http://highschool.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1220869
Most hyped high school recruits, did they get it right? I recall Felipe Lopez from New York who went to St. Johns, he was on the cover of SI at age 17.
6-11 Earl Jones of West Virginia who went to the University of District Columbia in the 80's. Wasn't he something like a 3 time Parade Magazine All-American?
a fun read.
Totally forgot about the Jewish Jordan. That dude had skillz.
This is fun stuff .... Tom McMillen deserves to be on this list -- he was an SI overboy as a high school senior in 1970 (ala Rick Mount) and picked MD over UNC to the surprise of many.
Agreed on Felipe Lopez btw - he was the coverboy for an article talking about how the Big East was back based on a sublime group of incoming freshmen around the league which included the troubled Chris Herren at BC and the academically questionable Zendon Hamilton (also to SJU).
FWIW, the hype around Alonzo Mourning was deafening in 1988 ... at the time that class was thought to be among the most talented ever assembled and he was at the top of that group (Kemp, Billy Owens, LaPhonso Ellis, Laettner, Don MacLean, Stanley Roberts, Chris Jackson, Malik Sealy, Chris Mills, Jarrod Mustaff, Donald Hodge, Litterial Green, Lee Mayberry, Todd Day, Adam Keefe). That class was pretty amazing.
How about Bernard Toone?
How about Larry Johnson?
Quote from: Hards_Alumni on June 02, 2011, 09:54:11 AM
How about Larry Johnson?
Larry Johnson was not even the most hyped recruit in the state of Texas in 1987, though his SAT odyssey was interesting. The most hyped kid that year was LaBradford Smith from Bay City, then Louisville. Smith was a freak athlete, best I've ever seen at the high school level (played against him). It was said that he high jumped 6'10" in a baseball uniform (track meet was in the adjacent field ... 6'10" seems like B.S. but I gathered he did something of note), he was an all-state pitcher with a 90ish mph heater, and he could really hoop.
As a high school soph he jumped over a guy to dunk at the state tournament in Austin ... it was insane. His high school team was loaded -- he teamed with the talented Sammy Jackson (track guy), Billy Dykes (tight end for OU under Switzer) and Hart Lee Dykes, perhaps the most infamous high school athlete of that decade. Who else but the guy who put four schools on probation. That team won state during Smith's sophomore year -- his team lost in the semifinals as a senior.
With the exception of Goodman, almost all the players in the article lived up to expectations--even Rick Mount was a very strong college player.
Five more to add to the list of players with huge recruiting buzz in high school:
1. Patrick Ewing. A big deal in 1981, and he delivered. (Almost went to UNC--imagine that lineup!)
2. Damon Bailey. Made famous by John Feinstein's book on Bob Knight.
3. Lloyd Daniels. Considered the top NYC recruit since Alcindor, was tossed out of UNLV before he enrolled.
4. Elena Delle Donne. The dominating girls HS player for three seasons, she committed to UConn and spent exacty one day there, quitting school to return home to take care of her sister, who is deaf, blind, autistic and suffers from cerebral palsy. Reenrolled at nearby Delaware a year later.
5. Fab Melo. From pre-season Big East Rookie of the year to....what?
Lloyd Daniels.
Edit: D'oh. Beaten to the punch by less than 30 seconds.
Quote from: Pakuni on June 02, 2011, 10:58:36 AM
Lloyd Daniels.
Edit: D'oh. Beaten to the punch by less than 30 seconds.
sweet pea?
Quote from: Pakuni on June 02, 2011, 10:58:36 AM
Lloyd Daniels.
Edit: D'oh. Beaten to the punch by less than 30 seconds.
Garfinkel once said of Lloyd Daniels, he "is the greatest junior ever-alive or unborn." A great line
details here http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1992-11-08/sports/9204110410_1_prep-schools-alcohol-cat-has-nine-lives (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1992-11-08/sports/9204110410_1_prep-schools-alcohol-cat-has-nine-lives)
Isn't Garfinkel the one who pushed Roseboro to the MU coaches or was that Tom Konchalski?
Lance "Born Ready" Stephenson
Marcus Liberty probably belongs in the discussion as well.
Regarding the Rivals list, does LeBron really belong, much less at #1? It was pretty much assumed from the time he was 16 that he never was going to college, so how does he rank as a hyped recruit? Same with Kobe, to a lesser extent.
Quote from: Pakuni on June 02, 2011, 11:21:06 AM
Marcus Liberty probably belongs in the discussion as well.
Regarding the Rivals list, does LeBron really belong, much less at #1? It was pretty much assumed from the time he was 16 that he never was going to college, so how does he rank as a hyped recruit? Same with Kobe, to a lesser extent.
