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Friday, October 2, 2009

Recruiting News: Rod Odom Eliminates Harvard

Below, some Ivy League recruiting news.

Harvard invested tremendous time and energy in recruiting 6'8" Rod Odom of the Middlesex School in Massachusetts. Now it appears that Harvard's efforts were unproductive. The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper of Harvard University reports, "Harvard is no longer in the running for coveted recruit Rod Odom’s services." The article quoted Odom's father, Rod Odom Sr. as stating, "We visited the other Ivy League schools, and we ran comparisons [on the financial costs of attending Harvard]…when we got the number from Harvard…it was six, seven times higher than anything we had previously been told about."

Make no mistake about it, the news is a major blow to the only Ivy program that does not have a single championship banner hanging in its gym. And while Harvard created some buzz and gossip about its program during the last few months, publicity and hype does not win championships.

While Harvard is still in the running for several other well-publicized recruits, various reports have indicated that the Crimson are becoming more and more of a long shot to land any of their top targets.

While Harvard seems to enjoy recruiting in the spotlight, a strategy that has yielded little success to date, the Cornell Big Red prefer to recruit in the shadows of secrecy. In addition to Cornell's involvement with some talented high school members of the classes of 2010, 2011 and 2012, throughout the season, the Big Red will continue to entertain interest from new potential transfers.

The Big Red's strategy has found success over the years. Cornell has recruited four of the last seven Ivy League Rookies of the Year. And even after Cornell's remarkable class of '10 graduates, Cornell's 2010-2011 team figures to be stacked with star power led by a trio of impact Division I transfers in 6'9" center Mark Coury (Kentucky), 6'8" combo forward Anthony Gatlin (Centenary), and 6'4" guard Max Groebe (UMass). This group will be bolstered by Cornell's current underclassmen, which includes the 2008-2009 Ivy League Rookie of the Year, Chris Wroblewski.

This certainly looks like a team that will not back out of any title hunt.

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