get when trying to build local inroads.
It’s time to celebrate in Providence. For the second year in a row Keno Davis and his staff identified a top 60 talent and landed him, winning what looked like an uphill battle early in the process. For the second year in a row this staff has landed the player I wanted more than any. This is a huge day in Friartown.
“Naadir is a true point guard,” Smith said. “He definitely is a pass-first point guard and has an extremely high basketball IQ.”
Tharpe is rated among the top 100 juniors in the country by most scouting services. He is coach Keno Davis’ first verbal commitment in the Class of 2011.
Brewster Beats St. Thomas More School in the Semifinals 74-69 to advance to the National Prep Championship against the Northfield Mount Hermon School.
Brewster captured the championship of the New Hampton School Invitational by defeating South Kent, 114-88. It’s Brewster’s third New Hampton Invitational Tournament championship in the past four years. Brewster was led by tournament MVP Naadir Tharpe (Worcester, MA) with 30 points
The NBE Basketball report has a great update on the top prep underclassmen. If you’ve been keeping an eye on FriarBasketball.net’s recruiting updates, some of these names will seem familiar as big PC targets. Obviously, Ricky Ledo has been mentioned here several times, but nice to see this quote from his coach.
“Ricardo is accepting his challenges and he’s done OK. He knows he’s got to get better. He does one thing extremely well – he scores. But can you make your teammates better? Defense – he’s embracing it. All I ask of him is to just get better,” Hart said.
You had me at defense.
Also discussed are two top point guards. We can’t have enough point guards.
The 2011 class has a pair of point guards who are among the best in the country at their position in Shabazz Napier (Lawrence Academy) and Naadir Tharpe (Brewster Academy)
Anyways, the fact that we are pursuing these guys isn’t really new. I just like reading how they describe who is involved — it just shows the hard work Keno and his staff are putting in to have a chance to land them.
Shabazz Napier – For the local, Connecticut was there as well, while Providence and UMass have tracked him hard
Naadir Tharp – Providence and Boston College have been on him the hardest
Ricky Ledo – Hart mentioned Providence, Rhode Island, Boston College as locals who have been there since early
On the latest Cox Sports’ “Tip Off Show” host Vin Parise talks with college hoop recruiting expert Adam Finkelstein about Providence College’s outstanding signings, most notably guards Gerard Coleman and Joseph Young
Stevie Taylor is a pure point guard out of Lincoln High School in Gahanna (OH) who has played AAU for All Ohio Red and the Cleveland Basketball Club this past summer. Stevie is scat-quick at 5-8/5-9 with a complete understanding of how to play the game from the point guard position as well as the ability to hit runners/teardrops in the lane that make a player like him even more effective. He also shoots the ball very well from deep.
Here are some quotes from Taylor from the post
“It was a great visit,” said Taylor, “the campus and city are really unique and beautiful, plus I got to hang out with the team and coaches and understand the academic side of things.”
“Of course,” Taylor replied when I asked him if playing in the Big East is attractive to him, “everybody wants to play at the highest level and the Big East is no joke, it’s the real deal.”
The young PG has Ohio, Akron and PC listed as his final choices
The folks over at the Villanova blog VUHoops have a great post discussing how fans can potentially get their school in trouble by interacting with potential recruits through social media.
Just be sure to replace “Villanova” with “Providence” below in this excerpt (heh).
As a Villanova fan with knowledge of a potential recruit’s Twitter account, you should feel free to “follow” these players. You can probably “retweet” their comments as well. However, any “pitch” attached to the retweet as a comment, or any reply directed at them, or mention of them in a “persuasive” manner could get the program in trouble. Please do NOT message (direct or otherwise) any unsigned recruit on the internet.
If an unsigned recruit follows your Twitter account, feel free to speak highly of Villanova. Talk about how awesome it is to be a Villanova basketball player. Say whatever you want, just leave out the player’s names and DEFINITELY don’t include the “@username” in the tweet.
One secondary violation will probably not result in much for the school, but multiple/repeated violations are considered a “major violation” under Bylaw 19.02.2.2. Intentional contact with a recruit is a Level I secondary violation that Villanova would be required to report to the NCAA immediately (unlike a Level II secondary violation which are accidental and reported quarterly).
