Well, the early signing period is over. Pitt had all of its commit sign NLIs.
The centerpiece of the class is 6-foot-9 power forward Dante Taylor, a consensus top-30 recruit from National Christian Academy in Fort Washington, Md. He is joined by 6-5 guard/forward Lamar Patterson of Lancaster, 6-7 forward J.J. Richardson from Missouri City, Texas, and 6-9 forward Talib Zanna, who is originally from Nigeria but is finishing his high school career at Bishop McNamara in Forestville, Md.
It’s a consensus top-25 class according to the recruiting services that do rankings. Hoopscooponline ranks Pitt No. 9, ESPNU Pitt No. 14, PrepStars No. 23 and Scout.com No. 24.
Well, ESPNU seems to have dropped them to #15. Scary when you look at their rankings. 5 of the top-15 classes are from the Big East. This conference is brutal in all facets of basketball.
It’s good to see Pitt steadily rising in profile for recruiting as well.
Now that the class is signed, Chris Dokish has Tom Herrion talking about each player.
Of course, we are greedy. It isn’t enough to have this class. We still want Dominic Cheek to choose Pitt. He’s eliminated Memphis from his list and will be at Pitt next week.
Cheek has been the subject of much attention. Including this video on his life so far (via ZagsBlog).
Hopefully not all the students will be home for the Belmont game on Tuesday.
Now on to my potentially stupid comment. In all the recruiting talk I’m wondering if Jamie D has approached J. Baldwin to join the squad after Football season ends. As we all recall, this guy was a can’t miss hoops prospect that chose to pursue football. What better way to stay conditioned in the off season than to play for the BB team?
@The Hagen
Baldwin is much more valuable to the football team than he could be for the basketball squad. Throw in the risk of injury, and its highly unlikely. If Baldwin sat on the bench for football this year, it would be much more likely for him to try basketball.
See: Jarret Brown, WVU link to wvgazette.com
Hail to Pitt!
