Friday, June 27, 2008
2008 signings help Tech's Greenberg focus on perimeter
Eagle-eyed Teel catches Gayle mistake
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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Editor's note: Doug Doughty is taking the week off. Notebook Plus will return on July 11.
With the addition of impact big men in back-to-back recruiting classes, Virginia Tech basketball coach Seth Greenberg clearly has turned his attention to the perimeter.
The Hokies took an oral commitment this past week from 6-foot-5 Manny Atkins from Tucker High School in Atlanta, which has allowed them to focus even more of their attention on 6-3 guard C.J. Harris from Mount Tabor High School in Winston-Salem, N.C.
Tech earlier had received commitments for 2009-2010 from shooting guard Ben Boggs from Hidden Valley in Roanoke and first-team All-Group AA selection Erick Green, a point guard from Millboro High School outside Winchester.
Atkins is rated 89th in the entering class of 2009 by prepstars.com and is the highest-rated of the prospects who have committed to Tech. Recruiting analyst Bob Gibbons, who is affiliated with ESPN.com and Scouts, Inc. raves about him.
“Another great addition,” Gibbons said. “He’s just the epitome of the ideal student-athlete. He’s got the highest test score at his school, he’s in the honor society and he has a 3.8 GPA. His goal is to be the best student he can be. Education comes ahead of basketball and how rare is that?”
Plus, he can play a little.
Gibbons hasn’t seen Atkins play for Tucker High School, but “he was an excellent player for the Atlanta Celtics [travel team]. They won the championship of my Memorial Day Tournament. He has the versatility to play either big guard or small forward.
“He’s an outstanding player in his own right, but the most impressive thing is his academics come first. He brings your GPA up for the whole team. He’s a role model for all your kids to get the work done in the classroom. I think he’s a valuable, valuable player.”
Atkins played on a Class 4A championship team as a sophomore, when he was the most valuable player in the state final, according to Tucker coach James Hartry, who said that Atkins averaged 24.3 points, 12 rebounds, four assists and two blocked shots as a junior.
“He had offers from everybody,” Hartry said, “Coach [Paul] Hewitt from Georgia Tech called me as recently as yesterday, just wanting to know what he had done wrong, why he hadn’t landed the kid. He wanted to polish up on his recruiting because he had done something wrong.
“I think Manny just wanted to leave the state and, second of all, Virginia Tech was a great offer and the head coach up there came down and visited Atlanta. When the head coach takes time out to come and sits in your gym for 2 ½ hours and watch you play, that’s something special.”
Hartry had gotten to know Tech assistant coach and recruiter Stacy Palmore when Palmore was in his previous job, at the College of Charleston.
“He was always telling me, ‘Coach, you work too hard; one day you’re going to have a player,’ “ Hartry said. “He said, ‘Coach, you’ve got to help me out. One day you’re going to have a player.’ Me and this guy, Stacy, have been friends for a while.
“Manny is a student on the floor. He’s so heady, so smart. He’s always a step ahead of his opponent. He always prepares himself. He’s a workaholic. He’s the first one at practice and the last one to leave.
“He’s one of the best shooters I’ve ever coached and that’s going to get better as the years come. I look for him to do big things at Virginia Tech and big things in the ACC.”
NO SOONER DID I WRITE earlier this week that Kevin Newsome’s transfer to Western Branch was anticipated than I started to second-guess myself about Virginia Tech center Ryan Shuman.
I thought there was a good chance that Shuman had played at least one season for his dad, John, on the postgraduate team at Fork Union Military Academy.
Not so.
“My older son [Ryan] transferred into Fork Union as a junior,” Shuman said Friday. “It was July 5, a Friday. I said, ‘Do you think you can go [Division] I-A out of Fluvanna.' He said, ‘No.’ I told him, ‘You ought to think about transferring to Fork Union and work at getting things done.'
“Three days later, my wife came to me and threatened to kill me. I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ She said, ‘Your son wants to transfer. He went to get the form.’ It was shocking. I was like, ‘Wow, he actually listened.’ “
Ryan Shuman spent two seasons on the high-school team coached by Mickey Sullivan.
“I haven’t coached either of my sons,” said Shuman, whose younger son, Mark, is a rising junior who has emerged as an elite prospect. “We have a rule that, even if that young man, Newsome, wanted to come to our school, he would have to play on the high-school team. We don’t jump over our high-school team.”
Not knowingly, at least. This year, 16-year-old Canadian and eventual University of Virginia signee Austin Pasztor played for the postgraduate team.
“Up in Canada, you can go [to high school] for 13 years,” Shuman said. “I thought I was a 13-year guy. It created some controversy but it’s a fact, if I had known beforehand that he was a regular senior, I would have sent him to Mickey.
“I swear, we got the kid here and my dean said, ‘You know this guy is a senior?’ And, I was like, ‘What?’ It was like October, Oct. 10, and I was like, ‘I can’t give him back now. He can’t play down.’ Actually, I said facetiously, ‘If I give you Austin, you’ve got to give me my son.’
LEAVE IT TO DAVID ‘OL’ TEEL, still checking Notebook Plus after 10 years. Teel points out a mistake in an item last week about Jimmy Gayle, a 6-4, 220-pound rising senior defensive end from Bethel High School in Hampton.
Gayle is related to Shaun Gayle, who played for Ohio State and the Chicago Bears, but not for the Washington Redskins, as indicated in last Friday’s Notebook Plus. Teel was right when he suggested that I had Shaun Gayle confused with Shawn Springs, who also played at Ohio State and is now with the ‘Skins.