Please just keep this in mind as you converse around the internets.
Providence College men’s basketball coach Keno Davis announced on November 11that student-athletes Gerard Coleman (West Roxbury, Mass.), Ron Giplaye (Lowell, Mass.) and Joe Young (Houston, Texas) each have signed a National Letter of Intent to attend Providence College beginning in September 2010.
He is rated the 30th-best prospect in the class of 2010 by Slam Magazine, the 51st-best prospect by Rivals.com, 66th overall by Scout.com and 72nd overall by ESPNU. Coleman is the 11th-ranked shooting guard according to Rivals.com and he is rated No. 16 by Scout.com
Love these phrases from ESPN: “The long lefty is a pure scorer”, ” He has great confidence in his shot and is not afraid to take the big one”, and especially “He’s a very disruptive full court defender, at his best in passing lanes, and capable of being a good on-the-ball defender”
Giplaye is a very physical player who uses his strength to rebound and score down low.
We need some bruisers in the BEAST! Well, he’ll fit in perfectly, because his profile says he is: “An absolute beast physically” #104 Power Forward according to ESPN. Oh, and apparently he “dunks with both hands”, which I am a huge fan of. Not that single hand nancy shit.
23. Providence Top 100: No. 69 Joseph Young (6-2, 175, G), No. 87 Gerard Coleman (6-4, 175, G) Supporting Cast: Ron Giplaye (6-5, 200, F) Analysis: Young drew some big crowds (comprised of college coaches) during Las Vegas’ AAU extravaganza with his scoring exploits.
God Bless Keno Davis. I can’t remember the last time we made a list like this (I’m guessing the Brown/Brew class?). It’s great to see the recognition from all the hard work coach and his staff have been doing since they arrived. As all you Friar Fanatics already know, the future of Friartown is looking brighter and brighter each day.
Over the past week StatSheet.com has been releasing a lot of new recruiting and High School Basketball features to get ready for the new College Basketball season. Here are some interesting new pages.
Best/Worst Freshman Classes – Which class had the biggest / worst impact based on three metrics: Winning %, NCAA Tourney %, NBA Draft picks.
Recruiting by Conference – breakdown of the Top 100 recruits by class in the BIG EAST. Here is a shocker: The 2008 class was the best! It also lists all the Top 100 recruits who have played in the conference.
Recruiting by Team – The data is um, a little thin for our Friars, but you can view all the Top 100 recruits data by any other team as well.
Note: Since 1998, Dwight Brewington (2003), Gerald Brown (2004), and DeSean White are PC’s only Top 100 recruits. According to the Number of top recruits by team, this total is pretty low on the list (which I’m sure I didn’t have to tell you that). Hey, we are TWO up on URI!
Anyways, kudos to Robbie at StatSheet for more cool features. You can follow what he is up to on the site via the StatSheet blog, or follow them on Twitter.
Next year’s Friar team just got a little more experienced with the verbal commitment of Russ Permenter, a 6-9 JUCO big man from Temple, Texas. Permenter sat behind the bench during Saturday night’s Rutgers game, and gave his verbal before flying back home.
Permenter went to Texas-San Antonio out of high school, and transferred to Temple College for his sophomore year.
(photo by tdtnews.com)
This is huge for the Friars since they are losing 5 seniors after this season, including forwards Geoff McDermott, Jonathan Kale, and Randall Hanke. They will have a lot of young talent in their frontcourt, with Bilal Dixon and Jamine “Greedy” Peterson coming off redshirt years, and James Still and Kadeem Batts as incoming freshman. Permenter will hopefully be able to contribute right away while the young guys get up to speed.
He paces Temple (14-10 overall, 4-4 Northern Texas Junior College Athletic Conference) with per-game averages of 18.9 points, 8.5 rebounds and 3.1 blocked shots entering the Leopards’ crucial duel against second-place Hill (16-8, 6-2) at 4 p.m. today at TC Gym.
“His numbers have been what I expected,” Johnson said. “He has 72 blocks for the season, which is the most already that we’ve ever had anybody have, and he has a shot at getting to 100. Russ has helped us immensely because he’s big and he can run.”
