I just read that Freeman is the nephew of Marcus Liberty. Interesting tidbit. If he's even half the player his uncle was, Valpo will be ok.

Looks like we got Brandon Wade coming in this weekend. All the scouting I've seen on him have him as a borderline high major true point; would be a real nice get!

Good to see. It seems like we haven't been getting as many visits this fall as usual.

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MBB Scholarship Chart

I agree we haven't heard about as many but it's hard to say if we have less; the time to visit just started up last weekend (I believe). It's really all about who's covering the high school players/what players put up on their social media since schools can't post about visits themselves. To your point though we're in some pretty competitive races for some nice talent, most of whom will likely exhaust the five allotted visits... so we may be in line waiting for some down the road. Wade, Kaifes, Castenada, Norman etc. almost everyone we've offered has a long list of suitors. We're targeting high talent which is great, just means we have more competition than usual.

Side note keep an eye on La-Lumiere's Franklin Agunanne. Recently followed Valentine and Mullins; could be becoming a big man priority. He plays at what is probably the best best program at the country.

Castaneda to South Florida. That one hurts for me, really wanted to see him play at the next level. But selfishly glad he didn't make it to his WSU official.

Also of note, Zion Griffin committed to Iowa State.

Few more updates:

Mullins and Valentine working hard on Wade. Went to Michigan to attend open practice at his school.


Keshawn Justice will be visiting this week. I'm wondering if it's with Wade?Justice is a real nice forward; stock is rising, looks to have a good 3pt shot and size at 6'6'. Wing player in the mold of Donte; smoother on the drive though. Scored 41 at a high school championship game over the summer.

Verbal Commits reports that Talen Horton-Tucker from Simeon has trimmed us off his list... that's the third Chicago area target (Horton-Tucker, Xavier Casteneda, and Zion Griffin) to shun local offers to look elsewhere.

It also really hurts when a promising local target like Casteneda (3 star PG out of Whitney Young) goes 1000 miles away to a program like South Florida. By the way, USF's home attendance last season averaged 2586, so we can rule out fan support as a reason.

Hopefully, there will be a surprise in this year's recruiting class, because it would be terrible to lose the momentum we had from last year's excellent class.

For what it's worth Tucker proved to be out of our league a long time ago. He's had nothing but high major teams after him for the better part of the year; and I believe Dildy was the connection. Castaneda hurts but he also chose them over the likes of Wichita State, and budding interest from Georgetown and Butler. I'm with you though, sucks to have these kids leave. At least they're entering high major conferences rather than conference foes.

It'll be interested to see if we target any other in state talent, our only offer out at this point is to Drew Peterson, but our interest in him may have cooled; he set up several official, we weren't on the list. We were involved with DeAndre Heckard for a while and he may be a player that comes into play during the second round of commitments. Same with Ty Mosley who's been getting a lot of social media love for the last several weeks (Interesting Note-some services have him as a top 100 player). Maurice Commander from Curie is another pg who's got a lot of skill, he's undersized, but our coaches follow him on twitter so we're somewhat involved, though i get the sense he may commit to Murray State soon.

I'm really hoping we end this week with at least one, but ideally two commits from Justice and Wade. The more I look into Justice the more I like his game. Over the summer he put up 41 in a high school championship game, including the game winner.

As an aside (and not to get too serious) but with the public league kids it's important to remember some just want to leave the city, there was a great article in the tribune about it last year. I look at a kid like Evan Gilyard from Simeon who was down to us and UTEP and ended up going down to Texas. He was number one on my wish list last year, but he chose what's best for him. Part of this was getting away from a lot of the violence. While Loyola is by no means anywhere near these more dangerous parts, that danger is still relatively close. Some of the stuff these public leagues kids see is genuinely heart breaking. (Source: http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/co ... story.html)

OK !! All cheers to Biers JCT and the rest who have been on top of our recruiting adventures to date . I feel we are now at the "being good " stage rather than where we have been FOR YEARS !! Recruits mostly look to be on the floor quickly, but then what do I know? We will get our share for sure --

It truly IS fun following this thread !! One thing though, remember our scholastic requirements are higher than most of those that we compete against. Even so , we will be favorites in the Valley this year --We win it and THEN watch the recruiting scene !!
Anyway--So far so good !

GO RAMBLERS !!

Brot, you're back!

I was worried about you. You've been gone for over a month.

You don't have a new girlfriend, do you?