SoCalHoops Recruiting News

"Hey. . . Aren't You Going
To Update The Site???"--(Aug. 8, 2000)

Geez, we take a couple of days off, and suddenly, we get tons of e-mail asking us, rather insistently, "Hey, when are you going to update the site???"  

Well, it's only be four days.  It's August.  It's a "Quiet Period".   So all we can say is "ssshhhhhh".

In the last four years we've been running SoCalHoops, we've taken off maybe about three days from writing a consistent stream of articles, sometimes three or four, but more often than not, about an average of six or more per day.   Well, in case you hadn't noticed, other than phone calls and recruiting rumors (hey that's the fun stuff, right?) there isn't a lot happening right now.    And so, we plan to keep the articles few and far between in the next week or so (well, we might sneak in a couple of new articles in the next day or two).  We're actually trying to get ready for the Maccabi Games in Cincinnati, OH, and Richmond, VA, and we'll have some news from there shortly. . . but for now we're taking it easy.

Why?

Well, we're tired.  Yeah, it's a sorry excuse, and we know that on the voracious, bottomless pit that is the internet, no one ever gets "tired", but as Frank Burlison quickly learned when he switched from being a newspaper guy whose job went from writing one column a week, to having to fill unlimited space without end at Fox Sports, there really is no "end" and you can never write enough. . . There are more than 500,000 players (according to the NCAA) playing high school ball.  About 20,000 of them are right here in SoCal.  About 10% of them are guys who think they will play in college somewhere at some level. . . there are thus more than enough guys out there to evaluate, and even if we wrote 24 hours a day for the next four years straight, we couldn't hope to write about everyone, much less see everyone play, not even once. . .

So this internet thing is all about "pacing". . . it's best treated like a marathon, rather than a sprint. . . so right now we're just going to jog,  just keep a mild pace to regroup and recharge before the onslaught that will come with this coming fall season. . . and believe us, we'll have a few new surprises in terms of coverage this season.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. . . there are actually a few things to report about which have been taking place in the last few days.  Now we also don't go in much for the rumor-mill stuff anyway when it comes to recruiting, but there are a few more confirmed verbal commitments which occurred in the last few days. . . like Joe See (5'-11" Sr. PG/SG) from De La Salle/Oakland Slam N Jam to Oregon State (to go along with JS Nash from Rancho Verde who committed about two weeks ago), and UCLA's first verbal of the year from Mike Fey of Washington, which was first reported by (take your pick) a) Oregon Preps about two days ago, b) Frank Burlison early yesterday, or c) PacWestHoops sometime mid-afternoon yesterday.  

Frankly, it doesn't much matter who reported it first, the fact is that with UCLA getting the verbal from Fey, they've now picked one of their five available scholarships from this year's rising senior class.  And they get a 6'-11" post player who is a pretty good shooter from about 6 to 8 feet out, who can score inside, who has excellent shot blocking capabilities, but who tends at times to disappear in some games offensively when faced with a serious challenge in the post.   Can he fill the spot which Gadzuric will vacate next season?  Only if between now and then he puts on some serious muscle and works on his post skills, which are not bad, they just need honing for the Pac-10.   Don't get us wrong, we've seen Fey play a lot this summer, including one game in Vegas where he really torched Jason Carter inside (but interestingly, in the same game, didn't really do a lot against Dustin Villepigue, who himself is being recruited by Oregon, Oregon State, St. Louis, San Diego State, San Diego, and several others, including probably to a lesser degree right now, USC, New Mexico and a couple of the Ivy Leagues), and we like his energy and athleticism and definitely think he's a Pac-10 type of player, but he will need to do some serious weight training in order to fulfill the expectations people are placing on him, at least those pundits and others posting messages about him on the various boards. . . .but then what the heck do we know anyway. . . hey, we've only watched him play about, oh, 15 or 16 times this summer. . . And LA is a very tough town. . .  

Frankly, we didn't expect Fey to be among the first verbals among "bigs" for the Bruins, who are looking seriously for yet one more big man, a couple of wings, and a point guard.   At the one, the most likely candidate being chased by the Bruins is still Aaron Miles from Portland Jeferson, but we really only rate him at about 50-50 for the Bruins. . . So among the Bruin-faithful, there is now talk about recruiting Terrance Ford of the Houston Superstars as another likely candidate in the event Miles winds up at Arizona or Kansas (and most of our sources are telling us that Kansas is probably fading, but don't count them out, because with the absence of DeShawn Stevenson, a guy like Aaron Miles would be getting about, oh, 32 minutes a game as a freshman).  There are a couple of other likely targets at the one, but the other big wing prospects are Cedric Bozeman (who committed, then de-committed, then committed, then "opened things up" again, but who is really an excellent combo, point-forward type of prospect), Dijon Thompson (who is being chased pretty heavily by the other LA Pac-10 team),  Josh Childress (who is also being recruited hard by Stanford, Kansas and a handful of other high-major programs) and Jamal Sampson as the primary big man.    Now if Lavin could secure commitments from all of them, he'd probably think he'd died and gone to heaven. . . and so would a lot of Bruin fans, and probably the only thing better would be if Tyson Chandler finally woke up and realized he'd be better off playing at least a year of college ball. . . something we don't think is likely, but then you never really know. . . .

In any event, we are taking some time to sit back, recover and regroup, so don't expect to see a lot of stories posted in the next few days. . . but then you never can tell, we just might get a nervous burst of energy, and when that happens, the articles just sort of flow. . . .

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