Admon Gilder, a 6-foot-3, 195-pound shooting guard from Dallas (TX) James Madison, is down to four schools and will announce his college choice at 11 a.m. local time Thursday at his high school.
Gilder is considering Oklahoma State, Baylor, SMU and Texas A&M, where he visited this past weekend.
“I’m announcing Thursday,” he said, adding that he had not yet decided in his own mind.
As for A&M, he visited on the same weekend as 6-9 Lancaster (TX) forward Elijah Thomas, who will announce his college choice Oct. 21.
“It went real good, I liked it a lot,” Gilder said of A&M. “It kind of opened my eyes on a lot of things. They see me as a combo guard that can play the one and the two and be a scorer and also a distributor.”
As for possibly playing together with Thomas, who is also considering SMU, Oklahoma State and A&M, along with Illinois and LSU, Gilder said it was possible.
“Everybody has their own things to do, everybody has their own way of looking at things, so we’re kind of looking at it like we if we happen to pick the same schools, then we pick the same schools,” he said.
As for SMU, Gilder said: “I like SMU. They have a Hall of Fame coach, Coach [Larry] Brown, one of the best coaches of all time. The coaching staff that they put together, at first they wasn’t a big-time basketball school, but they turned the whole program around and I like that.”
On Baylor: “I like Baylor that they’re a basketball school even though they do have a good football team, it’s really a basketball school out there. I like the whole coaching staff. I like the way they live spiritually, always competitive and just good people to be around and have a good basketball prpgram. They mostly go to the [NCAA] Tournament every year and have good players coming out and going to the NBA.”
On Oklahoma State: “I really like them, Coach [Travis] Ford, Coach [Butch] Pierre, and they have Coach [James] Dickey. Coach Dickey was the first coach to offer me a scholarship when he was at University of Houston. And I like them that they always get Dallas players…They just got one Juwan Evans. They are known to get Dallas players and I like that.”
Asked if he would like to play with Evans, Gilder said, “We are good friends. When he first came down here I was already in contact with him because him and Elijah were already good friends. Once he came down here, I was kind of already hanging out with him before he even came down here, so he came here to visit and I was I here before he even came to Dallas and we built a relationship then. He’s a phenomenal point guard, probably one of the best guards in the country and I just know if I make my decision to go to Oklahoma State, we’ll have fun and do some good things at Oklahoma State.”
