The Good Mongrel Returns With Tricks and Treats!

Thank you for your patience as the Good Mongrel has spent time away from Hoops the last couple of weeks. The top 50 lists were a hoot and I'd love to do one for 2012 soon but I really feel underexposed to the younger kids in parts of Michigan and Ohio from that class so I wouldn't do it justice. Perhaps we can do an interactive one soon and I'll suggest some kids and have a few days for input from readers before we put it together. But it'll be even more interactive. The Mongrel sees a lot of hoops, but doesn't want to fall into the trap of pretending I see them all.

Lets take a state by state look at what's been going on in the last days before hoops gets going again.

Illinois:

Congrats to Levonte Dority who won't be cold for a long, long time after leaving high school. That is a kid understanding what is important about life, but don't forget to hit the books before the bikinis young man! Dority is joining Stan Heath's South Florida club, they are quickly building a very strong program and Dority should help. He's a dynamic scoring point guard who has a nice feel for the game as a point but can put up buckets in a hurry. We'll check in on Foreman and his other three D1 teammates as much as we can this year! Imagine playing in the best league in America but not living in the snow zone! http://ilprepbullseye.com/page9.html

Chicagohoops has been busy puting out some great previews. They put out a preview of their all CPL team which includes Ahmad Starks, Mike McCall, Wayne Blackshear, Brandon Spearman, and Jermaine Winfield. The only junior is Blackshear, the rest are seniors. http://www.chicagohoops.com/articles1/earlyallcpl.html Chicagohoops also took a look recently at six of the top scoring seniors still unsigned for college and named Jay Harris, Hollis Hill (pictured above in a ST shot), Kyle Clevenger, Kashune McKinney, Gerald Dorsey, and Luke Labedzki. http://www.chicagohoops.com/articles1/buckets.html

Depaul is in a major rebuilding mode after going 0-18 in the Big East last year, but they seem to be scaring UI and other area schools in recruiting. Jabari Parker, Mike Shaw, and Wayne Blackshear were just three of the several recruits who decided to spend the opening night of practice with Coach Wainright and his new dynamic coaching staff. http://ilprepbullseye.com/page39.html

Summer leagues are a great place to see how kids used that AAU time and summer to develop. The South Suburban Exposure League was a big success and several kids used it to show they have great years ahead of them. Rajhan Muhammad, Darius Draper, and Dominique Jackson were just a few of the stars who stepped forward. http://ilprepbullseye.com/page4.html

IllinoisHSBasketball.com is puting out some great stuff, here is a link to some updates from Week 6 of the Full Package Exposure League. Dig through their archives for some older stuff, its well worth it. http://illinoishsbasketball.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1054&Itemid=1

Michigan:

Coach Tom Izzo has outdone himself in recruiting, he already had one of the best guards in the country lined up for 2010 in Appleton and now he is adding one of the most talented power forwards in the country in Adreian Payne. Until the last couple of days it was hard to read where Payne would end up, but he's on his way to East Lansing. West Virginia and Kentucky seemed to have a lot of momentum with Payne, but he chose the program that has been to 5 final fours in 11 years. Wise young man!

Central Michigan has been on fire! Coach Zeigler's squad has landed several top kids for 2010 and the most recent additions were a couple of big kids. Coach Buscemi at Loyola HS is seeing his 6'8 big man go big time as Jevon Harden joined recent commit 6'10 Nate VanArendonk from Grand Haven HS. Both kids had several good offers and VanArendonk joins recent commit Colin Voss and Derek Jackson for Central Michigan.

The Styles 3 Elite Showcase was one of the many good internal events going on in Michigan the last few weeks. Dwann Anderson perhaps made the biggest splash as several reports had him continuing to play his way into one of the elite prospects in the 2011 class in the country as he showed his high major athleticism and kept hitting shots. Anderson has offers from Central Michigan, Utah, and Oakland and has strong interest from Wisconsin, Michigan State, Michigan, and more. He was a star for Parallel 45 over the summer. Tommie McCune and Matt Costello were two of the other standouts.

I'll take a look around Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio in an upcoming post and perhaps lay the groundwork for a collaborative effort with you the Good Mongrel's readers for a dynamic 2012 top 50 list as well. Don't let me just put all the kids I've seen on there, I'll be looking for people to convince me I have to put on somebody I have not seen a lot of yet because its a blog and lists are always a little arbitrary at least and I couldn't do it otherwise.

