Recruiting Thread

[Buehrle>Wood]

He's going to Memphis.

[SleepyWhiteSox]

He's going to Memphis.

 

Yep.

 

http://blogs.suntimes.com/preps/

[whitesoxfan101]

Rose combined with that other talent down there is good enough to Carmeloize Memphis. Not sure why he put off the annoucement this long though, he's been going to Memphis for several months now, and it wasn't like the Gordon thing where he was even really still looking.

[Buehrle>Wood]

Rose combined with that other talent down there is good enough to Carmeloize Memphis. Not sure why he put off the annoucement this long though, he's been going to Memphis for several months now, and it wasn't like the Gordon thing where he was even really still looking.

Meh. Memphis has had more talent in the past and has done nothing with it. I don't think anyone can Carmeloize them.

[WhiteSoxfan1986]

Meh. Memphis has had more talent in the past and has done nothing with it. I don't think anyone can Carmeloize them.

 

If Cal could actually get guys to stay at least 2 years they would probably win a title. It doesn't help when Darius Washington leaves 2 years early and doesn't even get drafted.

[Palehosefan]

Sometimes Memphis doesn't pay enough and they look for a raise...

[whitesoxfan101]

Sometimes Memphis doesn't pay enough and they look for a raise...

 

Reggie Rose definitely finally got the money he missed out on by not being good enough to make the NBA, so congrats to him. That's not to be bitter either, even if that wasn't what was going on here, Derrick coulda went anywhere for all we know, not like Bruce can ever get a big recruit, regardless of if the process is clean or dirty. I don't blame Derrick though, he's a hell of a talent and he'll be a great player at Memphis and probably in the NBA too after a year to tuneup down there.

[SleepyWhiteSox]

"The recruiting changed—it went from 'Derrick, you're a regular recruit' to 'Derrick, you're a program-changing recruit,'" Reggie Rose said. "If you would've had that setup from the get-go, things could've been different. ... The atmosphere [last weekend], it was like he was a rock star. Every other recruiting visit we went to, Derrick was a rock star. But the [first] visit we went to Illinois, it was just, 'Hey, Derrick, how you doing.'"

 

I just hope this gives Coach Wainwright an edge if/when both schools are recruiting the same player...Sure hope that getting top-tier type recruits like Mac Koshwal and Dar Tucker this year becomes a trend...

[Buehrle>Wood]

I just hope this gives Coach Wainwright an edge if/when both schools are recruiting the same player...Sure hope that getting top-tier type recruits like Mac Koshwal and Dar Tucker this year becomes a trend...

I find it funny that Reggie Rose actually said that. No, I find it ubeiveable.

[Palehosefan]

Tough for me to root for Derrick, knowing that his success would be Reggie's success as well.

[CWSGuy406]

Apparently Damian Saunders (?) is going to committ to Marquette despite the fact that they have no scholarships left to offer. He's a PF from NDPrep. Any idea on how good this kid is?

[greasywheels121]

EJ made it official today.

 

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/arti...TS0601/61108017

[chimpy2121]

FSU has the 20th ranked early signing period class for basketball.

[SleepyWhiteSox]

FSU has the 20th ranked early signing period class for basketball.

 

Who's rankings?

 

 

I would imagine DePaul has garnered a ranking with the nice little class they've put together...

 

And we recently got a former northern iowa commit, a PG from indiana named Buzoukas...I'm somewhat skeptical, but I hope he can be a valuable addition...

[chimpy2121]

Who's rankings?

I would imagine DePaul has garnered a ranking with the nice little class they've put together...

 

And we recently got a former northern iowa commit, a PG from indiana named Buzoukas...I'm somewhat skeptical, but I hope he can be a valuable addition...

 

It's from Rivals, and you are correct about DePaul. They have the 10th ranked class. I'll post the whole list if you guys want when I get back from class.

[thedoctor]

dar tucker reconsidering?

[greasywheels121]

dar tucker reconsidering?

 

I would not be mad if he changed his mind.

[SleepyWhiteSox]

I would not be mad if he changed his mind.

 

I would.

 

There were rumblings immediately after he chose DePaul, but he reaffirmed his commitment soon after. It's a bit unsettling, but I'm not too worried.

 

 

Also, there was a nice article in the trib about Tucker just a couple of days ago:

 

Top 50 basketball player finds DePaul

Michigan standout Dar Tucker had only heard of school

 

By Brian Hamilton

Tribune staff reporter

 

November 5, 2006, 7:45 PM CST

 

 

SAGINAW, Mich. -- The backdoor unlatched about 6 a.m. Thursday, courtesy of an understanding janitor, and Arthur Hill High School basketball players loped in.