Agreed on both of them ... really, with Kobe there was not much hype relative to so many others listed here (and, you could argue that Ronnie Fields got much more hype than Kobe). And while LeBron was never going to college his hype as a prodigy, not a recruit, was something we might never see again.
NYWarrior---How big of a recruit was Pearl Washington out your way? I remember hearing about him at early age.
Quote from: Goose on June 02, 2011, 11:29:40 AM
NYWarrior---How big of a recruit was Pearl Washington out your way? I remember hearing about him at early age.
I didn't live here at the time but he played at Boys & Girls High School, which was a powerhouse in the 80s. Must have been a huge recruit during what was a golden era of high school point guards in NYC (Kenny Smith, Pearl, Mark Jackson, Kenny Anderson, Rod Strickland and surely others)
Quote from: NYWarrior on June 02, 2011, 10:14:18 AM
Larry Johnson was not even the most hyped recruit in the state of Texas in 1987, though his SAT odyssey was interesting. The most hyped kid that year was LaBradford Smith from Bay City, then Louisville. Smith was a freak athlete, best I've ever seen at the high school level (played against him). It was said that he high jumped 6'10" in a baseball uniform (track meet was in the adjacent field ... 6'10" seems like B.S. but I gathered he did something of note), he was an all-state pitcher with a 90ish mph heater, and he could really hoop.
As a high school soph he jumped over a guy to dunk at the state tournament in Austin ... it was insane. His high school team was loaded -- he teamed with the talented Sammy Jackson (track guy), Billy Dykes (tight end for OU under Switzer) and Hart Lee Dykes, perhaps the most infamous high school athlete of that decade. Who else but the guy who put four schools on probation. That team won state during Smith's sophomore year -- his team lost in the semifinals as a senior.
Hart Lee Dykes...name from the past. First kid ever to win the national Punt, Pass, Kick competition and the national Pitch, Hit, Run contest. Played for the Patriots....got hurt...end of career.
Quote from: ChicosBailBonds on June 02, 2011, 11:49:16 AM
Hart Lee Dykes...name from the past. First kid ever to win the national Punt, Pass, Kick competition and the national Pitch, Hit, Run contest. Played for the Patriots....got hurt...end of career.
Bingo .. he was an amazing athlete back in the day....but in the end, he might not have even been the best athlete on his own high school football team (DeLoach, Joe)
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1122822/index.htm (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1122822/index.htm)
How 'bout Colt Knost?
Enos Henricksen
Quote from: NYWarrior on June 02, 2011, 09:40:14 AM
FWIW, the hype around Alonzo Mourning was deafening in 1988 ... at the time that class was thought to be among the most talented ever assembled and he was at the top of that group (Kemp, Billy Owens, LaPhonso Ellis, Laettner, Don MacLean, Stanley Roberts, Chris Jackson, Malik Sealy, Chris Mills, Jarrod Mustaff, Donald Hodge, Litterial Green, Lee Mayberry, Todd Day, Adam Keefe). That class was pretty amazing.
Yeah, but when I look at this class I see a lot of reasons why USA basketball and the NBA sucked in the immediate post-Jordan era. I see a lot of kids that were great athletes, but outside of a couple, not many good basketball players.
I believe the quote was "...the greatest junior dead, alive, or yet to be born." pretty strong endorsement from a professional recruiting evaluator
not to turn Scoop into a book club or anything, but this is a great book: SweePea and Other Playground Legends by John Valenti and Ron Naclerio
Quote from: The Sultan of South Wayne on June 02, 2011, 12:35:19 PM
Yeah, but when I look at this class I see a lot of reasons why USA basketball and the NBA sucked in the immediate post-Jordan era. I see a lot of kids that were great athletes, but outside of a couple, not many good basketball players.
'All-time great classes' are better viewed in the rear view mirror than the windshield. Still, the 1988 group stands apart from most and was notable for turning out great collegians as well as long-tenured, productive NBA players. That said, no class ever matches the hype...1988 is no exception.
Still, part of the reason this class stood out was the plethora of big men that flanked Mourning. In the end -- Mourning, Kemp, Ellis, and Laettner were as good a collection of bigs as any class has ever produced (and those are just the top guys). Laettner is in the Pantheon of all-time great college players. Kemp was very good and Mourning is a borderline Hall of Famer. Chris Jackson was perhaps the greatest freshman in the history of college basketball at that point and went on to a reasonable pro career where he averaged 14ppg over a decade. Don MacLean was the all-time leading scorer in the history of the PAC-10 & played for a decade in the NBA. Owens, Peeler, Sealy, Day, Mayberry, Mills, Martin, Gugliotta, Horry, Walt Williams, Stith, etal. The class was crazy deep with high-ceiling talent.
