UConn power forward Alex Oriakhi will spend his final year of eligibility at Missouri.
He will be eligible right away because UConn is banned from the postseason for the 2012-13 season.
“Missouri needs a center, and I’m going to be the center,” he told the Kansas City Star. “It’s a perfect match.”
Oriakhi visited Missouri beginning Friday and chose to reunite with his former BABC teammate, Phil Pressey.
With Nerlens Noel off the board, the number of available big men in the Class of 2012 has dwindled to a few.
One of them is 6-foot-11 Bradley Hayes of Jacksonville (Fla.) Sandalwood, whom we recently profiled here.
According to Todd Washington, a family friend and founder of the Puerto Rico Playmakers, Hayes worked out Friday for Florida State, Arkansas, Mississippi State, UConn, Arkansas and Oklahoma State.
Max Hooper, a 6-foot-6 guard from Carmel Valley, Calif., is considering St. John’s and Oakland (MI) as his new landing spots after transferring from Harvard.
“I’m familiar with those schools and I’m just feeling around after that,” Hooper told SNY.tv Friday by phone.
Hooper, who played with incoming St. John’s frosh JaKarr Sampson at Brewster (N.H.) Academy and played in only two games for the Crimson, plans to visit both schools with his father, Chip, but has yet to set any visit dates.
NEW YORK — On the day before St. Anthony capped a perfect season by winning the New Jersey Tournament of Champions crown, a single college coach was in the school’s Jersey City gym.
That coach was Tom Moore of Quinnipiac.
Turns out Moore’s persistence paid off as his target, 6-foot-3 guard Tariq Carey, verbally pledged to the Northeast Conference school Friday in the SNY.tv studio.
“The atmosphere was great, it was just a family atmosphere,” Carey said. “I just liked a lot of aspects about the school.”
St. Patrick coach Chris Chavannes says he doesn’t know where Western Kentucky guard Derrick Gordon will wind up, but he’d like to see him come home to Seton Hall.
“For me personally, I’d love to see him come home,” Chavannes told SNY.tv Friday by phone. “It would be very beneficial to him. Jeff Robinson came home [from Memphis] and had a great end of his college career. This would help both ways, both basketball-wise and for his family.”
In the last organized basketball game they played, the Seton Hall senior duo of Jordan Theodore and Herb Pope lost an NIT game to UMass in the cozy confines of Walsh Gym.
With both players now at the Portsmouth Invitational in front of a slew of NBA scouts, Pope sprained his ankle Thursday night after managing just 4 points and 4 rebounds and is done for the rest of the event.
Theodore, meantime, was anxious to get a win under his belt.
“That was was a point of emphasis,” Theodore told SNY.tv by phone Friday morning. “I told the guys in the locker room, ‘Let’s get a win coming out in my first professional game.'”
Given how weak this draft is after Anthony Davis, Florida’s Bradley Beal is an intriguing choice anywhere from No. 2 through 5 or 6.
DraftExpress.com has him at No. 5 after Davis, Andre Drummond, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Thomas Robinson, and ahead of Jared Sullinger, Harrison Barnes and John Henson.
“I like him at 6th to 10th,” one veteran NBA scout told SNY.tv following a report by CBSSports.com that Beal was turning pro following his freshman season.
Listed at 6-foot-3, Beal averaged 14.8 points on 45 percent shooting and 34 percent from deep. He also averaged 6.5 rebounds.
