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Elite conferences mop up

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As generally is the case, members of the seven elite Division I conferences -- the Atlantic Coast, Pacific-10, Southeastern, Conference USA, Big Ten, Big East and Big 12 -- hogged the premier available high school and junior college talent during the Nov. 8-15 fall national signing period.

Schools in these seven leagues signed 42 of the 44 top-50 prep seniors and 83 of the 88 top-100 prep seniors who made their collegiate decisions in November. The same pattern holds true among junior college sophomores who signed this fall, although not as strongly. Thus, 29 of the top 75 juco sophs made fall commitments, and 19 of those 29 chose a college in one of the seven power conferences.

The result, as usual, is that the rich get richer. The order in which we listed these seven conferences above is the precise order of their fall recruiting success, based on our ranking system, which gives the most weight to the best prospects.

All signees ranked among the top 25 high school seniors are worth four points apiece, those ranked between 26 and 50 count three points, those 51 to 100 or among the top 75 junior college sophomores equal two points each, and recruits ranked from 101 to 200 in the high school Class of 2001 are valued at one point in our system.

Based on this system, ACC schools signed 26 ranked players (either top 200 prep seniors or top 75 JC sophs) worth a total of 56 points, to nip the Pac-10 (24 ranked signees for 53 points) for the top spot. Members of the SEC, Conference USA, Big Ten and Big East each signed from 20 to 23 ranked prospects worth between 39 and 48 points, while in seventh place is the Big 12 with 17 ranked recruits valued at 37 points. The gap after that is immense, as no other conference in the nation had fall signees worth more than 13 points.

The chart below shows in detail which conferences fared best in recruiting this month. Note that while a majority of the best junior college sophomores did not sign this fall and therefore remain available for spring recruitment, over 80 percent (163) of the top 200 high school seniors inked binding national letters-of-intent.

We also find it interesting that while the SEC (with five) is the conference whose members have landed the most top-25 high school seniors, the ACC (with 10) and Pac-10 (with eight) are the only leagues with more than six signees ranked among the top 50. Overall, we find a lot of parity among the power conferences in recruiting results, but significantly less talent present overall in other Division I leagues.

FALL RECRUITING BY CONFERENCE
Conference	1-25 Preps	26-50 Preps	51-100 Preps	101-200 Preps	1-75 JC Sophs	Ranked recruits	Points
1. ACC	3	7	6	9	1	26	56
2. Pac-10	3	5	9	6	1	24	53
3. SEC	5	0	8	4	4	21	48
4. C-USA	3	1	5	7	6	22	44
5. Big Ten	3	1	8	6	2	20	41
6. Big East	1	4	4	13	1	23	39
7. Big 12	3	3	1	6	4	17	37
8. MWC	0	0	2	7	1	10	13
9. Sun Belt	0	1	0	4	3	8	13
10. A-10	0	1	1	2	1	5	9
11. WAC	0	0	0	4	1	5	6
12. Am. East	0	0	0	2	2	4	6
13. Colonial	0	0	0	2	0	2	2
14. West Coast	0	0	0	0	1	1	2
15. Mid-Cont.	0	0	0	0	1	1	2
16. MAC	0	0	0	1	0	1	1
17. Ivy	0	0	0	1	0	1	1
Unsigned	4	2	6	25	46	83	151

Now let's look briefly at which schools within the predominant conferences have contributed the most to the fall recruiting success of their respective leagues. Only listed (conference by conference) are top-50 caliber prep seniors who have determined their collegiate destination.

Atlantic Coast (10): 6-5 New York WG/PG/SF Julius Hodge (No. 5 overall) to N.C. State; 6-7 North Carolina SF/WG Anthony Richardson (No. 16) to Florida State; 6-8 Ohio SF/PF Jawad Williams (No. 18), 6-2 Maryland PG/WG Melvin Scott (No. 26) and 6-6 Florida WG/SF Jackie Manuel (No. 34) all to North Carolina; 6-8 Florida PF/C Ed Nelson (No. 29) and 6-6 1/2 Georgia SF/PF Is'mail Muhammad (No. 43) both to Georgia Tech; 6-4 Texas WG Daniel Ewing (No. 30) to Duke; 6-8 1/2 Va. PF/C Elton Brown (No. 33) to Virginia; 6-9 Florida PF/SF Jamal Levy (No. 47) to Wake Forest.

