Tai Bibbs off the board to Columbia.

(03-23-2017 11:04 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  

(03-23-2017 10:40 PM)elw4796 Wrote:  New offer out to Malik Osborne at Don Bosco. 6-8 SF who looks like he can play inside and out. Looks comfortable shooting from outside, although he's got kind of a funky release (a little similar to Quez). Not too impressive of an offer sheet. Best offer is East Carolina. Might not mean anything that we're offering a forward/wing, but also could mean we're expecting to lose a big.

Other offers include Drexel and UW Milwaukee, who I would argue have had better basketball than ECU recently...

I would think Drexel might be the team to beat given proximity, but maybe he wants to get out of the tri-state.

I wonder if we will see an uptick in Southern California recruiting now that Pera is head coach. Obviously we took Harrison, but Rhoades definitely hit the northeast hard (as he should of given his background).

Malik Osborne is up to 9 D1 offers, including a recent offer from Oregon State.

In terms of coaches, I wonder if we might make a run for Glen Miller, who was UConn's associate head coach and a former Ivy League head coach? He'd be a good fit with the two guys we have in place right now. Jarvis Sanni might be another interesting candidate for the #3 assistant if he's interested. I don't believe he has any coaching experience outside of AAU ball but he's an HISD guy, a Rice grad, and his junior son is one of the best juniors in the city (down in Clear Lake). He or Tamir would make a great addition to the staff.

I don't think we should hire Tamir as an assistant as he has no experience. An off the court role like basketball ops or video, definitely!

Greg Elliott officially off the board to Marquette. Don't think he was ever interested in Rice as much as Coach Rhoades, although he was a huge long shot even with Rhoades.

With Bibbs, Nash, and Elliott all committing, I thought it was worth updating the list of outstanding offers (thanks to elw4796 for commentary):

LePear Toles - 6'6" SG (going to commit on April 12 which is signing day, offered by Rhoades)
Zhaire Smith - 6'5" SG/SF (blowing up, visits to UT, Texas Tech, and Arkansas, offered by Rhoades)
Malik Osborne - 6'8" PF (only known offer by Pera)

Caleb Simmons - 6'5" SG/SF (offered by Rhoades back in fall 2015, no known recent connections between him and Rice)
Caleb Daniels - 6'4" SG/SF (offered by Rhoades, doesn't show up on VerbalCommits, just the player's father tweeted it out)

Of note given all the recent transfers, remember ExcitedOwl18's observation that the recent underclassmen transfers had either attended a post-HS prep year or transfferred high schools for basketball reasons. Toles and Osborne are both in post-HS prep schools. Not sure if any of the others transferred high schools. Also, I've listened to quite a few of Coach Pera's recent interviews and he always says he's excited about recruiting right now. I guess that leaves me intrigued about what may happen over the next few weeks.

Just offered 6-5 G/F Najja Hunter out of a prep school in New Jersey. Smart kid (multiple Ivy offers) who can play (offers from the likes of Penn State, Seton Hall, Rutgers). Weirdly it looks like most of those offers were 2013/14, and most of his interest recently has been mid majors. The school he played at before his prep year is a powerhouse, and the prep school he plays at is also good so it looks like he's played against good competition. However there's very little video of his out there, so I'm not too sure what his style is like. In reality, if we're not going to draw heavily from the Houston area, this is the type of kid we need to be getting. From what I've seen, the official visits he's taken: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia. Kids that really care about academics are more likely to stay all four years.

(04-04-2017 04:31 PM)elw4796 Wrote:  Just offered 6-5 G/F Najja Hunter out of a prep school in New Jersey. Smart kid (multiple Ivy offers) who can play (offers from the likes of Penn State, Seton Hall, Rutgers). Weirdly it looks like most of those offers were 2013/14, and most of his interest recently has been mid majors. The school he played at before his prep year is a powerhouse, and the prep school he plays at is also good so it looks like he's played against good competition. However there's very little video of his out there, so I'm not too sure what his style is like. In reality, if we're not going to draw heavily from the Houston area, this is the type of kid we need to be getting. From what I've seen, the official visits he's taken: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia. Kids that really care about academics are more likely to stay all four years.

247sports has him ranked #307 overall in their composite rankings. With his offers and apparent interest in good academics, you have to think Rice would be thrilled to have him when there are still 5 open scholarships (assuming Letcher-Ellis transfers).

Former high school & AAU teammantes with Mohamed Bamba, one of the elite recruits in the 2017 class (who holds a Rice offer but removed Rice from his list long before Rhoades was out the door). If nothing else, it means Rice probably had plenty of looks at Najja Hunter.

(04-04-2017 04:31 PM)elw4796 Wrote:  Just offered 6-5 G/F Najja Hunter out of a prep school in New Jersey. Smart kid (multiple Ivy offers) who can play (offers from the likes of Penn State, Seton Hall, Rutgers). Weirdly it looks like most of those offers were 2013/14, and most of his interest recently has been mid majors. The school he played at before his prep year is a powerhouse, and the prep school he plays at is also good so it looks like he's played against good competition. However there's very little video of his out there, so I'm not too sure what his style is like. In reality, if we're not going to draw heavily from the Houston area, this is the type of kid we need to be getting. From what I've seen, the official visits he's taken: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia. Kids that really care about academics are more likely to stay all four years.