 

Daylight was a faint expectation. Snowflakes were a few hours away. No one shared the glee of the lumberjack painted on the mural overhead, his Leno-like jaw locked in an everlasting grin.

 

 

 

Dar Tucker had plans, though. These plans, dated to last summer, had not yet come to fruition and thus gnawed at him. So when open-gym games ended, Tucker stationed teammate Tyrie Wooten near a basket. And he began his approach.

 

Wooten spiked a ball to the floor. Tucker leaped, snared the ball with his waffle-iron-sized hands, put it through his legs and thrust it through the rim.

 

The gym detonated with hoots and howls. The normally sedate Tucker sprinted the floor, smiling wildly, reminding his coach of the beaming 11-year-old version of Tucker after he had led his AAU team to its first tournament win.

 

When Dar Tucker signs a letter of intent to play basketball at DePaul this week, a linchpin in a watershed recruiting haul, this is what the Blue Demons will get: an unassuming soul with athleticism that can raise arm hairs and rouse teammates from a predawn haze.

 

Good thing, then, that he finally learned where DePaul was last summer.

 

Despite lunch-period racket outside, the shoebox of a locker room off Arthur Hill's gym sufficed as a confessional: Until Tucker visited his AAU coach's hotel room during a Las Vegas tournament in July, the 6-foot-5-inch guard hadn't considered DePaul.

 

Which is to say he didn't know DePaul was recruiting him.

 

"I didn't even know who (Blue Demons coach Jerry) Wainwright was," Tucker said. "I knew of DePaul, because Wilson (Chandler, a Michigan native) goes there."

 

But no letters. No text messages. No working knowledge of Chicago.

 

"I didn't know it was in Chicago," Tucker said, laughing.

 

Eventually letters arrived, then a call from Wainwright. Then Tucker visited, and suitors such as Indiana, Miami and Louisville fell to the side. He loved the compact environment, just near and far enough from big-city hubbub.

 

On Sept. 22, Tucker committed, finding his new home in a place that hadn't existed for him two months earlier.

 

And the most popular question in Saginaw became: DePaul?

 

"I get it from a lot of people—still," Tucker said. "They expected me, from what I've been doing around here, to go to a bigger school.

 

"They don't understand what I've seen. Everybody doesn't get explained to them how [DePaul is] a perfect fit for me. Some people understand. But I still get a lot of looks."

 

Top-notch recruiting crop

 

With this recruiting class, DePaul could reap looks of a decidedly less skeptical nature. In Tucker and 6-9 forward Mac Koshwal of Boys To Men Academy, the Blue Demons are expected to sign two consensus Top 50 players.

 

"It's like having your membership card punched," Scout.com national recruiting analyst Dave Telep said. "You've got to be able to walk into a living room and say, this level of player is coming to my program."

On court, Tucker seems possessed by Saginaw itself, infused with the city's rough-edged character. Along with 26 points, he averaged 14 rebounds per game as a junior. In a Michigan Class A state semifinal last season, he collected more rebounds (19) than points (18).

 

The convenient reference is Jason Richardson, now with the Golden State Warriors, whose high school jersey hangs next to Arthur Hill's scoreboard. Coach Greg McMath says Tucker's skill level is higher at this stage, but his work ethic is still creeping toward Richardson's.

 

 

 

"It's only a struggle when the kid kind of fights it," McMath said. "But he embraced me challenging him. He doesn't take anything personal."

 

This is the anti-Saginaw element in Tucker. A dedicated homebody, difficult to pry from his bedroom, he often allows the game—and life in general—to come to him, displaying a subdued ease, asserting himself only when others ask.

 

Needing to improve academically, he pressed through four summer-school courses in three weeks, studying with teacher and de facto academic adviser Sharon Richardson four hours after everyone else had gone.

 

In last season's Class A championship game, Tucker scuffled with foul trouble and his shot until McMath called a third-quarter timeout and singled out his star. It's your time, McMath told him. Tucker responded by finishing with 26 points in a thrilling, double-overtime win.

 

"I'll be like, 'Come on, step this up,'" Arthur Hill teammate Latreze Mushatt said. "That's all you've got to tell him."

