After a prolonged absence from the summer circuit it appears like Sonny Vaccaro, who was once quiet possibly the most powerful man in AAU basketball, is making his triumphant return. As Gary Parrish notes, Vaccaro should make things more interesting.
- It’s already almost a week old, but ESPN released its team recruiting rankings and you will be shocked to see who is #1.
- Arizona was able to land some big names like Josiah Turner and Nick Johnson over the past few weeks, but as we pointed out last week their haul would be coming to an end soon due to the Lute Olson-era sanctions against the program. Now we see the results as Sean Miller has told super recruit LeBryan Nash that there isn’t any room for him in Tucson.
- Speaking of the Wildcats, last week we mentioned the refreshing case of Norvel Pelle who was just starting to do in-house visits, but now Pelle has moved ahead to planning official visits as he recently expressed interest in St John’s, UTEP, UConn, and “the whole PAC 10 except Arizona” according to a phone interview with Adam Zagoria, although Pelle has not committed to any official visits yet.
- In yet another reaction to Arizona’s filling its scholarships already . . . Quinn Cook, who had been high on Arizona before Turner’s surprise commitment, is now considering Duke, Kansas, UCLA, Villanova, and UNC. In a rather unsurprising surprising comment, Steve Smith, his new coach at Oak Hill, says Cook is “comparable” to Rajon Rondo, Ty Lawson, Marcus Williams (hopefully leaving the laptops out of it), and Brandon Jennings who all played at Oak Hill. Cook is a talented prospect, but outside of Williams I think Smith might be stretching the truth a bit. To be fair, I can say my paycheck is comparable to John Paulson’s paycheck, but Paulson made way more than I did (at least before the RTC royalty checks get processed).
- Last week we noted that Austin Rivers had taken Florida off his list of potential schools and now it seems like he has set dates for his official visits: UNC (October 1st), Duke (October 15th), and Kansas (October 22nd). You can guess that the basketball coaches will be especially interested in the football team’s performances those weekends against East Carolina (could be challenging for the depleted Tar Heels), Miami (this one could be ugly), and Texas A&M (depends on the week for the inconsistent Jayhawks).
- Tubby Smith may not be able to keep up with John Calipari at Kentucky in terms of recruiting, but he has to be pleased to get his first commitment of the recruiting season with Joe Coleman, the state’s #1 recruit, committing to play for Minnesota.
- After losing several players following the departure of Ernie Kent it appears like Oregon is starting to reload with Bruce Barron, Austin Kuemper, and Brett Kingma all committing to play for the Ducks.
- Jenard Jarreau, a talented power forward out of New Orleans, committed to play at Washington one week after committing to play for Virginia Commonwealth. We are going to go ahead and use the pencil to mark this one on our “commitment” list.
- Rutgers is starting to load up on recruits as this past week it signed Jerome Seagears and Mike Taylor to go along with an increasingly vaunted class that already included Myles Mack, Malick Kone, Kadeem Jack, and Derrick Randall. Although there is still plenty of time left in the recruiting season it seems like Mike Rice has a good shot at finishing with a top 10 class that could make the Scarlet Knights a contender in the Big East over the next few years, particularly with the long list of recruits on hand for the football game this weekend against the Tar Heels.
- St John’s may not be quite as hot as Rutgers so far this recruiting season, but Steve Lavin is trying his best to keep up as he is having Amir Garrett and D’Angelo Harrison visit in October to try to convince the duo to join Maurice Harkless and JaKarr Sampson to help rebuild the once-proud program.
- Notre Dame picked up an early commitment from Cameron Biedscheid, a junior small forward who is ranked in the top 25 in his class.
- Jabari Brown, a top 5 shooting guard, recently took a visit to UConn as he attempts to narrow down his list from five schools as he still has visits at Arizona State, Oregon, and Georgia Tech after visiting Washington earlier this month.
- Ky Madden, a top 5 point guard, appears to have narrowed his list down to five schools as he has already visited Baylor and Arkansas, with visits at Ole Miss, Oklahoma State, and UConn coming up.