Guyn recruitment heats up, Kamieniecki winding down, other updates...

Mongrel favorite Ge'Lawn Guyn (pictured here from an Examiner.com article) has decommitted from Charlotte and has heard from Northwestern, Indiana, Georgia Tech, and Mississippi State already. The article also mentions Chane Behanan has a new offer from Oklahoma State and Daryl Hicks visited Behanan's former school of choice University of Cincinnati this weekend. Here's the link... http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-9504-Louisville-High-School-Sports-Examiner~y2009m9d26-News-and-Notes

Devontes Smith-Rivera is visiting Purdue this weekend.

Jake Kitchell has committed to Indiana State, he also had an offer from Oregon State and had been one of the most productive kids in Indiana in his class as well as a standout on the SYF Players AAU team this summer.

According to Jeff Goodman, one of the country's top seniors has cut his list to seven. Tobias Harris has included Kentucky and Louisville in his final seven and will do officials at both schools.

Wisconsin landed Port Washington shooting guard John Gasser. It'll be interesting to see how his college career works out compared to Vander Blue who withdrew his commitment from Wisconsin this spring. Blue is a much higher ranked prospect but he is not more productive than Gasser who had an enormous summer. As usual, the good Mongrel will predict that Bo knows best.

Brandon Kearney is visiting Kentucky this weekend along with fellow Detroit star Percy Gibson. Marc Maggard has a nice breakdown of each in this blog entry. http://www.truebluekentucky.com/index.php/basketball/926-guest-basketball/1990-two-qmystery-visitorsq-will-be-at-uk-today.html

Rick Bolus has been releasing his scouting reports the last several days.
* According to Bolus, the top twelve seniors in Indiana are Deshawn Thomas, Jordan Manual, Xavier Jones, Russell Byrd, Terone Johnson, Travis Carrol, Donnie Hale, Jesse Berry, Eric Fromm, Jake Kitchell, Khristian Smith, and Kennis White.
* According to Bolus the top twelve underclassmen in Indiana are Marquis Teague, Matt Carlino, Ryan Taylor, Jeremiah Davis, Michael Chandler, Cody Zeller, Justin Gant, Dee Davis, Rafael Davis, Kendal Griffin, Evan Blackmon, and PJ Boutte.
* Bolus says the top twelve seniors in Kentucky are Curtis Washington, Ricardo Johnson, Elijah Pittman, Chad Jackson, Ge'lawn Guyn, Donovan Gibbs, Elijah Justice, Josh Sewell, Aaron Watts, Dakota Euton, Matt St John, and Jomari Bradshaw.
* Bolus says the best underclassmen in Kentucky are Chane Behanan, George Fant, Jaylen Beckham, Vinnie Zollo, Remy Abel, Desmond Dorsey, Robbie Stenzel, Trey Williams, Jordan Shanklin, Josh Stroud, and Josh Forrest.

Several Ohio updates from Ohio/National Preps Scouting Service on their twitter account http://twitter.com/ONPSS. If you follow Ohio hoops you have to check this guy out, he's always cranking out non-stop hoops lore from Ohio and around the country. Here's a sample from the last few days only.
* Clarkston, Michigan forward Matt Kamieniecki is deciding between Ball St and Western Michigan this weekend.
* Peebles, Ohio junior Blake Justice is a 6'2 guard received an offer from Akron after a Wednesday visit. Akron also offered 6'7 sophomore Eric Troug from Kenton, Ohio.
* Ranks top 10 unsigned Ohio kids as 1) Adriean Payne, 2) Nick Kellog, 3) Garon Johnson, 4) Allen Payne, 5) Antone Hutchins, 6) Kennis White (South Bend, IN transfer), 7) Nick Harney, 8) Storm Sanders, 9) Angelo Gonzalez, 10) Kevin Gray
* Will Sheeley from Florida is visiting Northwestern this weekend.
* Strongville, OH junior Aaron White is a 6'7 forward who visited Butler this weekend. Butler, West Virginia, and Penn State visited last week among other schools.
* Akron St V/St M junior Jakar Sampson, Alpharetta, GA junior Shannon Scott, Indianapolis Broad Ripple sophomore Ron Patterson, and Indianapolis sophomore Jeremy Hollowell, and Merrillville, IN sophomore Dejuan Marrero are visiting Ohio State this weekend for the Illini game.
* Dayton, OH senior Adriean Payne is on an official visit to UK this weekend.
* Cincinnati, OH senior Allen Payne is visiting VCU this weekend.
* Dayton, Oakland, and Kansas State all visited Grand Ledge HS to see Jon Horford Friday.
* Westerville, OH junior Traevon Jackson has offers from Miami, Akron, Cleveland State, and Ohio.
* Trey Burke is a junior from Northland, OH with offers from Butler, Ohio, Miami, and James Madison.
* Dublin, OH sophomore Kyle Molock has offers from Akron, Florida International, Georgia State, Ohio, and St Joes.
* 6'2 senior shooting guard and South Bend transplant Kennis White has offers from Drake, Bradley, and Indiana State.
* 6'4 senior Matt Vest from Dayton, OH committed to Wright State last week.

