Louisville Recruiting, Marquette Recruiting, Pittsburgh News, Pittsburgh Recruiting, Seton Hall News, St. John's Recruiting, Transfers, Villanova Recruiting, West Virginia News

BIG EAST NEWS & NOTES (9/2/2008)

Bobby Gonzalez and Seton Hall go the transfer route and it looks like they have landed a big one. This will definitely fall into the classification of high risk, high reward!

A busy recruiting weekend as Louisville hosted as many as seven top prospects, James Padgett schedules an official visit for a Big East school, Tobias Harris has formed a top 10 list of schools he is considering, Dominic Cheek makes a campus visit and the time is now for Lance Stephenson to claim his spot in NYC.

Pitt guard Levance Field will be shelved for a while as he continues to have some problems with the foot that he broke last season.

Seton Hall University is becoming ‘Second Home’ University with the amount of transfers Bobby Gonzalez seems to be pursuing and landing for the Pirates. This season they will have Duquesne transfer Robert Mitchell suiting up and are in the process of applying for a wavier to have Missouri transfer Keon Lawrence on the floor by the second semester (has some academic work to be eligible as well). Now, it looks like the biggest name is preparing to transfer into the program: Herb Pope.

According to the Las Cruces Sun-News, Pope Commits to Seton Hall after a brief ‘I am going’, I am coming back’ drama that ended over the weekend when the sides officially parted ways. Pope originally notified New Mexico State he would be returning to the school, but a change of heart of at least one of the sides has now led to him coming east, closer to home.

Pope had a good freshman season at new Mexico State, averaging over 11 PPG and nearly 7 rebounds a contest for coach Marvin Menzies squad. Of course, there is baggage with Pope, from the punching of his AAU coach in his final AAU contest, to the display following their state championship loss to even more serious episodes of being shot following an altercation at a party to a DUI last December back in Pittsburgh, so it is definitely a buyer beware scenario.

The article also mentioned schools such as Pittsburgh and West Virginia showed interest, but it was Seton Hall that had a scholarship available for 6-foot-8 Aliquippa native (our records indicate both Pitt and WVU also have a scholarship open for 2008-2009 season as well).

Pope has a very strong desire to play immediately and once enrolled at SHU he will apply for a waiver to play immediately due to family issues. In his good-bye note in the Las Cruces News article to NM State, he is saying the right things in his pursuit of the waiver…we will see how that plays out…if granted, he is a big piece to helping SHU move up this season in the conference.

According to the Post & Courier of Charleston (SC), 6-foot-8 James Padgett of Lincoln HS of Brooklyn (NY) did not make his planned trip to four schools over the Labor Day weekend. Instead, Padgett has scheduled an official visit for Pittsburgh this weekend and to Maryland for September 27th.

The article also mentions that 6-foot-5 Garris Adams of Apex (NC) is taking a look at Marquette. Adams visited South Carolina last weekend, will visit Miami this coming weekend and is also looking to possibly visit Wake Forest and Virginia Tech.
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Padgett’s high profile teammate at Lincoln is Lance Stephenson, aka ‘Born Ready.’ While St. John’s of the Big East is very involved in his recruitment, the NY Daily News had an article over the weekend on the talented, but sometimes enigmatic, guard: Time for Lincoln Phenom Lance Stephenson to Come of Age
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The push by Villanova to land the top recruiting class in the nation continued this past weekend as the continued their efforts to get a commitment from Dominic Cheek the 6-foot-5 elite shooting guard prospect from St. Anthony’s of Jersey City (NJ). Cheek Visited Villanova Last weekend (ZagsBlog.net) on an unofficial visit.
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Louisville football had a bad weekend, losing on their home field to rival Kentucky. Rick Pitino hopes his weekend will be more productive in the near future as U of L Basketball was Courting Prospects (Courier-Journal) by hosting several top recruits for the game.

Sophomore Marquis Teague of Pike High School in Indianapolis was on hand. The 6-foot-1 point guard is the son of Shawn Teague who played for coach Pitino at Boston University back in the day. Justin Martin of Lawrence North, also of Indianapolis, was on hand as well. The 6-foot-6 junior will also visit Xavier this month.

Another Big Guest was San Diego big man Jeremy Tyler, one of the top rated players of the junior class.

Durand Scott (class of 2009) and 2010 prospects Doron Lamb, Josh Selby and Tobias Harris were also expected to be on hand for the football game.

Speaking of Harris, we had a Tobias Harris Recruiting Update last night as Harris has decided on a ‘top 10’ list of colleges he is interested in. The list contains six Big East schools.
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Pittsburgh point guard Levance Fields missed seven weeks last season because of a broken foot. Now, he will miss quite a bit of the preseason because of surgery on that same foot that had developed a slight fracture in the bone. Fields Has Second Surgery, Should be Ready for Season (Post-Gazette) after a bone graft was recently performed to add stability to the foot.

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