Reid Travis spurned both perennial powerhouse Duke and home-state school Minnesota in order to go play for Johnny Dawkins at Stanford.
“It just kind of came down to the feeling,” said Travis, who averaged 26.1 points and 9.0 rebounds per game last season, according to the Star Tribune. “I went out to Stanford and immediately it just felt like home and it was comfortable there … [Cardinal coach] Johnny Dawkins did a great job of building a relationship with me since sophomore year. It got to the point this last year where it wasn’t even like he was recruiting me anymore, it was like I was talking to a family member — he was just checking in on me.”
He added: “I wanted to give my parents the opportunity to say they have a son at Harvard and a son at Stanford. That’s an opportunity that not every parent can say.”
As for his skill set, he told SNY.tv he plans to be a “physical four.”
“I’m just working on my perimeter skills, trying to stretch it out more,” he said. “But still keeping my post work and going inside.”
Travis joins 6-2 California point guard Michael Humphrey and 6-10 Arizona power forward Robert Cartwright in Stanford’s 2014 class. 2014 wing Justise Winslow is on campus this weekend as well.
Minnesota coach Richard Pitino and his staff had targeted Minnesota’s “Big Three” of Travis, point guard Tyus Jones and shooting guard Rashad Vaughn , but is now 0-for 1 with Jones and Vaughn yet to announce.
“I don’t think we’ve ever had three [Minnesota] guys in the Top 25,” Howard Pulley coach Antwan Harris told SNY.tv this summer. “We’ve had guys from Minnesota be in the Top 100 tons of times. But this highly rated with the skills that they’ve had, I don’t think we’ve had that.”
Asked what it would mean to the state school and the Gopher State itself if Pitino got at least one of them, Harris said: “It would be tremendous to the fanbase to get one, two or even three of these guys. They’re so skilled, they’re so talented, so well known across the country, it would boost the recruiting at University of Minnesota.”
Pitino echoed those sentiments to SNY.tv this summer.
“When you’re the only Division 1 school in the state, guys grow up wanting to go to the University of Minnesota” Pitino said, speaking generally.
“Now it’s our job to show them that we’re going to have a competitive, high-level basketball program, a program that should be as good as anyone in the country. You’ve always got to try to keep guys close to home and kids are going to want to play in front of their family and friends, you’ve just got to show them that you’re just as good as any other program out there.”
