Recruiting News

Below, some recruiting news from around the Ivy League.

As a reminder to our readers, some of Cornell's top recruiting prospects intentionally have not been mentioned by name on The Cornell Basketball Blog. As a matter of practice, unless specifically authorized by an information source, we never identify players in connection with Cornell that have not been mentioned publicly elsewhere. For example, one elite undisclosed prospect is on campus today for an official visit and has reportedly indicated that Cornell is his leader over some Conference USA and other major scholarship programs. A commitment could be forthcoming this month.

In other recruiting news, the Pioneer Press is reporting that Saint Louis University (A-10) men's basketball coach Rick Majerus will be in Minneapolis in two weeks to watch Henry Sibley High Schoolss 7-foot, 220-pound Jake Kreuser. Also in pursuit of Kreuser, who is an "A" student and scored a 29 on his ACT exam, are Cornell, Wisconsin Green Bay, North Dakota State and Santa Clara. The Minnesota Gophers also have him on their radar. Kreuser could be an obvious replacement for Jeff Foote and an immediate starter at Cornell.

Northfield Mount Hermon School in Northfield, Massachusetts is expecting on campus visits next week from coaching staffs at Georgia Tech, Pittsburgh, Columbia, Radford, Brown, Yale. Meanwhile, coaches from Elon, Northeastern, George Washington, Wichita State, Fordham, URI, Pepperdine, Penn, Princeton, Cornell, Davidson, Vermont, Stanford, and Harvard all made calls in the last two days. Several NMH players are Ivy League recruiting prospects.

Akil Mitchell, a 6'7" forward from the Charlotte Christian School has offers from Mercer, George Washington, James Madison, Liberty, Winthrop, Navy, Princeton and Yale according to the Charlotte Observer.

Kyle Tresnak, a 6'9" forward from Horizon High School near Phoenix committed to Weber State this week according to Arizona Preps. He had offers from Buffalo, Colorado State, Northern Colorado, Eastern Washington and Princeton according to published reports.

Montgomery, New Jersey's James Loupos, a 6'6" forward gave his pledge to the Naval Academy according to NJHoops.com. He had offers from Columbia and Vermont and visited both schools before making his decision. He also had recruitment interest from Dartmouth.

GopherIllustrated.com reports that Austin Hollins, a 6'4" guard from Germantown High School in Tennessee, the son of Memphis Grizzlies coach Lionel Hollins has an offer from Penn, as well as offers from Minnesota, Memphis, Arkansas, Oregon State, and Belmont. Other involved schools include St. Joseph's (PA), Middle Tennessee, Samford, Baylor, Arizona State, Alabama, Georgia, Ole Miss, and Virginia.

Keegan Hyland, a 6'4" shooter from Portland, Maine is setting up campus visits to a host of mid majors, none of which include Ivies. Columbia has reportedly offered but appears out of the running.

Several high profile Harvard prospects recently gave updates to NBE Basketball Report.

Keala King, a 6'5" wing from Compton, California and Mater Dei High School said this week, “I narrowed [my school list] down to Arizona State, Arizona, Stanford, Cal and Harvard. There are other schools I’m looking at, but those are the ones I like the most.” King named Arizona State as his leader.

Meanwhile, Pe'Shon Howard, a 6'2" guard from Oak Hill Academy in Virginia noted, “I’m still weighing my options and I probably won’t decide until the spring." He has a list of 14 schools which include South Florida, St. John’s, Rutgers, Marquette, Harvard, Stanford, Virginia Tech, Arkansas, UCLA, USC, Arizona, Virginia, and Alabama, and Tennessee. Out of the 14 schools on his list, only UCLA and Arizona have not offered. He plans on using all of his NCAA permitted five official visits and is also planning some unofficial visits. Howard previously committed to Harvard, but since backed off and reopened his recruitment.

Both Howard and King are expected to commit to Pac 10 schools. Some sources speculated that UCLA is Howard's "dream school."

In the frontcourt, Harvard is targeting 6'8" Rod Odom of the Middlesex School in Massachusetts and 6'10" Dwight Powell of IMG Academy in Brandenton, Florida.

Powell said Harvard is among his three finalists along with Stanford and Georgia Tech, but most recruiting analysts have indicated that Stanford is the leader by far.

Finally, Odom has been completing visits throughout August and expects to make a decision by the end of September. Harvard could be Odom's leader. He is visiting Louisville on September 5 followed by a few more planned trips. "I'm going to Arizona on the 18th, Harvard on the 25th, and Boston College on Oct. 3," he reported to CardinalSports.com yesterday. When asked if he plans to take these visits and then make a decision, he said, "that's the plan".

Among the class of 2011 targets, Achraf Yacoubou a 6'4" guard out of Long Island Lutheran High School lists UConn, Villanova, Wake Forest, Kentucky, Maryland, Georgia Tech, Xavier, Pitt, Harvard, Memphis, Rutgers, Virginia Tech, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Providence, Seton Hall, Fordham and Oklahoma State.

Switching gears a bit, in the past, we have commented on overloaded Ivy League basketball rosters as a result over-recruiting. Most of the finger pointing was at Harvard. But due to some recent roster movements, the Penn Quakers are now making the case as the Ivy League's most overloaded roster.

We expect some of our Penn readers to immediately get angry with this assertion, but consider the following.

The Quakers will have 17 players on the 2009-2010 roster which includes three recruited walk-ons- Malcolm Washington, Tommy Eggleston and Zach Gordon. With the exception of true senior, Justin Reilly, the entire team is expected to return for 2010-2011. Both academic seniors Darren Smith and Andreas Schreiber have applied for 5th years of eligibility and are expected to return next year.

After losing Reilly to graduation, Penn's 2010-2011 roster will consist of the 16 returning veterans plus the new rookies from the high school class of 2010. The Quakers already have four commitments for the class of 2010 (Casey James, Kevin Panzer, Steve Rennard, and Austin Kelly), which means that if Penn ended its recruitment today, and Penn has not, the Quakers already would have a 2010-2011 roster consisting of 20 active players, only six of which are seniors in their final year of eligibility during 2010-2011.