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Friday, June 01, 2007

Tech has room for newest recruit

Cavs set for best Directors’ Cup finish

By Doug Doughty

Doug Doughty

Doug Doughty's College Notebook Plus is exclusive to roanoke.com and is posted by 5 p.m. Fridays.

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Virginia Tech’s decision to take a late-May commitment from 5-foot-9 Las Vegas, Nev., senior Hank Thorns sent me scurrying to take a look at the Hokies’ roster.

Where did Tech find a scholarship for Thorns and why did the Hokies need him?

“We’ve got scholarships,” head coach Seth Greenberg told me Wednesday.

That, they do.

Tech has six returning scholarship players (senior Deron Washington; juniors A.D. Vassallo and Cheick Diakite; and sophomores Nigel Munson, Lewis Witcher and Terrance Vinson).

The Hokies signed six players in the fall or spring (Jeff Allen, Terrell Bell, Malcolm Delaney, Dorenzo Hudson, Gus Gilchrist and Darrion Pellum).

The addition of Thorns puts the Hokies at 13, the NCAA limit.

Greenberg said in a statement that Gilchrist will be going to a prep school in 2007-2008. However, it appears likely that Gilchrist will meet NCAA eligibility guidelines once his home-school work has been evaluated. That would be the only thing stopping Gilchrist from going to Tech in the fall.

Gilchrist has said that April 16 shootings at Tech have made him uncomfortable with the prospect of attending school in Blacksburg. But, you know what? As of the middle of the week, he had not made a formal request to be released from his scholarship and Tech had not extended one.

GREENBERG SAID in a statement that he is looking forward to recruiting Gilchrist again in the fall, but you’d have to say that it’s a longshot Gilchrist will ever wind up in Blacksburg.

That would put the Hokies at 12 for the fall.

The issue was never 2007-2008, although the Hokies needed redshirt-sophomore center Robert Krabbendam to leave for the scholarship numbers to be where they are now.

A bigger question concerns 2008-2009. Tech already has taken commitments for that season from rising high-school seniors D.J. Thompson and Shamarr Bowden and, with Washington the only scholarship Tech senior about to complete his eligibility, Tech is sitting on 13 – the NCAA limit – for 2008-2009.

A question I had is what effect new NCAA legislation has on Bowden, who was a junior when  he played for Grimsley High School in Greensboro, N.C., in 2005-2006. Bowden subsequently transferred to the Miller School outside Charlottesville with plans to repeat his junior year.

The NCAA is expected to enact an eight-semester rule for the 2008-2009 season. Current Tech recruit Jeff Allen slipped in under the wire, but, if he follows through on plans to play for the Miller School in 2007-2008, Bowden will have spent more than eight semesters in high school.

A source close to the Tech program confirmed that Bowden is a good student who has the credits to graduate from Miller School this year – on time. He would then play for Miller as a postgraduate and have no problem playing for the Hokies in 2007-2008.

GREENBERG THINKS he has his point guard of the future in Munson and maybe his backcourt of the future in Munson and Delaney, and he wasn’t really looking for another point when he learned about Thorns, who averaged 27.7 points, 12.5 rebounds and 6.6 assists this season at Las Vegas Valley (Nev.) High School.

(We’re “efforting” a scouting report from Jeff Motley – wonder what he’s weighing these days ? – from the Las Vegas Motor Speedway by way of Fieldale-Collinsville High School, Virginia Tech and the Lynchburg News & Advance in its post-Golden Era).

“[Thorns’] dad runs a youth foundation,” Greenberg said. “He had an AAU team and, instead of playing with other Las Vegas prospects, he played for his dad. They call the team the Las Vegas Dogcatchers. So, at all of these AAU tournaments, [the son] would  play off the beaten path.

“He was a big-time football player (hmmm!) so people thought he’d play football for a while, but he loves basketball. Word gets out that he’s going to play and his dad had a decent team, good enough to play in the AAU Tournament in Vegas He had 24 against Boo [Williams] and ended up with 38. He just tore it up.

“Boo thinks the guy is terrific. When I told Boo we were going to get him, Boo said, ‘You’re not getting that guy. That guy’s too good, now. That guy’s going to a Pac-10 school.’ All the kid’s people I knew from my Long Beach State days.

“It was one of those rare instances in recruiting when everything just connected. The people who were advising him called up ‘X’ guy who had worked at some university to ask about Seth Greenberg. People out there like me.”

Reporter Mark Berman likes Greenberg, I suggested.

“I owe Berman a lunch,” said Greenberg, who circled the wagons during the Gilchrist saga. “He’s upset because I haven’t been returning his phone calls.”

IT WAS INTERESTING to see Virginia listed as one of the teams involved with Thorns, who actually took a visit to Charlottesville, because the Cavaliers have scholarship issues that are more pressing than the Hokies’.

If two-time All-ACC selection Sean Singletary removes his name from consideration for the NBA Draft and returns for his senior year, Virginia would have 14 scholarship “candidates.” That would include four signees and all of the underclassmen who were on scholarship last year.

One of those players, Ryan Pettinella, began his Division I career at non-scholarship player at Pennsylvania and, presumably, would have the resources to pay his way again. I have no evidence that such an arrangement was ever discussed and would think Pettinella and his family would have to approve. Pettinella was on grant this past season.

Should we assume, since the UVa staff did not offer a scholarship to Thorns, that the Cavaliers think Singletary is staying? Possibly. Or maybe it was just the realization that there are a lot of guards already in the program, with or without Singletary.

Moreover, if the Cavaliers had another grant available, what of Calvin Baker, a 2006-2007 redshirt who might have qualified for some need-based aid after transferring from William and Mary? Wouldn’t that have been a slap at Baker, a former Colonial Athletic Association freshman, if he hadn’t been bumped up to an athletic full ride?

Maybe Baker has a pretty good financial package already, but, aside from Singletary, UVa’s 2007-2008 guard corps will include Baker and signees Sam Zeglinski, Jeff Jones and Mustapha Farrakhan. To bring in another guard in the same class would smack of over-recruiting.

THE BEST NEWS for Virginia this week was its seventh-place standings in the Director’s Cup rankings that were updated Thursday.

UVa has never finished higher than ninth in the Director’s Cup and has a shot to catch sixth-place Duke, which has an 11 ½-point lead over the Cavaliers. Even if Virginia fares no better in baseball than it did last year, when the Cavaliers did not get past the first weekend of regional play, it would still pick up 25 points.

Duke’s baseball team did not advance to postseason play but I guess there’s always the possibility that the NCAA could award the Blue Devils an honorary men’s national championship in lacrosse, if not a pair of national championships dating back to the 2006 season that Duke (and not the NCAA or ACC) canceled.

Eighth-place Florida is 1 ½ points behind the Cavaliers, which says something for the validity of the Directors’ Cup. All the Gators did this year was win the Division I football and men’s basketball championships.

Coming off a 45th-place showing in 2006 that was the best in school history, Virginia Tech currently stands 50th, but that does not include men’s and women’s track and field. The Hokies were indoor and outdoor ACC women’s champions.
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