stewart twins announce for usc

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SoCalHoops Recruiting News

Stewart Twins Declare For USC,
Not Washington...--(Aug. 26, 2002)

If you happened to read the Seattle newspaper accounts published on Sunday, then you might have spent most of yesterday thinking that the Trojans had been spurned by Rodrick (6'-5" Sr. G) and Loderick Stewart (6'-5" Sr. G) from Rainier Beach HS in Seattle. You might have been convinced by their statements to the Seattle Times that the pair was going to be spending the next four years playing for Lorenzo Romar at the University of Washington. And certainly, if you were Lorenzo Romar, and checked the local papers, Sunday seemed to be getting off to a great start.

But as the day wore on, if you were a Huskie fan, things only went from good, to bad, to worse, as the news rapidly changed. And if you were a Trojan fan, things brightened up considerably around about 10:045 p.m. last night when the twins publicly announced that they intend to sign with USC, not Washington, as had been previously reported.

The Stewart twins made their "real" announcement on Fox Sports Northwest's Sunday night show, and as a result, it was too late for the news to hit today's papers. But "Bibby Baby" who maintains the USCHoops.com website (and who is no relation whatsoever to the real Henry Bibby) has a sorta, kinda loose transcription of the Stewarts' announcment at his site, along with a couple of screen-capture pictures from the show on which they made the announcement. We're not going to reprint the whole thing here, but it's available there if you want to read it in its entirety. The story did evidently make the other Seattle paper, the PI (Post-Intelligencer), and here's the story from that paper.

But that's not all that happened yesterday, and it's not the only reason that former UCLA assistant and former Pepperdine and St. Louis head coach Lorenzo Romar's day also got mucked up a bit. Right at about the same time the twins were announcing their "real" intentions (we have that in quotes because they obviously intended to mislead the Seattle papers when they "announced" that they would attend Washington), Andy Katz of ESPN was also reporting on some potential recruiting violations which, according to Katz, could be pretty serious stuff, and which in part, seem to be related to some of the comments which the Stewart twins may have made to the reporter from the Seattle Times in the link above (e.g., speaking with Romar and his staff every day, being observed, etc.).

The allegations of recruiting violations don't only pertain to the Stewart twins, and in fact most of them pertain to claims that Washington obtained an unfair recruiting advantage with other players, including Josh Heytfelt, who is also being recruited by Gonzaga, Eastern Washington and Washington State, and according to Katz' story, it appears that most of the claims of recruiting violations alleged against Washington and Romar's assistant Cameron Dollar, have come from other coaches in the region.

So, USC now gets another set of twins to go along with the Errick and Derrick Craven. And the University of Washington? Well, it looks like the Huskies and the staff will have a bit of explaining to do.