Commitments, Visits, and School Lists Update: 8/5

6'6 Glenbrook North swingman Alex Dragecevich has had a big July for Full Package and seen his interest list and offers expand quickly. Dragecevich was second team all-state by the Sun Times last year and Chicagohoops has him ranked 12th in the class of 2010 in Illinois. He committed to Coach Mike Brey and joins point guard Eric Atkins in Notre Dame's 2010 recruiting class. Dragecevich is still a shooter first but has worked hard to be a legitimate high major wing and has developed an all around game this summer. It will be a blast seeing how he develops in South Bend and Notre Dame landed a deadly shooter. http://w3.nbebasketball.com/2009/08/05/notre-dame-adds-dragicevich-to-2010-class/ Notre Dame is pursuing several elite targets still in the 2010 class including Ralston Turner, Tobias Harris, Kyrie Irving, and Jerian Grant among others.

Kentucky is expecting 6'7 Long Island wing forward Tobias Harris today on campus according to RumbaughD1 on twitter. Harris is being pursued by many of the top programs in the country including Notre Dame and Syracuse among others. Syracuse just beat out Louisville and Kentucky for 7'0 Florida Rams project Fab Mello. Since he was a bit of a new arrival and a novelty I think a lot of people nationally fawned over Mello excessively. He is talented and is going to be a wonderful pro in four or five years in my opinion but I see no reason to expect anything special out of him during his one or two college years. He was outplayed by younger and less talented kids in July including 2011 Louisville commitment Michael Chandler. If you do your player rankings by who is going to be high in the draft in two years he's your guy but if you're a college basketball fan he probably shouldn't be mentioned with the other five star type of guys in my never humble enough opinion.

Avon, Indiana 2012 big man Austin Burgett received offers from Iowa and Northwestern. He already had an offer on the table from Cincinnati and his recruitment is early but he has interest from Indiana, Purdue, Butler, Louisville, and others. Burgett is already 6'7 and growing and has reliable range to the three point line to go with several post moves and a good handle. He will be a hot commodity this time next year!

Burgett's Spiece Rising Star teammate Kellon Thomas received a Butler offer according to P-hoop.blogspot.com. http://www.p-hoops.blogspot.com/ Kellon is an outstanding point guard who is being pursued by several high major programs as well. He's about 5'9 and has a nice outside shot and gets to the hole at will. He also has the kind of handle and floor vision you hope to get from a point guard. Photo is from the USSSA Nationals last week.

Here's an outstanding rundown of stock raisers and post-July awards for Illinois kids from the Hendrickson Blog in the Sun Times (hoopsreport). http://blogs.suntimes.com/hoopsreport/ He has nice comments on several 2012 Chicago area point guards, the 16U Illinois Wolves, the 17U Rising Stars team, UI recruits Leonard, Robinson, and Abrams as well as the talented 2013 trio of Parker/Hamilton/Foster who he says are not as good as Peter Jok of Des Moines! Good stuff as always from Hendrickson.

Here's a couple of links from chicagohoops. The first talks about Bolingbrook's Antwain Cox and his recent visit to Eastern Illinois. http://www.chicagohoops.com/articles1/acox1.html The second talks about the top uncommitted point guards in Chicago in the 2010 class. Mike McCall, Levonte Dority, Jay Harris, Reggie Smith, Hoopy Jones, and Karl Madison are the ones focused in on. http://www.chicagohoops.com/articles1/availbackcourt.html Several of these guys are going to high majors and will be among the "how did they get away" file from local schools.

Here's an Illinois Prep Bullseye link with a ton of nuggets. http://ilprepbullseye.com/page33.html They mention Evansville making Hayden Hoerdemann top priority, Peoria Irish 17U Jeff Johnson possibly favoring Eastern Kentucky, Walter Lemon from Chicago Fenger being pursued by Wright State, and Sean McGonagill being pursued by several programs. Also notice Hollis Hill and Aaron Williams drawing quite a crowd of head coaches from Bradley, Chicago State, Illinois State, Murray State and other schools after decommitting from UW Milwuakee. James Siakem was being watched by several schools including Notre Dame and Illinois while Threloff and Revonte Rice drew a big crowd including Evansville, Illinois State, Indiana State, and several others.

Commitments, De-Commitments, Offers, and Favorites 7/17

July is not only the busiest recruiting month of the year with AAU tournaments galore and open evaluation periods for the coaches to get out and see and be seen but kids are committing, de-committing, and schools who have been aggressive on the recruiting trail are filling up their rides and moving on to evaluate younger players.