This link is useful in comparing the relative strength of classes ... just change the date in the URL to compare. It is amazing how poor most of the individual classes have been over time (and note these are just the McDonald's game participants, by no means the only way to measure)
http://statsheet.com/bhsb/mcdonalds_all_american_team/1988 (http://statsheet.com/bhsb/mcdonalds_all_american_team/1988)
Ben Wilson?
Sebastian Telfair
he was mentioned briefly in the piece, but he's the first really hyped HS kid I remember with the "Through The Fire" Documentary.
He never really measured up
Marcus Liberty
Quote from: 4everwarriors on June 02, 2011, 06:52:18 PM
Marcus Liberty
A couple buddies from work and I used to take a limo trip to a college basketball game each year. One year Milwaukee, one year Champaign, etc. We were in Champaign Liberty's freshman year and sat with him during the game (he was a prop 48 so ineligible to play). After the game, we gave him a lift back to his dorm. After quickly polishing off a cold one, he interrupted his own story of life as a frosh at Illinois, turned to me, smiled and said, "I don't wanta be ignorant, Tony, but could I get another one of those Michelobs?" Nice kid, never lived up to the hype.
Quote from: MuMark on June 02, 2011, 05:54:45 PM
Ben Wilson?
As good as he was, I don't think many outside the dedicated high school hoops fan really knew about Ben Wilson until he was murdered.
Quote from: Pakuni on June 02, 2011, 08:38:01 PM
As good as he was, I don't think many outside the dedicated high school hoops fan really knew about Ben Wilson until he was murdered.
A friend of mine who did some scouting for DePaul thought Benjie was the best player to come out of Chicago in that era.
Lloyd Moore out Pittsburgh. He was a Street and Smith high school All American center. After a brief stay at Marquette he played some at Rutgers. Lloyd could not control his weight and had a work ethic issue. He ended up blowing out his knees because of theweight issue. What could have been -- a Charles Barkley type 5 inches taller.
Appropriate timing
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?id=6609946
Lloyd Moore had ZERO chance of being anything other than Lloyd Moore. I prayed for us to get him but in reality he was destined to be what he was, a real fat guy with great hands.
Let us not forget Raymond Lewis. A SI article on him had this quote:
"In Los Angeles he is a legend. You say Raymond, they say Lewis. You say Lewis, they say Raymond."—Bob Hopkins, assistant coach, New York Knicks.
PG recruit headed to Long Beach State during Tarkanian's stint there, until someone out bid Tark for his services.
Tarkanian saw Lewis as "the missing link" and told everyone that with him he could realize his dream: beating UCLA and winning an NCAA championship. At the time the coach also was recruiting Ernie Douse, then New York City's Player of the Year, and when Douse came out to California during the summer, Lewis badgered Tarkanian about setting up a one-on-one game between them. "But I wouldn't allow it," says Tarkanian. "I knew that Raymond would kill Douse, and I was afraid he'd get discouraged and go back home. Raymond would play all of our kids one-on-one and kill 'em, and half of them were All-Americas. He was in high school. Nobody knows him like I do, and I say he was the best high school player I ever saw."
" Lewis was blessed with such tremendous talent. He had body balance, great reflexes and coordination. A lot of players have those skills and never use them, but Raymond had them and developed them. He had a great quickness on the court, but it was his ability to shoot with a man right on top of him that made him so great. A lot of players can shoot, but Lewis had all the moves to get the shot off. He loved to take players one-on-one. His quickness made it impossible for one man to guard him. He loved it."—Jerry Tarkanian, UNLV coach.
Lewis would have gone to Long Beach, but Bob Miller, the L.A. State coach, had hired Caldwell Black to be his assistant coach. Also, Miller had enrolled Lewis in three summer-school classes. At one point Lewis wrote to Miller and said he did not want to go there. But at the same time he was telling Tarkanian, "It boiled down to the money and the car and the other things, stuff I never had before."
Bombed a group of LA Lakers for 52 points in a summer league game while still in high school.
1973, as a sophomore Lewis scored 53 points in an upset win (107-104) against number three- ranked 22-1 Long Beach State, in an electrifying double overtime thriller.
The youngest Player ever drafted and signed by the NBA during his era. The 18th overall pick in the first round by the Philadelphia 76ers in 1973.
Reportedly scored 60 points in the first half against the NBA's number 1 draft choice Doug Collins. In Sixers NBA camp. (And then quit when Philly wouldn't renegotiate his contract.)
Scored 56 points in 1983 against NBA's defensive star Michael Cooper in summer pro league game in only three quarters of play.
2004, jersey Number 23 retired and Lewis is honored as the greatest player in Verbum Dei History.
Albert King. As Al said, he is the first one that Al had to schedule an appointment to visit.
For us Oldtimers, Earl (The Goat) Manigault.
Connie Hawkins