Report: Tennessee Loses Prized Recruit Selby
Some surprising recruiting news broke this morning and has been confirmed by multiple sources: Josh Selby, an elite class of 2010 point guard recruit from Baltimore, has de-committed from Tennessee. Selby, who first announced the news via his Facebook page, is ranked as the #3 point guard in the class and considered a legitimate five-star recruit who would have solved Bruce Pearl’s ongoing search for a player to run his fast-paced offensive attack.
Selby’s mother to CBS Sports: “We’re just going to get together as a family and figure it out. Right now we don’t even know. We haven’t compiled a list or anything.” She didn’t rule out a return to Rocky Top for her son and cited the main reason for de-committing as being “overwhelmed” during the initial process, leading to a rash decision to commit to Bruce Pearl and the Vols. Industry sources indicate that John Calipari could immediately jump on this juicy situation and lure Selby to Kentucky to take over as starting point guard when John Wall departs for the NBA. Louisville could also be involved (they offered Selby before he committed to UT) while Memphis and Oregon are the sleepers. Selby broke through in a big way at the LeBron James Skills Academy this month, only improving his already leaping stock as a top-10 player in the entire 2010 class. Selby shot down rumors of a possible de-commitment from Tennessee during the camp, but apparently he had been considering such a decision.
This has to be crushing news for Vols headman Bruce Pearl, who is currently coaching Team USA in Israel at the Maccabiah Games. Pearl has garnered some controversy from Vol fans for ditching the all-important July recruiting trail for the games and the de-commitment of Selby will not soothe their worries. While head coaches like Calipari, Ernie Kent, Paul Hewitt or Josh Pastner have been able to converse with Selby during these elite summer recruiting camps, Pearl’s assistants have taken over such duties, leaving one to question whether that was a good decision.
[...] For those of you scoring at home Pearl just made fun of the living conditions of African-Americans and other groups that live in the inner city then implied that there is a strong KKK presence in rural Tennessee. So he’s being critical of African-Americans from the inner city and people from his own state. I’m not a recruiting expert, but that doesn’t seem like the best way to recruit especially when you are losing prized recruits while coaching overseas. [...]