Las Vegas senior Moses Morgan committed to Depaul last week. Morgan is a high scoring 6'5 wing guard who considered Indiana, Utah, Oklahoma, and UNLV among others. http://blogs.suntimes.com/hoopsreport/2009/09/depaul_lands_a_good_one.html

Chicago Foreman point guard Levonte Dority hosted visits from New Mexico's Steve Alford and South Florida's Stan Heath last week. He is expected to choose between those two programs and Baylor soon. http://www.chicagohoops.com/articles1/dorityusf.html

Dority's Foreman teammate Eddie Denard committed to UI-Chicago. http://ilprepbullseye.com/page30.html Denard is a 6'5 wing.

Illinois Prep Bullseye has several updates in this link http://ilprepbullseye.com/page43.html , including...
* Justin Threloff is visiting Western Michigan this weekend and is expected to decide between WMU, Drake, Illinois State, and Northern Illinois after the visit.
* Levonte Dority and former UNLV and Valpo center Beas Hamga are taking official visits to New Mexico this weekend.
* Jarod Oldham is visiting Southern Methodist this weekend and has offers from SMU, Bradley, Indiana State, Eastern Illinois, and Buffalo.
* Kourtney Darby visited Bradley this weekend.
* Jacob Williams has offers from Bradley, Xavier, Southern Illinois, and Loyola.
* Chason Randle is visiting Iowa State again this weekend. I continue to hear the Cyclones and Purdue are strongest here but Ohio State made a huge impression and is closing fast.

Offers, Updates, and Link-O-Rama! July 19, 2009.

I spoke with Chris Hawkins, the Spiece Indy *STARS* 2012 coach yesterday and he said Jeremy Hollowell has decided to stay with the Spiece Indy Stars through July. Hollowell has seen his game and his offer list grow rapidly this summer and appears to be one of the highest recruited kids in the 2012 class at this point if offers are used as a barometer. He has offers from Illinois, Tennessee, Ohio State, Indiana, Iowa, and others despite not even beginning his sophomore year.


New offers keep rolling in. According to Chicagohoops Jeff Johnson of the Peoria Irish has received offers from American University and SIU-Edwardsville. He has a nice mid range shot and plays physical at 6'8, when I saw him against Camp Daryl in Indianapolis he looked like a solid mid-major to me. http://www.chicagohoops.com/articles1/jeffjohnson2.html

A couple of nice features by the Indy Star's recruiting blog. Spiece Select 2011 teammates Kendall Griffin (scout.com photo mug-shot above) and Zach Van DeWater are both big guards with D1 attention and at least mid-major futures. I've seen the play a little although Griffin was out this spring and they are both really impressive players. Griffin is a versatile guard who can play some point or off the ball and has good length at at least 6'4. He has an offer from IPFW on the table and interest from several schools including Xavier, Purdue, Michigan, and Dayton.
http://blogs.indystar.com/recruitingcentral/2009/07/avons-kendall-g.html Here is an interview posted on P-Hoops.blogspot.com which is a wonderful site for position player rankings in Indiana from somebody who gets to see them quite a bit. http://p-hoops.blogspot.com/2009/01/one-on-one-with-kendall-griffin.html The interview is from January but has some information on Kendall's recruitment.

