Point guard Chris Wright is one of a trio of 5-star recruits in the D.C. area for the Class of 2007. Greg Nelson/SI

Monday's blog launch looked at some of the new heavies (including Purdue!) on the national recruiting scene. Today, the focus is much narrower: the changing dynamics of the Washington D.C. talent market.

In last November's college basketball preview issue, SI ran a four-page spread entitled "Hoops Hotbeds: SI's Survey of America's Basketball Boomtowns," with Washington D.C. as one of the featured hotbeds, albeit in a secondary position behind New York. The story listed "Pipelines" for each hotbed; for D.C., it read, "Maryland and Georgetown have divided the city's spoils in recent years, but North Carolina's Roy Williams has muscled in to sign freshman Marcus Ginyard and '06 freshman Tywon Lawson."

While NYC has since stagnated to a point where it has no 4- or 5-star recruits, the D.C. area has blown up: Its Class of 2007 crop includes three 5-star prospects -- PF Michael Beasley (headed to Kansas State), SG Austin Freeman (Georgetown) and PG Chris Wright (uncommitted) -- and four with 4-star grades -- PF Jeff Allen (Virginia Tech), center Anthony McClain (uncommitted), SG Nolan Smith (Duke) and PF Julian Vaughn (uncommitted). From that group, all but Wright and Allen play for the D.C. Assault, an adidas outfit that may be the East Coast's top AAU team.

So how does an outsider program without the cachet of a Duke or UNC infiltrate a market in which there's intense competition from the local powers? It's easier than you think: Just go out and add someone to your staff who has connections to the Assault. That's what Kansas State did in April; new coach Bob Huggins shrewdly hired Dalonte Hill, an ex-Assault coach and Charlotte assistant. Hill is a father figure to Beasley, the No. 5 overall player in the '07 class … and lo and behold, Beasley backed out of his verbal commitment to Charlotte and said this summer that he intends to play at K-State instead.

The Wildcats, however, are not the only ones crashing the D.C. party. Next up? Pittsburgh, which must forge a new recruiting identity after losing ace assistant Barry "Slice" Rohrssen -- a Sopranos-like character -- to the top job at Manhattan. Rohrssen is a Brooklyn guy who dominated NYC recruiting and stocked the Panthers' with talents such as Chris Taft, Carl Krauser, Levance Fields and Ronald Ramon. Pitt's '05-06 roster had six players from New York as opposed to one (Sam Young) from the D.C. area.

A nice story in Tuesday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette describes how coach Jamie Dixon is banking on newly hired director of basketball operations David Cox to help make Pitt a player in D.C. recruiting. Cox, to put it lightly, is "hooked up" inside the Beltway after serving as an assistant with the Assault for seven years. Coincidentally, with Cox in the fold in July, the Panthers landed Darnell Dodson, a 6-foot-6, three-star wing player for the Assault. They're also now in the hunt for Vaughn and McClain and are said to be considered by Beasley as a possible back-up option should he change his mind about K-State. Cox also gives Dixon more pull in his battle against Huggins for Herb Pope, an ultra-talented power forward from Alquippa, Pa., who formerly played for the Assault.

Oh -- and Chris Wright, the lone, five-star D.C. prospect who hasn't made his college decision? He doesn't play for the Assault, but that doesn't mean he's unfamiliar with Cox. "Actually," Wright told Scout.com this summer, "[Cox] was the assistant principal at my school [St. John's College High]. We had a very good relationship before he went to the University of Pittsburgh.”

Wright has two Big East schools on his short list: Georgetown … and Pittsburgh. Is anyone surprised?