Who’s Got Next? is a weekly column by Sean Moran, the RTC recruiting guru. Once a week he will bring you an overview of what’s going on in the complex world of recruiting, from who is signing where among the seniors to discussing the recruitments of the top uncommitted players in the country. We also encourage you to check out his contributions at The Intentional Foul dedicated to recruiting coverage and analysis. You can also follow Sean at his Twitter account @Seanmohoops for up-to-date news from the high school and college hoops scene. If you have any suggestions as to areas we are missing or different things you would like to see, please let us know at rushthecourt@yahoo.com.

Note: Scout.com used for all player rankings.

Chatman Leaving the West Coast for Ann Arbor

On October 2, four-star small forward Kameron Chatman committed to the Michigan Wolverines. At 6’7”, 195 pounds, Chatman is currently ranked as the 8th-best small forward and 23rd overall. He chose Michigan over three Pac-12 schools in Arizona, Oregon, and USC. Chatman is one of the more intriguing prospects in the class of 2014, which John Beilein and the Michigan coaching staff realized early on. The Michigan recruitment first began in the summer of 2012 with a phone conversation between Michigan assistant coach Jeff Meyer and Chatman’s father, Canaan. Subsequent to the phone conversation Michigan watched Chatman play in Vegas and then made him a top priority over the next year.

Chatman Is a Great National Get For Michigan

In 2012, the Portland native made his mark playing a year above his age group on the 17U Nike EYBL circuit with Inner City Portland Elite (ICP). He teamed up with current Pac-12 freshman Roshcon Prince (USC) and Jordan Bell (Oregon) and averaged 11.7 points and 4.1 rebounds per game while shooting 44% from the field. After the AAU season ended, Chatman decided to follow his ICP coach, Sharrief Metoyer, to California high school powerhouse Long Beach Poly. Unfortunately for Chatman, the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) suspended him for the year based on this transfer. Despite the suspension, Chatman still practiced with the team and went up against Prince and Bell on a daily basis. After the one year suspension, Chatman decided to head home to Portland and will attend Columbia Christian School for his senior season.

Over the spring and summer, Chatman shook off his basketball rust and averaged 15.8 points and 9.8 rebounds per game for ICP under the watchful eye of Beilein and various Pac-12 coaches. At the end of his summer, Chatman cut his list down to the four schools mentioned above and took visits to all of them. His first visit came on September 6 to Michigan and then he traveled to Oregon, USC, and Arizona in the following weeks. Despite having the earliest visit, Michigan and Beilein impressed the Chatman family enough while providing Kameron with the chance to compete in the hyper-competitive Big Ten.

Overall, Chatman is a tall and talented multi-dimensional wing that oozes potential. He is still coming into his frame with a long 6’9.5” wing span. He is a strong rebounder as shown by his per-game averages despite mostly playing on the perimeter and can do a little bit of everything on the court. This commitment gives Michigan a player who can man different roles on the court and will clearly pay dividends for the Wolverines in the future.

Okonoboh Heads West

Dave Rice already had five-star forward Dwayne Morgan making the trek from the east coast out to Las Vegas. Now he also has Goodluck Okonoboh, a four-star center coming from Boston to the desert. Okonoboh is currently the 5th-ranked center in the class of 2014 and 37th overall. This past Thursday night, Okonoboh made his decision to attend UNLV live on ESPNU. The other two finalists for the center included Big Ten powers Ohio State and Indiana. Okonoboh noted, when asked why he decided on UNLV, “the relationship with Coach Rice. We have a great relationship on and off the court. They had the best blueprint for me.”

Read the rest of this entry »