Van DeWater plays for Whitko and has interest from Butler, Ball State, and Indiana State among others. http://blogs.indystar.com/recruitingcentral/2009/07/vandewater-hear.html They have several D1 teammates to watch including 6'7 brute Tony Springmann who is also getting recruited at the highest levels as a tackle in football.

Albany has offered 6'2 shooting guard Blake Justice from Peebles, Ohio. He plays for CBIZ. HighMajorscoop is one of our favorite twitter links to follow during aau tournaments and they have some new content on their website including this link on Justice and some other Ohio recruiting buzz. http://highmajorscoop.com/2009/07/weekend-scoop/

Also according to the above link Bowling Green, Wright State, and James Madison have offered 2010 small forward Craig Seeley from Brookhaven, Ohio.

Back to the Indianapolis Star's Kyle Neddenreip with another blog entry, this time on the Mount Vernon trio the good Mongrel has blogged about a few times. Daniel Turner has offers from Wright State, Lipscomb, Navy, and UW-Green Bay. He's the 6'5 all hustle jack of all trades small forward. PJ Hubert is the big time shooter. He has an offer from IUPUI. DeAndre Davis is a 6'6 forward with offers from UW-Green Bay, IUPUI, and IUPFW.

The good Mongrel linked several updates of the NY2LA Summer Jam and should've updated some wrap up reports a couple of days ago but dropped the ball. Here are a few links talking up the performances of Cameron Wright, Vander Blue, Moses Morgan, Dominique Fergeson, Percy Gibson, Chasson Randle, Trey Zeigler, Branden Dawson, and several other players of interest. Here are the 17U standouts
http://www.ny2lasports.com/SummerJam17UTopPerformers.htm. And here are the 16U standouts
http://www.ny2lasports.com/SummerJam17UTopPerformers.htm. NY2LA had similar coverage of the NY2LA Invitational from the first week of July if you click on their home page the links are on the side. It didn't have as much talent as the Summer Slam but it had quite a bit of the same people.

Here is a similar rundown by ESPN Scouts.inc on the Triple S Mountain Slam last week. Western Kentucky commitment Derrick Gordon is mentioned along with Indiana target Tyrone Johnson and some updates on some mystery Canadians the good Mongrel was marvelling at in passing at the Kentucky Hoopfest. Kadeem Green was really impressive with his ability to handle the ball at 6'8 or so and the ability to drive consistently and shoot a pretty jumper. http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/recruiting/basketball/mens/news/story?id=4338300

Are you a little depressed about not having a budget to get to Vegas or Orlando to see hoops? The frugal Mongrel's hoops budget this month is going to be limited. I'll make a trip to Merrillville to see the End of Summer Classic put on by Chicagohoops and I'm also hoping to get a chance to peek in at the USSSA Championships put on in Fort Wayne about the same time. I'll be catching much of the Reebok Championship on the web for free on Wazoosports.com. It is the best quality you'll find and they have real Kentuckians doing the play by play so you get to hear the latest gossip on the kids playing the game as well as feel like you aren't drinking alone if you're sipping a little bourbon. The video is superior to what you find elsewhere and the games are pretty random. My other pursuit will be Grassrootstv.com. It is run in cahoots with Maxxathlete.com and hoopmasters.com and I am not sure how much of it will be free and how much will require a monthly subscription. I'll foot the bill for a month if I have to, but I think last year a lot of it was free. They are doing the Las Vegas Main Event from the 22nd to the 26th and the Double Pump Best of Summer Tournament from the 27th to the 31st. You can watch replays so it is wise for the married readers to wait till the kids are in bed and the wife turns on Trueblood before checking in there. I also hear Jody Demling will be doing a lot of live blogging from Vegas so get him with questions if he is watching something you're interested in.