 

'Just a great kid'

 

Arthur Hill voted Tucker homecoming king this year. Last season he routinely asked athletic director Sonya Dudley if her daughter Wisdom would attend games—born the first day of the campaign, Wisdom was a good-luck charm—and led the charge to visit with the infant afterward.

 

Security guard Danny Evans received an animated call last summer from a nephew attending Richardson's camp at Saginaw Valley State: His coach was—gasp—Dar Tucker!

 

"He's got a great heart," Richardson, the teacher, said. "He has that ability to draw kids in. He's just a great kid all the way through."

 

So Tucker has become from Saginaw but not of Saginaw, accepting the city's gravelly grip but hardly choked by it. The balance begins to reveal itself on the nine-block walk from his home at 10th and Annesley to Veterans Park, Saginaw's virile basketball proving ground, past houses with boarded-up windows, tires stacked in the yard or both.

 

On a frosty November morning, a basketball and a pair of jeans lay forsaken at the place known merely as Vet's. A chain-link fence surrounds four courts with distinctly colored lanes: green, red, yellow and blue. A sign demands "No vulgar, loud music" and "No fighting," among other stipulations.

 

And when the one light over the courts isn't enough as dusk descends, car headlights flick on so the knowns and unknowns can continue their high-strung jousts for esteem.

 

"If you're trying to make your name out here in Saginaw, trying to be someone," Tucker said, "that's where you go."

 

Specifically, you go to the blue court, where the best compete. Tucker first played there as a petrified 6th grader, picked up by Tim Prince, now an Arthur Hill assistant. He has bled at Vet's more than once since, slamming into the iron stanchions or the concrete court.

 

Ultimately, Tucker became another in a long line to make his name at Vet's, forging a cast-iron basketball identity. It ebbs elsewhere, but here it defines him—a legend made flesh on summer nights, now amused by eager upstarts on the basketball bedrock of Saginaw's east side, searching for what he already has found.

 

"What I do now, it's like, 'That ain't nothing; we've seen that already,'" Tucker said. "When somebody else new does something, it's, 'Oh, he's killing you.'

 

"I go after dudes because I'm not just going to let anybody go after me. I don't let anybody make their name on me. But if he's trying to get his shine on, he's trying to get his shine on. He's going to have to work for it, though."

 

[email protected]

[thedoctor]

I would not be mad if he changed his mind.

 

i tend to doubt the veracity of the report, primarily because of the louisville mention. i know louisville was dar's top school for a long while, but i didn't think they had any schollies left after goode committed. i could be wrong, though.

 

however, since jordan crawford (once thought an iu lock) is now delaying his announcement, maybe sampson is making a late push for tucker.

[whitesox61382]

ND gets a verbal from 3* OL Nwankwo from Florida. He is an underrated prospect who has a good mix of size and athleticism. It is a bit of a surprise considering that most thought he would end up at Florida, so it is nice to pick him up(especially after a 2 month dry spell for ND).

 

In other recruiting news, rumor has it that Greg Little(4* athlete from NC) could announce as soon as tomorrow. He is currently deciding between UNC and ND. I am pretty sure that he will end up at ND after a good unofficial visit last weekend, and no coach at UNC for next year. If ND does get Little, combined with Kamara(jumped to #31 rated overall in the most recent Rivals top 100), it will soften the blow of losing out on Benn(if he doesn't go to ND).

[farmteam]

Speaking of Benn, any more news on him?

[chimpy2121]

Speaking of Benn, any more news on him?

 

Thursday night

[thedoctor]

Thursday night

 

6:30 eastern time at the espnzone in baltimore.

 

*fingers crossed*

[aboz56]

i tend to doubt the veracity of the report, primarily because of the louisville mention. i know louisville was dar's top school for a long while, but i didn't think they had any schollies left after goode committed. i could be wrong, though.

 

however, since jordan crawford (once thought an iu lock) is now delaying his announcement, maybe sampson is making a late push for tucker.

U of L has scholarships left, but Tucker and Goode play similar positions, U of L was ready to take Tucker, he wasn't ready to commit, they took Goode and then Tucker didn't want to go there anymore (most likely due to the fact that he'd really have to bust ass to start immediately at U of L), as simple as that.

[whitesoxfan101]

6:30 eastern time at the espnzone in baltimore.

 

*fingers crossed*

 

Weird that he denied their was going to be a presser Thursday just 2 days ago. Anyways, if he doesn't choose Illinois, I think everybody, even the school he chooses in that senario, would be shocked. Nice to see him make it official though.