Pacific-10 (8): 6-8 1/2 Connecticut PF Julian Sensley (No. 12) and 6-11 California C Jamal Sampson (No. 36) both to California; 6-8 Kansas PF Dennis Latimore (No. 42) and 6-2 Oregon WG/PG Salim Stoudamire (No. 46) both to Arizona; 6-7 California SF Andre Patterson (No. 24), 6-6 California SF/WG Dijon Thompson (No. 31) and 6-5 California PG/WG Cedric Bozeman (No. 40) all to UCLA; 6-6 California WG/SF Josh Childress (No. 25) to Stanford.

Big 12 (6): 6-1 Oregon PG Aaron Miles (No. 15) and 6-8 1/2 Kansas PF/C Wayne Simien (No. 17) both to Kansas; 5-11 1/2 Texas PG T.J. Ford (No. 22) to Texas; 6-10 Michigan C/PF Robert Whaley (No. 27), 6-6 Florida SF/WG Duane John (No. 37) and 6-6 Illinois SF/WG Najeeb Echols (No. 49) all to Missouri.

Southeastern (5): 6-11 Georgia PF/C Kwame Brown (No. 7), 6-9 Missouri PF/SF David Lee (No. 9) and 6-7 Virginia SF James White (No. 10) all to Florida; 6-1 1/2 Mississippi PG Maurice Williams (No. 19) to Alabama; and 6-3 Virginia WG Rashaad Carruth (No. 21) to Kentucky.

Big East (5): 5-11 1/2 Virginia PG Jonathan Hargett (No. 11) to West Virginia; 6-8 Maryland PF/SF Harvey Thomas (No. 28) to Georgetown; 6-6 Pennsylvania SF/WG John Allen (No. 35) to Seton Hall; 6-1 Indiana PG/WG Chris Thomas (No. 38) to Notre Dame; 6-2 New York WG/PG Ben Gordon (No. 44) to Connecticut.

Conference USA (4): 6-11 Illinois C Eddy Curry (No. 1) and 6-6 1/2 Florida SF/PF Quemont Greer (No. 48) both to DePaul; 6-2 New Jersey PG/WG Dajuan Wagner (No. 2) to Memphis; 6-1 1/2 Kentucky PG Carlos Hurt (No. 13) to Louisville.

Big Ten (4): 6-4 Michigan WG Kelvin Torbert (No. 4) to Michigan State; 6-11 Minnesota PF/C Rick Rickert (No. 20) to Minnesota; 6-4 California WG/PG Dommanic Ingerson (No. 23) to Michigan; 6-3 Illinois WG/PG Pierre Pierce (No. 41) to Iowa.

Sun Belt (1): 6-9 New Jersey PF/SF Taurance Johnson (No. 39) to Florida International.

Atlantic-10 (1): 6-5 1/2 Ohio WG/SF Keith Jackson (No. 50) to Xavier.

We'll look at prominent signees from the junior colleges in a future column.

Regional Notes

Let's identify some prospects who signed late during the fall national signing period. Five of them are ranked among the top 200 high school seniors, while several more are well-regarded junior college sophomores.

EAST

Penn State: 6-11 Berlin (Germany) C/PF Jan Jagla.

St. Joseph's: 6-9 Aston (Pa.) American Christian PF/C Dwayne Jones (unranked), over Virginia Tech.

Northeastern: 6-6 Fitchburg (Mass.) Notre Dame PF Meshak Burke-Bennet (unranked); and (verbally committed) 6-5 Columbia (S.C.) Dreher SF Jerome Washington (unranked), over East Carolina and others.

Lehigh: 6-5 Middletown (N.J.) South SF/PF Kevin Mirawinski (unranked), over William and Mary, Yale and Cornell. He averaged 20 points and eight rebounds per game as a junior.

American: 6-8 Tallahassee (Fla.) CC PF Nick Boyd.

SOUTH

Tulane: 6-5 Jonesboro (Ga.) Mount Zion SF/WG Karl Hollingsworth (No. 80), over Tennessee, Yale and Georgia; and 6-4 River Ridge (La.) Curtis WG Ben Benfield (top 250), over LSU and Vanderbilt. Hollingsworth averaged 25 points, 14 rebounds and five assists per game last season.

South Florida: (verbally committed) 6-6 Fort Lauderdale (Fla.) Dillard SF Kelvin Brown (No. 143), over interest from Charlotte, Auburn, West Virginia and Florida State; and 6-4 Leesburg (Fla.) High SF Marlyn Bryant (top 300), over Georgia State, to whom he had earlier given a verbal commitment. Bryant averaged 15.7 points and 12 rebounds per game as a junior.