1. UNLV may have lost Anthony Bennett to the NBA Draft and Mike Moser to Oregon, but that has not stopped Dave Rice, who got a commitment from Goodluck Okonoboh yesterday. Okonoboh, who is the #21 overall prospect in ESPN’s rankings, is a 6’9″ center with good defensive skills, but with a raw offensive game. We are not privy to the details of his recruitment, but are a little surprised that he chose UNLV over more established programs like Duke, Florida, Indiana, and Ohio State, which were his other finalists. If Okonoboh follows through on his commitment (see below), he would join Dwayne Morgan, a top-10 power forward, to give the Rebels an imposing frontline.
2. One of the many reasons that we do not get too worked up about recruitment is the inevitable early commitment/decommitment. The latest example of this is Trevon Bluiett, who backed out of his one-month-old commitment to UCLA yesterday. Blueitt’s official reason for backing out of his commitment was the distance from his home state of Indiana to UCLA, but we would not be surprised if UCLA’s surplus of wings may have played a more significant role. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Bluiett’s decision is that the Bruins has already hired Ed Schilling, Bluiett’s former high school coach, as an assistant coach. Package deals like this are not unusual in college basketball, but it is unusual to see one part of the package fall apart like this.
3. As we mentioned last month when he had his DUI charge reduced to a driving without a license charge, it did not take long for Connecticut to let Tyler Olander back on the team as Kevin Ollie announced yesterday that Olander, a 6’10” senior who has been arrested twice since March, was back on the team following his September arrest. We won’t pretend to know how to run a basketball team/program, but we are a bit surprised with how quickly Kevin Ollie let Olander back as he cited Olander’s “responsibility and maturity” as well as time management skills and academic work. We understand that Connecticut is in need of an inside presence, but we have a hard time believing that doing so for less than a month after his (second) arrest really demonstrates that.
4. When the NCAA made its controversial decision to not allow coaches to attend practices for schools that do not participate in scholastic associations we assumed it was a backhanded attempt at questioning the legitimacy of the academic credibility of those institutions. If the case of Illinois State freshman MiKyle McIntosh is any indication, they may have targeted the wrong school. McIntosh, a 6’7″ forward from Canada, was ruled academically ineligible after the NCAA determined that some of his high school coursework could not be used. Of course, this is not an infrequent occurrence, but it is notable that McIntosh spent part of his time at Christian Faith Center Academy in North Carolina, the same school that Florida State non-qualifier Xavier Rathan-Mayes attended for part of his career. We do not have access to the details of what courses these two took that the NCAA deemed unworthy of meeting its requirements as both players appear to have bounced around high schools, but much like Prime Prep in Texas when multiple players who graduated from the same high school are ruled academically ineligible you start to wonder what is going on there.
5. Ken Pomeroy writes some of the best publicly available analytic work available, but sometimes it takes someone else to put it into a format that makes others recognize its value. One example of this is the work of Dan Hanner who looked at two Pomeroy metrics–possessions per game and average possession length–to determine which teams had the biggest differences between perception and reality in terms of their tempo. The basis behind this is that a team that plays suffocating defense that leads to their opponent using up a large percentage of the shot clock will tend to have fewer possessions per game as their opponent will be consuming significant portions of the overall game time with their offensive possessions. We won’t get into the specifics of the analysis (you can check out the link for that), but it is interesting that teams that play faster on offense than standard metric suggest tend to be much better than teams that play slower on offense than standard metrics suggest.

Big East Recruiting Round-up is a recurring feature that will focus on, well, recruiting.  Rumors, buzz, rankings…..everything potentially shiny and new. 

Deck the Halls

Seton Hall has been busy looking for some holiday cheer to add to its roster.  They were in the house to see Aquille Carr (’13 – 5’7″ point guard – Patterson– MD – Ranks: Rivals: 26 , ESPN: 59) play his first game of the season, according to Alex Kline of The Recruit Scoop.  Carr, affectionately known as “The Crime Stopper” because the crime rate in Baltimore plunges when he plays, also has Big East interest from Louisville, Connecticut and Syracuse.

Carr is Being Looked at by a Number of High Majors (Photo Credit: Kelly Kline, ESPNHS)

The Pirates also offered Kris Jenkins (’13 – 6’5″ power forward – Gonzaga– DC – Ranks: Rivals: 26 , ESPN: N/R) per William Gunter via Twitter (@willgunter247).  Jenkins holds an offer from Rutgers per ESPN.com and has interest from Georgetown, Pittsburgh, Marquette and Villanova per Rivals.com.

The Hall has also experienced recruiting success through an unexpected resource called Canarias Basketball Academy in the Canary Islands.  The academy has produced three current Pirates: Patrick Auda, Haralds Karlis and Aaron Germaipoor and coach Kevin Willard is reported to be mining Canarias for a class of 2012 point guard according to southorangejuice.com via Twitter (@SOrangeJuice).

Johnson Headed Back East?

Read the rest of this entry »