Kentucky Basketball Recruiting: Updates Come Fast and Furious
by jc25 on Jan 10, 2012 1:02 PM EST
in Kentucky Wildcats Basketball
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Recruiting news never ceases to arise. On the heels of the latest recruiting update, which unveiled 2012 forwards Savon Goodman and Ricardo Gathers as potential targets, comes another new name. Meet Tony Parker, a highly regarded forward from Lithonia, Georgia. Parker, ranked 31st overall by ESPNU, is a true power forward at 6'9", 270 pounds. He's also hotly pursued, with a top 3 suitor list of Duke, UCLA, and Ohio State.
There's conflicting reports about whether Kentucky head coach John Calipari has officially extended an offer or not. A Cats Pause ($) report quotes Parker as receiving a scholarship offer, while a Scout ($) report says no. Whether it's the former or the latter, an interested Parker would certainly be take for the Wildcats, as Kentucky sorely needs size going into next season.
Despite having longstanding relationships with a handful of blue blood schools, it certainly seems like Parker is receptive to the newfound attention from Kentucky. In the Cats Pause report, Parker's dad Virgil was quoted as saying:
"Tony and I, we've had a lot of discussion with the (recruiting) process. He has always said that (recruits) say when they go to a certain school, it reaches out and grabs them and they know they want to be there. He said that hasn't really happened yet."
Parker's addition to Kentucky's recruiting big board isn't the only new recruiting news. Briefly, after the jump:
- Five star 2012 PF Anthony Bennett trimmed his list to five: Florida, Kentucky, Oregon, UNLV and Washington. Bennett unofficially visited Kentucky in November but has yet to take any official visits. I strongly expect Calipari to make Bennett, along with Shabazz Muhammad, a top target this spring.
- Speaking of Bennett and Muhammad, they may be affected by another piece of news. Khem Birch, formerly a Pittsburgh Panther, decided to transfer to UNLV. That's notable because both Bennett and Muhammad currently play high school ball in Las Vegas and have UNLV as a finalist. Muhammad is a Vegas native at Bishop Gorman with ties to UNLV Head Coach Dave Rice, while Bennett is a Canadian playing at Findlay Prep. Hey, did you know Birch is Canadian as well? The Rebels could be in for a big spring.
- Per Jerry Meyer, Kentucky target Devonta Pollard plans to visit Texas on January 21, his first official visit. He's also been closely linked to his hometown school, Mississippi State. Meanwhile, per Clint Jackson, fellow forward target Amile Jefferson just received an offer from Duke.
- In 2013 news, Troy Williams told Tar Heel Illustrated that UNC and Kentucky are co-leaders, and that he currently plans to commit in May. That's a little earlier than my Bold Prediction, but I'd take it.
- Uber-prospect Julius Randle blogged about his recent visit to UNC, Duke and NC State. In his post, he mentioned that he'd like to take a visit to Kentucky.
- Local product Darryl Hicks could come down to a Kentucky-Louisville battle.
- One name to cross off the list: Aquille Carr has pledged to Seton Hall. He didn't have a Kentucky offer, but there was some interest.
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Interesting ESPN Survey Of Recruits
ESPNU surveys 25 of Top 100 on influencers of decisions. Nothing all that surprising for me.
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
Weasel - I guess I'm naive ...
Have any schools offered you cash or other illegal benefits?
Yes: 7
No: 18
“One day I was working out in the gym with my dad, and some guy who was a booster came over, and he basically offered my dad $100,000 for me to go there.”
Assuming the responses are honest, not a small assumption, imo, given the young egos involved, I’m aghast at the idea more than 25% of these guys have been offered inducements. I wonder how many of these instances might have been an attempt at entrapment?
30% Yes, 70% No
Doesn’t surprise me all that much. As for the individual story: ego boosting story telling, sort of typical of adolescent males.
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
Could I be considered a "booster"
Since part of the cost my UK DMV plate says it goes to the general UK scholarship fund, though small? Don’t worry, I don’t/won’t offer gifts of any kind. Though my fandom might be considered a gift by some. ;-)
Blue... there is no other color to Bleed !!!
a2d2, ...
No, a contribution to the University as a whole doesn’t cross the qualifying threshold definition of “Booster.” To be a Booster your “contribution” would have had to go to the Athletic Department or a specific athletic booster organization.
