Thursday, November 17, 2005
Expert hails UVa recruiting class
All Top-100 players
Doug Doughty
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Will Harris, a 6-foot-6, 230-pound forward from Queens, N.Y., is the icing on a Virginia men’s basketball recruiting class that recruiting analyst Bob Gibbons places in the top four in the ACC.
At Wednesday’s end to the fall signing period, Gibbons had only North Carolina, Duke and Wake Forest ahead of the Cavaliers. If a team had the fourth-best talent in the ACC on a yearly basis, it would have a good chance of making the NCAA Tournament on a more regular basis than UVa has lately.
Gibbons said he has Harris rated among the top 10 fifth-year players in the country.
“If Will Harris were a senior, he’d be in the top 50,” Gibbons said. “He’d be the highest-rated guy in Virginia’s class. He’s got extra years. So, he’s got maturity.”
In Gibbons’ eyes, a player in his top 100 qualifies as a blue-chipper. Of Virginia’s other three recruits, 6-8 Johnnie Lett from Mobile, Ala., is 52nd on Gibbons’ list; 6-5 Solomon Tat from Stockbridge, Ga., is 68th, and 6-9 Jamil Tucker from Gary, Ind., is 72nd.
“You’re not going to rectify it overnight, but I think this is a great beginning,” Gibbons said.
Harris could be viewed as a pleasant surprise, not because he signed with Virginia but because he signed early. In an e-mail exchange as late as this week, coach Jason Smith said that Harris was leaning toward signing early.
Smith said the turning point may have come Monday night, when first-year UVa head coach Dave Leitao walked into the gymnasium at Brewster Academy in Wolfeboro, N.H., after several airplane connection problems.
“It was the fact that coach Leitao personally was recruiting Will and took time out in his busy schedule to come up here,” Smith said. “He personally came up here twice and I think that was the deciding factor for Will.
“He developed a relationship with the head coach, which he hadn’t done previously with UConn or even Nebraska.”
Harris originally signed with Nebraska in the fall of 2004, when he was a senior at Maine Central Institute, but he tried to get out of his letter-of-intent in the spring. His explanation was that his mother had become ill and she did not want him so far away from home.
When Nebraska declined to release him from the letter, Harris’ only recourse was not to graduate, although he had a 3.0 grade-point average and had reached the required standardized-test score, Smith said. He could have returned to Maine Central Institute, but transferred to Brewster, alma mater of current UVa sophomore Adrian Joseph.
Smith said the Harris was the most valuable player in one of New York’s premier spring leagues and Connecticut was quick to take notice.
“That’s when UConn became aggressive,” Smith said. “He committed to UConn at the ABCD camp. I thought it was done, but both parties decided it would be in his best interest to open it back up and have him go through the recruiting process again.
“Everything happened very suddenly. In all fairness to Will or coach [Jim] Calhoun, I don’t think that either party got to know one another very well.”
Harris has said that he felt Connecticut “recruited over” him by taking another player at the same position, but, with the Huskies out of the picture, there was no shortage of teams ready to jump into the fray.
At the time Harris committed to Virginia on Tuesday night, there were scholarship offers on his table from visit Boston College, Providence, Georgia, Memphis and Seton Hall.
When Smith dealt with Virginia previously, Pete Gillen was the Cavaliers’ head coach and Alexis Sherard, now at Liberty and coming to University Hall on Friday night for the season’s opener, was the lead recruiter.
However, Smith said he has been dealing with current UVa assistants Rob Lanier and Steve Seymour for numerous years. Seymour was the head coach at Drexel before joining Lanier’s staff at Siena.
“I think they’re doing a fantastic job of building a foundation,” Smith said. “I think what coach Leitao and his staff are doing is stockpiling the best players. It’s like the general manager who says, ‘We’ve got these needs, but we’re going to go with the best available players.’
“They’re getting some versatile players who can play multiple positions. They’ve already got a phenomenal point guard in Sean Singletary and, as you know, that’s the most important piece.”
