Chris Dokish, Notre Dame Recruiting, Pittsburgh Recruiting, Villanova Recruiting

PITT, DUKE, OTHERS AFTER 2010 PG DRONEY

By Chris Dokish

After many years of having few local players ranked nationally in the Top 50, the Pittsburgh area has had three in two years in DeJuan Blair, Herb Pope, and Terrelle Pryor. Only Blair has decided to stay home, however, with Pope’s troubles leading him all the way to New Mexico State and Pryor realizing he was better off playing football. Now, however, the University of Pittsburgh will get another shot at a projected Top 50 prospect, but the competition is already shaping up to be a fierce one.

Tom Droney, of Sewickley Academy, twelve miles northwest of the city, just finished his sophomore season, but he is already in a growing recruiting battle between two of the nation’s best programs. At 6’5” and 180 pounds, Droney already holds one offer from Duquesne, and has been getting a lot of attention from St. Joe’s and Penn State. Villanova, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Stanford, and Arizona are some of the schools that have begun to throw their hat into the ring very recently. But while Droney says he is open to everybody right now, it’s no secret that this is shaping up as a battle between hometown Pittsburgh and national power Duke.

“Pitt has been great to me so far,” says the highly personable and mature Droney. “Coach (Tom) Herrion comes to all of my games and I’ve talked to Coach (Jamie) Dixon before, and he is great. They have a great program and they are close, too. They have already put in a great effort.”

Duke, on the other hand, is Duke, according to Droney, who says Five-Star Basketball Camp Director Howard Garfinkel alerted Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski about him after Droney performed superbly at the camp. Garfinkel, who Droney calls “my mentor”, is an unabashed fan and friend of Krzyzewski, and the two have been quoted often singing each other’s praises.

“I went down there about four months ago,” says Droney, “and I loved it. It was amazing. Coach (Chris) Collins and Coach Wojo (Steve Wojciechowski) spent some time with me and then me and Coach K talked for about two hours. Then last week I called him since I am allowed to call him at anytime and we talked for awhile again. He said he sees me as another (Duke guard) Jon Scheyer.”

Sewickley Academy coach Win Palmer has seen his fair share of top prospects in his 27 year career, especially since he spent the first twenty coaching in Washington, DC, but he is first in line when it comes to being in the Tom Droney Fan Club.

“He is a legit point guard at 6’5”, says Palmer. “He’s just such a great passer, he can score, he can defend, there’s nothing he can’t do well. And he has an amazing wingspan. I’m not even sure that he’s done growing yet.”

It’s Droney’s elite passing skills that get the most attention, and why, paired with his athleticism, he is looked at as a possible point guard in college. But it’s his rare combination of skills, size, and athletic ability that makes him versatile enough to make the top programs salivate. Both Palmer and Droney say that Pitt and Duke would like him to play point guard, shooting guard, and small forward for them.

Droney comes from a close family who has always stressed finding the perfect school to help their children grow, according to Palmer. “He’s from the Keystone Oaks School District,” says Palmer, “but his three older brothers played football so the family sent them to Seton-LaSalle. But since Tom played basketball, they thought we would be a good fit here. Thank God, he didn’t play football, too, or we wouldn’t even have him,” laughs Palmer, “because we don’t have a football team. But Seton-LaSalle wanted him to go there and be their quarterback.”

Droney will start the AAU season in late March and he will play for a brand new team run by Five-Star, and coached by Sewickley Academy assistant coach Derek Freeman. He is looking forward to showing the basketball world that despite coming from the lowest classification in Pennsylvania, he can still play.

“Being from Single A, I have to hear a lot about the competition” says Droney. “I saw that somebody once said that if I was on a Quad A team, I would be on JV. But I got my good reputation by playing in the national Five-Star camp in eastern PA, so I think I already proved I can play with anybody. But this year we will playing in all of the major AAU tournaments in Las Vegas, the Bob Gibbons in North Carolina, the Rumble in the Bronx in New York City- all of them. So I’ll have my chance to show everybody that playing in high school is for fun, but playing in AAU is where you get noticed.”

Getting noticed is definitely becoming a problem of the past for Droney. He shot up from 6’1” to 6’5” in the past year and he brought his point guard skills along with him. Every week, more of the top programs are discovering him.

“When Villanova was in to play Pitt the other week, one of their assistants came over just to watch Tom do guard drills,” says Palmer. “After just a few minutes, he turned to me and asked it was too late for them to get involved. I told him no, and he said now he knows why Pitt loves him and to tell Tom that he’s sorry that they weren’t on him sooner.”

The college recruiting world knows that Pitt will do anything they can to keep a rare top 50 talent at home, but if one school can pull him away, Duke could be the program to do it.

“I do want to stay pretty close to home so that my family can see me play all my games”, says Droney. “And I really like all the coaches. Plus, they just got a junior from Lancaster named Lamar Patterson that I was just in awe of when I saw him play. He’s just a bull, the way he takes it to the basket- very strong. He and I in the same backcourt would be a pretty big backcourt. But, on the other hand, I loved it down at Duke, too. I don’t know. I will have to take my time and think about it. I can’t really go wrong either way.”

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