Followup on several top recruits, Beas Hamga, Manual Cass, Ryan Boatright, Leon Powell, etc...

How many people recall seeing this story back in 2007?

The Top non-BCS Freshmen - from 2007....
http://www.collegehoopsnet.com/story/best_non_bcs_freshmen_part_one40974

This story lists Manual Cass, Keenan Ellis, Beas Hamga, Darrington Hobson, and Matt Howard as the nations BEST freshman at non-BCS schools.
Hobson was good and is now in the NBA -- but is struggling, injured.
Howard is good and leads a fine and successful Butler squad.

But the other three have been extremely surprising FLOPS.

-Beas Hamga is one of the most well-travelled recruits ever and he has flopped everywhere he's been.
Beas Hamga came from Africa...started at Cincinnati Harmony Prep,
then spent a year getting touted beyond comprehension at Decatur Christian,
and also played on the same Indiana Elite team that Matt Roth played on,
then he verbaled to Steve Alford and Iowa, then reneged and said he was going to follow Alford to New Mexico -- but he changed his mind and went to UNLV.
There he redshirted and then the following year, amid reports of how bad he was and lost he looked, he was booted and sent packing and landed at Valparaiso.
He never played there either and shifted to junior college at Weatherford College in Texas.
After one season there - struggling against a bunch of non-D-I opponents, he was given yet another shot at D-I with a scholarship offer to UAB.

Last night we saw the first hint of how his career at UAB is going..
UAB played their first exhibition and beat West Alabama 81-64.
Hamga played only 6 minutes, looked totally lost, was 0-0, zero pts, but 2 rebs fell into his hands, and he had 1 TO.

Here are a couple quotes from UAB bloggers who witnessed Hamga's performance...

This one was before the game...
"We also have high hopes that our JUCO transfer big man will continue to develop and improve. He shows progress each day. It's important not to get to high when you play well in exhibition games or too low when you don't play as well as you'd like.

But after the game this...
"looked confused"
"Hamga just seems like a kid who hasn't gotten any better since he was a junior in High school playing against 6-1 white guys. Anyone calling him a top 10 recruit is nuts."
http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2010/11/uab_beats_west_alabama_81-64_i.html

So -- he's still got apparently at least one year of NCAA D-I eligibility left -- as he used one and possibly 2 while at UNLV & Valpo..


Manual Cass is also among the most traveled...
http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showpost.php?p=145500&postcount=1

But after years and years of changing teams and trying again...he appears to now be totally gone...he doesn't seem to appear anywhere on any D-I or D-II team's roster.
Looks like after his juco career he was left with few or no offers.

And Keenan Ellis went to UAB but never played and is nowhere to be found.
So in the end that list of top non0BCS recruits turned out to be a little weak.



One more followup on ex-BU recruit Leon Powell who we discussed a couple blog entries ago...
Tuesday night Leon Powell had another great game in SEMO's last exhibition -- 24 points on 10-14, 9 rebs, 3 blocks. Leon is going to have a fine career if he stays on track.



Will Franklin has turned his new team, ES Sahel in Tunisia, into an awesome team and consistent winner...

They are now undefeated at 5-0 and winning every game by comfortable margins..
In fact, they haven't won by fewer than double digits and their average margin of victory in the five games is 28.2 points!

Here are the scored thus far...
ES Sahel 90 - ES Rades 41
ES Sahel 87 - US Monastir 69
ES Sahel 64 - Ezzahra 54 (thi steam is 6-1 and tied with ES Sahel for 1st place)
ES Sahel 76 - Cheminots 41
ES Sahel 95 - JS Kairouan 66



One other highly touted recruit, Ryan Boatright, actually zoomed to the #1 ranked recruit nationally back when he was in 8th grade and was given a scholarship by Tim Floyd at USC.
He's slipped a bit but is still a good PG and was getting decent recruiting interest but kept verbaling and reneging!!
Finally he verbals to UConn and then this story---
Ryan's mom complains that schools used negative recruiting to try to talk them out of going to UConn. Uconn is facing major NCAA sanctions for admitted recruiting violations (illegal phone calls).

So why wouldn't other schools point that out to the Boatrights? That is not negative recruiting when a schools tries to keep a kid from making a major mistake.
I wouldn't consider it too negative if a college coach simply pointed out that UConn is likely facing some serious sanctions!
http://www.zagsblog.com/2010/11/08/ryan-boatright-to-uconn/



With BU's recruitment of another 7-footer...I checked back to the Patrick O'Bryant era and found all the 7-footers the Valley has seen...a roughly 5-6 year span...

There are at least nine who have or will play in the Valley in the past few years...and can't really say any of them were dominant although the only one who really got a dime's worth of interest from the next level was POB.

BU-
David Collins - career 4.1 ppg, 3.3 rpg - 258 career pts
Patrick O'Bryant - career 11.6 ppg, 7.85 rpg - 605 career points
Nate Wells - pending
Brandyn Heemskerk - career 1.4 ppg, 1.8 rpg - 110 career pts

Creighton-
None recently

Drake-
Sean Jones - redshirt has not played

ISU-
None recently

InSU-
None recently

Missouri State-
None recently

UNI-
Jordan Eglseder - career 9.0 ppg, 5.6 rpg - 1066 career pts

SIU-
Kobby Acquah - career 0.25 ppg, 0.375 rpg - 2 career pts
(Nick Evans was 6-11)

Wichita State-
Garrett Stutz - career 6.0 ppg, 3.5 rpg - 417 career pts
Ehimen Orukpe - has not played yet

Note that of the ones who played at the D-I level -- the career average for those guys was about 400 pts...with POB & Eglseder accounting for almost all of that.
Thus, contrary to some comments lately, I really just don't see the Valley being called a "big man's league"...and if any 7-footer can score and rebound even at a minimum proficiency, then he can apparently have a good career.
I am hopeful Nate Wells can develop and have a great BU Career.



A Creighton writer said this about their recent exhibition performance...
There's an astronomical number of negatives here...kinda surprising given that Creighton is picked by everyone to be a top 2 or 3 team in the Valley...

"...so-so performance by Creighton
The Jays won their only practice game over Division II Northern State 79-67
I have a feeling, a sinking feeling about the Jays after digesting this win over an inferior team.

I think I overrated the talent level on this year's roster.

The team also hasn't improved much in some key areas
Maybe I was expecting too much from a new coaching staff,

I'm really scared of my prediction of Creighton finishing second in the Missouri Valley Conference after watching tonight's game. The team that played against NSU is not good enough to beat out the top teams in the conference.

...this team might need to be saved. I know it's just an exhibition and just one game in early November, but I'm nervous now.

Being an optimist by nature however, let's start with the positives:

-Team defense was horrible on Thursday night.

-Creighton was outrebounded by NSU 36 to 32.

-the team misses an explosive scorer off the dribble

My question: Who is the consistent No. 1 offensive option this season? Kenny Lawson Jr. is the obvious pick but has he ever had that role in college for an entire year? The answer is no and that scares the heck out of me.

-Ethan Wragge can't stay on the floor without picking up fouls.

-Speaking of shooting, the Jays were 4 of 16 for a whopping 25 percent from three-point range led by Kaleb Korver's 1 for 6. If this team is going to face team defenses that collapse towards the post, knocking down shots will be a huge factor in winning games.

Keep putting up bricks and the year could go south quickly."
http://creighton.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1148502



Here's a good recruiting article...
He discusses how nobody cared about recruiting just a few years ago -- but now it's become an obsession for many including the average fan..
http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20101109/SPORTS11/311090041/1002/How-college-basketball-recruiting-became-a-national-obsession