Clemson: 6-9 1/2, 235-pound Fort Lauderdale (Fla.) Dillard C/PF Steve Allen (No. 180), over Auburn, LSU, South Florida, Florida State and Penn State. He averaged 12.3 points, 9.6 rebounds and 2.5 blocked shots last season as 31-4 Dillard won the Class 6-A (large-school) state championship.

Virginia Tech: 6-9, 235-pound PF/C Dimari Thompkins (top 200), a former Lakeland (Fla.) Lake Gibson star who prepped in 1998-99 at Chatham (Va.) Hargrave Military Academy but failed to qualify academically. He's reportedly been working at a grocery store in his hometown since then.

Old Dominion: 6-7 Delaware (Ohio) Hayes PF Allen Treese (unranked).

Southern Mississippi: 6-2 Alief (Texas) Hastings PG Dante Stiggers (unranked).

Western Kentucky: 6-10 Greenville (S.C.) Wade Hampton C Randy Orr (top 350).

South Alabama: 6-8 Manchester (Iowa) West Delaware PF Adam Salow (unranked).

Jacksonville (Ala.) State: 6-5 Birmingham (Ala.) Wenonah SF/PF Marvin Moore (unranked).

Liberty: 6-2 1/2 Berlin (Pa.) Brothers Valley WG Travis Eisentrout (unranked), after West Virginia (to whom he was verbally committed) reneged on offering him a scholarship.

Alabama: 6-8 1/2 SF/PF Kei Madison (top 25 JC soph), who is transferring from Iowa Western CC to Southern Union (Ala.) JC for the spring 2001 term. Madison, who also considered Mississippi, had committed three times previously to Indiana but changed his mind after Bob Knight was fired.

Auburn: 6-7 1/2 Southern Union (Ala.) JC SF Greg Johnson (top 100 JC soph).

Louisiana Tech: 6-10 Marshalltown (Iowa) CC C Joe Sykes (top 100 JC soph), over Kansas State.

Note: Verbally committed 6-9 Durham (N.C.) Mt. Zion Christian Academy C/PF Terry Licorish (No. 114), a Canadian native, did not sign after all with Louisville, although he apparently still has the Cardinals at the top of his list, ahead of Michigan State and others.

MIDWEST

Valparaiso: 6-5 San Jacinto (Texas) JC WG/SF Antonio Falu (top 50 JC soph), over Rice, TCU, Louisville, Charlotte, Arkansas, Iowa State, Missouri, Texas and Massachusetts.

Drake: 6-1 Merrillville (Ind.) High PG Lonnie Randolph (unranked).

Youngstown State: 6-5 1/2 Allegany (Md.) JC SF/WG Malik Wallace.

SOUTHWEST

UNLV: 6-2 Somerdale (N.J.) Sterling WG Ernest Turner (No. 77), over Villanova and Rutgers.

Houston: 6-4 Friendswood (Texas) Clearwood WG Bryan Shelton (top 350), over Rice, Louisiana-Lafayette and TCU.

Northern Arizona: 6-1 Phoenix Thunderbird PG/WG Kyle Feuerbach (unranked).

Arizona: 6-9, 280-pound Santa Monica (Calif) Crossroads C/PF Isaiah Fox (No. 108), over California and others.

WEST

Long Beach State: 6-2 Glendale (Ariz.) Cactus PG/WG Mark Bowens (unranked).

Pacific: 6-9 Woodland (Calif.) High PF Miguel Flores (unranked).

Fresno State: 6-9 Wabash Valley (Ill.) JC PF/C Hiram Fuller (top 50 JC soph), over Cincinnati (to which he had verbally committed, but his mother refused to sign letter-of-intent) and Oregon State.

Washington: 6-6 Tacoma (Wash.) CC WG/SF marksman Josh Bernard (top 150 JC soph), over Oregon State, Eastern Washington, Gonzaga and others.

Utah State: 6-7 Ventura (Calif.) JC PF Desmond Penigar.

Idaho: 6-5 Independence (Kans.) CC SF Jerald Jenkins, over Jacksonville.

Brick Oettinger is talent evaluator for the Prep Stars Recruiter's Handbook and recruiting columnist for the ACC Area Sports Journal. For more information on either publication, call 1-800-447-7667.

 

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