Tamir Jackson also graduated from the same high school - St. Benedicts.

Everybody will love this: Newest offer is to Houston G Nigel Hawkins. 6-3 2018 with offers from Houston and Texas A&M, among other Texas schools.

He's a junior though (a pretty good one - Greater Houston player of the year and led his team to the state title) - http://www.chron.com/sports/highschool/a...028085.php

Brion Whitley, who Rhoades had offered, just decommitted from UNCW. 6-5 2017 guard out of Florida. Certainly a chance he just follows Keatts to North Carolina State.

(04-04-2017 07:52 PM)Snozberry Wrote:  

(04-04-2017 04:31 PM)elw4796 Wrote:  Just offered 6-5 G/F Najja Hunter out of a prep school in New Jersey. Smart kid (multiple Ivy offers) who can play (offers from the likes of Penn State, Seton Hall, Rutgers). Weirdly it looks like most of those offers were 2013/14, and most of his interest recently has been mid majors. The school he played at before his prep year is a powerhouse, and the prep school he plays at is also good so it looks like he's played against good competition. However there's very little video of his out there, so I'm not too sure what his style is like. In reality, if we're not going to draw heavily from the Houston area, this is the type of kid we need to be getting. From what I've seen, the official visits he's taken: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia. Kids that really care about academics are more likely to stay all four years.

Tamir Jackson also graduated from the same high school - St. Benedicts.

Different school but surprised to see St. Anthony's is closing. Didn't we have a player from that school recently?

http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketb...chool-year

For those interested in our 2018 class, and who want us to recruit closer to home, here's how our 2018 offers break down geographically (excluding the highly unlikely guys):

NY: 2
California: 5
Texas: 4
Pennsylvania: 3
Maryland: 1
N. Carolina: 1
Colorado: 1
International: 1
Virginia: 1

I'm not sure of the correlation between twitter follows/following and actual interest in players, but the following players started following Coach Pera the last few days:
Bruno Solomun, 6'9" PF - just announced that he was transferring from Miami (OH). Played sparingly as a true freshman. Miami (OH) had a coaching change.
Cheikh "Shaq" Athie, 6'4" - just finished 2 years at community college. I mentioned him previously because he started following Coach Rhoades on twitter in February.
Jared Armstrong, 5'11" PG - coming off post grad year.

Tim Johnson 6'1" PG of Mansfield, TX was just followed by, and also just started following, Omar Mance.

Stephan Jiggetts, 6'1" PG grad transfer from Fairleigh Dickenson University was just followed by Coach Kreider. He started all 30 games, averaged 13.5 points.

Alex Vilarino, 6'1" PG who played post-grad year in the northeast, but is originally from Texas, was just followed by and started following Coach Kreider.

Miles Lester, who Coach Pera followed recently and was discussed a few pages back, is now following the entire Rice basketball coaching staff on twitter, with Pera and Kreider both following him.

Honestly, both Sulomun and Athis followed a bunch of coaches from many different schools recently, so I wouldn't read anything into it. It is more interesting if a guy starts following just Coach Pera, or if Coach Pera starts following a player.

Armstrong is following multiple coaches as well, but Pera is also following him.

Interesting name to track is Malcolm Allen, a grad transfer from Stanford. Guy we offered out of HS, played 12 minutes per game in 15-16. Clearly smart enough to play here.

(04-08-2017 10:50 AM)elw4796 Wrote:  Interesting name to track is Malcolm Allen, a grad transfer from Stanford. Guy we offered out of HS, played 12 minutes per game in 15-16. Clearly smart enough to play here.

I assume that would have been Braun that offered him? Edited my post 2 up with a couple new twitter leads.

Another new graduate transfer who we should look at is Austin Ruder, a 6-3 shooting guard from Missouri State. He's a very good student too (3.63 GPA in accounting).

(04-09-2017 09:39 PM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  Another new graduate transfer who we should look at is Austin Ruder, a 6-3 shooting guard from Missouri State. He's a very good student too (3.63 GPA in accounting).

Looks like primarily a shooter which, weirdly, is something we really need now. Dramatic decrease in playing time from sophomore to junior year.

As a reminder, the spring signing period for men's basketball starts this Wednesday. It runs from April 12th - May 17th.

So far, Rice has 1 commit from grad transfer Dylan Jones. He is essentially replacing Drone, so Rice still has at least 4 openings (Evans, Koulechov, Jackson, Douglas) with a 5th opening possible if Letcher-Ellis transfers as well. It has been surprisingly quiet on the recruiting front for the 2017 class or grad transfers. Hopefully there is a lot going on behind the scenes, because I haven't been able to discover much through my various twitter searches!

Earlier I was listing players who Rice might be interested in based on twitter follows by the Rice coaching staff. I think I'm going to stop doing that for Coach Kreider, as he has started following a lot of players and its tough to figure out how much of that is real interest by Rice, without something more. From glancing at Coach Kreider's recent follows, they are mostly 2018 recruits (with a decent number from Texas). Seems to lean towards big men.