sampson recruiting

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SoCalHoops Recruiting News

Trigonis & R-USA Speculate
About Jamal Sampson--(Sept. 29, 2000)

We read Dinos' recent column (Trigonis Tidbits--9/28/00) at his website Fullcourt Press, with some interest. In that recent article, Dinos speculated some about what Jamal Sampson might be up to with his recruiting. We had also heard about two weeks ago (and reported the same here at SoCalHoops) that Jamal had taken an in-home visit with Cal Coach Ben Braun, and was seemingly very interested in the Bears, a real surprise to those who follow Cal recruiting, and who had no inkling that either the school or the player might be interested in each other. But Dinos takes the speculation about Jamal's recruitment with Cal one step further, (but also throws in St. Louis and Lorenzo Romar just to spice things up a bit): "With the recent announcement that Saint Louis and Cal are the current favorites for 6'11" senior Jamaal Sampson, it seems that Stanford might be the prohibitive favorite for Mayfair star 6'6" senior Josh Childress. Sampson and Childress have always mentioned the possibility that they might attend the same college and with Kansas fading on Sampson’s short list, it might result in the next best thing for these two close friends - that they attend schools within the same general metropolitan area. While they could end up being eventual bitter Pac-10 opponents if Sampson ended up at Cal and Childress signed with the Cardinal, it would allow them to spend a lot of time together in college."

One thing we think is fairly certain, Sampson may or may not go to Cal, but he won't go there because Childress decides to go to Stanford. . . . while the Bay Area may be considered the "same general metropolitan area" by those who haven't actually lived there, the differences between Bezerkeley and The Farm are pretty stark, and all that water separating the two schools (not to mention about 45 miles of turf as well) might as well be the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans. . . these schools may both be in NorCal, but they're on two different planets, worlds apart. And from the perspective of a first year student at either institution, and with D-I basketball resembling a 20-30 hour a week job, not to mention having to study and trying to squeeze in a social life, we don't think the proximity of Josh at Stanford or Jamal at Cal will be enough to influence either of their decisions if they do indeed select those two schools. Other than two meetings a year, they might as well be on opposite ends of the country. For our money, no matter how close Jamal and Josh happen (as friends, that is) to be, we'd say that UCLA still has to be considered a favorite for Jamal given the relationship between Sampson and Cedric Bozeman, who has recently committed once again to the Bruins. While similar speculation was made about the Jamal/Cal--Childress/Stanford connection at Recruiting USA on September 27, we still think that the only way these two wind up together is if they both pick Kansas now that Childress had given up on UCLA.

As we've said before, Jamal Sampson is a pretty tough nut to crack, and his recruitment continues to be a puzzle. Frankly, we haven't got the slightest idea where he'll wind up really, but it's sure fun trying to figure it out.