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| Wednesday, February 7 |
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| UNLV prepares for life after Kambala By David Benezra and Mark Mayemura Special to ESPN.com | |||
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There have been some notable commitments recently, as "early fall commititis" continues to run rampant across America's high schools.
UNLV, which will see its team shrink next year when Kaspars Kambala departs and has very little size on this year's roster even with Kambala, will have 6-foot-10 Simplice Njoya, who has popped up at The Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. While UNLV may still have to bring in a juco player, Njoya will have to be ready to play major minutes for a team that right now figures to return only two wing forwards and no post players.
Georgia Tech got a good role player in power forward Ed Nelson (6-7, 240 pounds) from St. Thomas Aquinas in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. Tech has not yet received a commitment from a "glamour" recruit, but has received three verbals from players who play hard and could be said to be high-character, student-athletes.
New head coach Paul Hewitt is trying to create some stability in the program, while also trying to get Tech back on the map. He got off to a very good start in getting his first two commitments from players from the Atlanta Celtics, a perennial power on the adidas club team circuit.
Larry Shyatt believes in representing. And since he coaches the Clemson Tigers, he likes to recruit strong, low-post man-eater types.
Shyatt beat the bushes on safari and found 6-6, 250-pound Olu Babaloa (St. Augustine/Richland, N.J.), who skipped the summer circuit and committed to the Tigers. He joins 6-9 Sherrod Ford (Hargrave Military Academy/Chatham, Va.) and 6-3 wing Che' Christie (Biloxi, Miss.) as future Tigers.
Babaloa is a tough, physical player, the type that Shyatt has always coveted and been successful with. Babaloa has some skills, while Ford is a thin but talented shot blocker. That means that Shyatt and his staff can stay home and work with their own players since they are now done for this fall.
The Bozeman family won the good fight and 6-5 combo-guard Cedric Bozeman (Mater Dei/Santa Ana, Calif.) will be playing his college ball in Westwood for UCLA instead of in Gainesville for the Florida Gators, proving that Florida can't get everyone, or, uh, almost everyone.
Bozeman can and will play both positions in college, giving UCLA the size and athleticism it likes in their guards. Now the real fun begins for Bruin fans as they are now hoping that Bozeman's teammate, 6-10 Jamal Sampson, will choose UCLA over Kansas, California, St. Louis, Syracuse, Virginia and Connecticut.
Regardless, Bozeman's commitment is huge for UCLA at this time of the year for a lot of reasons, as it gets the Bruins off the impact player "schneide," and may help a couple of other recruits in their decisions.
Auburn continued their attempt to corner the market on stud athletes with a commitment from 6-4 swingman Dwayne Mitchell (JFK/New Orleans). Mitchell is an explosive player who just needs to get a foot in the paint to make things happen.
Michigan State, which has definitely usurped Michigan as the marquee program in the state, and is now the first choice on the wish list for Big Ten recruits, added another strong athlete in 6-6 wing Alan Anderson (De La Salle/Minneapolis, Minn.).
A while back we alluded to how Florida had joined a second tier of powerhouse recruiting schools behind Duke, Kentucky and North Carolina, which included Connecticut and Arizona. Add Michigan State to that list. While the Spartans don't go as far afield as Florida, UConn, and Arizona, they are just as effective reining in the top talent in Big Ten country.
What makes recruiting really interesting is when one of the better players seems to go to a program that should have almost no shot of getting him. Which is exactly what happened when 6-3 guard Chris McRae (St. Raymond's/Bronx, N.Y.) decided to commit to Hofstra.
Under rising coaching star Jay Wright, Hofstra has done a great job of "stealing" players who should be playing at a higher level. The most recent prior to McRae being Craig "Speedy" Claxton, whom we couldn't believe got away from the big boys when he came out of high school and may be playing for the Philadelphia 76ers this season.
McRae has the body, attitude, and desire. He is a hard-driving slasher with a fair jumper that will only get more consistent over time. McRae got away when he should have been tagged by a Big East program.
For the stat conscious, 42 of Recruiting USA's Top 100 players in the class of 2001 have committed so far. Three of the nation's better guard prospects that are still available are beginning to narrow down their recruiting a little bit.
One of the top point guards in the class, and perhaps the most underrated among the better players, is 6-1 Travis Diener (Goodrich/Fond du Lac, Wis.). Diener has narrowed the field down to Utah, Wisconsin, Marquette and St. Louis.
The 6-2 combo-guard Jermaine Harper (Blue Ridge School/St. George, Va.), a jet with a blazing first step, still has Rutgers, UNLV, Virginia, California and Villanova on his list. However, it appears that Virginia, which has been recruiting Harper hard for two years, may now have a slight edge over California and UNLV, with Rutgers and Villanova trying to make a push.
Some of the same players are involved with 6-1 guard Ernie Turner (Sterling/Somerdale, N.J.), a prolific scorer on the summer circuit for Rick Barrett's New Jersey Gym Rats. UNLV and Villanova appear to be the front-runners.
David Benezra and Mark Mayemura cover the national college basketball recruiting scene, both high school and junior college recruiting, at their Recruiting USA (www.recruitingusa.com) website.
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