Kentucky made news this week when it announced that coach Billy Gillispie had offered a scholarship to California 8th grader Michael Avery. Gillispie saw Avery play at a LeBron James sponsored event in Akron, and decided to offer the guard, who is yet to decide which high school he will attend, a spot on the Wildcats 2012-2013 squad.
"We're taking things one day at a time," the player's father, Howard Avery, told the Lexington Herald-Journal last week. "Right now, (Gillispie) is there and he's a terrific coach. Without a doubt, Kentucky is a terrific program. Factors change. I'm not going to worry about 25,000 different things when I'm trying to get through this day."
Last year, USC coach Tim Floyd offered a scholarship to Illinois forward Ryan Boatright, a move that drew criticism from the media and outraged some in the recruiting community. University of Kentucky president Lee T. Todd expressed surprise when told of the commitment.
"An eighth-grader?!" he blurted out, according to the Herald-Journal. "Not that you'd tell people not to ever do it. But I'd hope there aren't very many eighth-graders thinking of playing at a specific college.”
But the question remains as to whether this is an aberration or the wave of the future. I, for one, hope that this trend does not continue. But we’ll see.
- Tom Crean and Indiana have started the process of cleaning up the mess left behind by the Kelvin Sampson affair. Highly-touted Class of ’08 guard Verdell Jones announced his intentions to go to IU this week, choosing the Hoosiers over Minnesota, Kentucky, and Illinois. Jones, who is from Champaign, Ill., may be called upon right away to start for an Indiana club that has only three returning scholarship players remaining on the roster. Jones joins guard Nick Williams (Mobile, Ala.), forward Tom Pritchard (Lakewood, Ohio), guard Matt Roth (Washington, Ill) and junior college guard Devon Dumes (Vincennes University) in the Hoosiers 2008 class. Indiana also got a commitment from Class of ’09 shooting guard Maurice Creek of Temple Hills, Md.
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