The NCAA broadly defines a “booster” as an individual, agency, entity or organization who is known by an institution to:
•Have participated in or been a member of an agency that promotes the institution’s intercollegiate athletics program
•Have made financial contributions to the athletics department or a booster organization for the department
•Assisted in the recruitment of prospective student-athletes
•Have been involved otherwise in promoting the institution’s athletics program
All Kentucky fans should be very familiar with the information on this Webpage:
Link to the UK Booster Page
hahaha
Good to know it was the wrong one, but why was it ND? :-)
Blue... there is no other color to Bleed !!!
My son is a college Baseball prospect considering various opportunities.
I had been looking at Notre Dame’s website and bookmarked it. When I was writing that post I clicked on the wrong favorite to link, sorry.
Without attempting to insult ESPN by suggesting they have media integrity, ...
they will pretty much ignore any blandishments on the part of the NCAA. ESPN is very proprietary concerning their reputation, background access and relationship with athletes. Ratting out high school kids to the NCAA cops would do a huge amount of damage to ESPN’s goodwill asset with athletes at all levels, not to mention their fellow journalist/media peers.
Also, NCAA has no subpoena power
Its only power comes via suspensions or bans and whatnot. That’s one reason why the NCAA could never get to the bottom of the Derrick Rose situation. Rose had already finished his freshman year and declared for the draft, so he refused to discuss the matter with the NCAA. They only way it could punish him was to remove his accomplishments from the official record books.
Good point about the lack of subpoena power.
Lest there be any confusion, it was the Educational Testing Service that ruled Rose’s SAT score invalid when it perceived he was not cooperating with its investigation. ETS is an independent nonprofit organization two blocks from my wife’s law firm in DC.
What the lawyers at the NCAA did with that ruling was, yes, to undo history. Although they could make no finding of academic fraud, they decided it was the prospective athlete’s burden of proof to establish his eligibility, and without a currently valid SAT score from ETS, Rose didn’t meet his burden. Even though he did, earlier, when the NCAA found him eligible and cleared him to play. Detrimental reliance and estoppel be damned, the NCAA ruled him retroactively ineligible. It was all very procedural, and it allowed the NCAA to say, “Don’t blame us. Our hands were tied.”
Rose still says he took the test. Why he doesn’t now cooperate with the ETS to clear this up, reinstate his score and retrieve his accomplishments, and those of his team and coach, is beyond me. Well, not really. I think I know why.
I've always wondered...
…how the ETS became suspicious enough of Rose’s test to invite a handwriting expert to review it. Was Brucie Pearl in the room?
Rose's invalidated score wasn't the only time he took the qualifying exam.
He’d taken the ACT in Chicago at least three times before and failed to get a NCAA qualifying score. Then he “took” the SAT in Detroit when on an AAU team trip and appeared to achieve the necessary score sufficient to gain his freshman eligibility at Memphis – a total of at least 4 exams.
The ETS applies a statistical test to all the multiple exam scores achieved by a single testee to determine if it was reasonable for a given testee to have produced their range of test results. The idea being that an individual should produce exam results within a given statistical confidence interval. If a person scores significantly higher on an exam than would be expected given their other test scores, the ETS contacts them to discuss the results and routinely requests a retest. Rose failed to respond to any of the ETS’s correspondence and never took a retest. Rose said there were extenuating circumstances surrounding his failure to respond to the ETS, but the ultimate result was a belated notification of the NCAA and University of Memphis that his SAT score had been invalidated by the ETS.
MTCAT, I quess I should also mention ...
that it is only after the testee ignores the ETS’s correspondence, refuses a retest or the retest fails to produce results statistically consistent with the suspicious exam result that the ETS then goes to the expense of having the Testee’s file evaluated by an outside consultant.
True
Rose’s failure to cooperate is almost admission by adoption.
Why would a multi-millionaire worry one iota about this crap - bigger fish to fry
A man is nothing more than a summation of his scars!
Well, his refusal caused big problems for his team, coach, school and fans.
If he cared about them as much as we all hope a player does, then retesting would seem to have been a reasonable option, imo.
Now, I’m not saying he absolutely should have retested at such a belated date. He wasn’t the best student to begin with in either high school or college and had stopped attending classes when he declared for the draft. His ability to achieve a credible result, after basically divorcing himself over a lengthy timeframe from the topics covered by the SAT, would have been very problematic.
Add the issues he was encountering as he began to pursue his new NBA career and it may well be reasonable for him to refuse to retest even if he had taken the original test himself.
JC, thanks for the great information.
What can you tell us about Darryl Hicks? I know almost nothing about this kid.
Too bad, about Aquille Carr commiting to Seton Hall. I would have really enjoyed watching that little sparkplug of a guy play at UK.
Thanks for recruiting updates-
The problem is that I get fired up, and want UK to get them all…
"You are what you are and you ain't what you ain't"
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