Yesterday's biggest commitment was Simeon's Brandon Spearman going ahead and pulling the trigger to join Dayton's loaded 2010 class. Berry is an extremely talented kid from Lafayette Jeff and early favorite to lead Indiana in scoring this year and Spearman and Staten are ranked among the nation's top 100 players by several evaluators. Brian Gregory is landing one of the finest recruiting classes in the country in 2010 and isn't done yet.

Zach McCabe of the All Iowa Attack Red squad committed to Todd Lickliter's Iowa Hawkeyes after outperforming many of the nation's top players at a few July events and drawing the attention of the rest of the big ten and many other schools.

Chicago Vocational stars Hollis Hill and Aaron Williams on the other hand de-committed from UW-Milwaukee. Their Illinois Old School squad was tracked heavily by several other good programs and plenty of high majors for Jay Price and some other players. http://www.chicagohoops.com/articles1/uwm2.html Above photo of Hill is from Sun Times. The outlook isn't bleak for UW-M though, at the Triple S Mountan Slam Taevaunn Prince told Northstarblog UW-M was his favorite and has been showing him the most love to date. Prince is an outstanding player for Team Takeover (Canada) who has been one of the best travelling teams on the circuit this July and looked very good against Florida Future at the Kentucky Hoopfest in front of yours truly. http://blog.northstarbball.com/2009/07/16/triple-s-harley-davidson-hoop-group-jam-fest-days-one--two-news--notes.aspx

Commitment issues were not only the problems of the college coaches, AAU squads gearing up for Las Vegas have been harvesting players from other squads as well. Yesterday I mentioned the Eric Gordon All-Stars added Crishawn Hopkins to their roster for Vegas. Today word has tweeted out that Jeremy Hollowell of Spiece Indy Stars 2012 will be joining them as well. Hollowell unlike Hopkins was already on a team winning tournaments and drawing hordes of coaches and his improvement from May to July has seen him earn offers from Cincinnati, Indiana, Ohio State, and several others. Hollowell has not announced if he will be returning to the Stars after Vegas or playing with someone else next year.

Cameron Wright had been one of the high profile guards pursued by Brian Gregory of Dayton, but they might be focusing on a big kid such as Adreiene Payne or Jordan Manual for their last ride. Wright is having an enormous July after drawing great reviews at the King James Classic and NY2LA Summer Slam last week. He has added a Michigan State offer to his growing collection according to a Badgernation.com article from yesterday. Wisconsin, Indiana, Akron, and Cleveland State are the other schools listed as offers.

Chris Anderson of Reeths-Puffer, Michigan is an athletic 6'5 wing who made waves this spring when his Grand Rapids Storm team came up big in the Tulip Tree Classic and other tournaments. He has an offer on the table from Stoney Brook. http://www.westmiallstar.com/2009/07/11/whos-going-to-play-ball-in-college/#more-1301

The previous article mentions Kalamazoo's Jeff Hoskins of Camp Daryl All Stars has received a Moorehead State offer. I saw him at the Hoosier Shootout and he was very impressive making hustle plays to save the ball from going out of bounds and knocking down three pointers in rhythm while leading his team with poise at the point guard position. He has D1 athleticism.

The above link to Northstar blog has a few updates on offers to some outstanding players from local teams. Team Takeover's 6'10 300 pound center Maurice Walker is a 2010 prospect listing an offer from Depaul. And 2011 standout Grady Glaze is listing an offer from Xavier and Ohio State interest.

Northstar has updates on a few players of note as well. Ohio Basketball Club and Scott County (Kentucky) forward Dakota Euton (former UK commitment) has offers from Akron, Eastern Kentucky, Oregon State, and others. His AAU teammate Nick Kellogg from Columbus is also drawing a lot of interest this July. He lists Ohio as a favorite right now but said he has offers from Akron, Miami, and Wright State right now and is open to new interest in July before he decides. Several Big Ten programs are tracking him closely as he plans on visiting Northwestern and was at the recent Ohio State elite camp and has Iowa and Indiana keeping tabs on him.

Chicagohoops is also reporting that Sean McGonagill of the Illinois Kings has picked up an offer from North Dakota. http://www.chicagohoops.com/articles1/kings2.html He plays school ball for Riversville-Brookside. You might recall McGonagill was co-mvp of the Hall of Fame Showdown in Chicago in April and he has continued his fine play into July. He also has interest in Eastern Michigan.