PHILLY — Just pulled into the Wachovia Center for today’s ESPN tilt between No. 17 Villanova and No. 23 Louisville. I managed to get here before the snow arrived and tried to purchase some Allman Brothers tickets on the phone while driving down. No luck, what good are these Amex cards anyway if you can’t buy in advance? Looks like I’ll be standing in line at the Beacon Theater early Friday morning…Anyway, my plan was to pull a double-dip today and cover this game and then drive up to Syracuse-Rutgers, but we’ll see how the day goes….
In the meantime, here are some quick updates on Fordham, Quincy Hankins, Dexter Strickland, Beas Hamga and St. Benedict’s.
***Fordham has offered scholarships to 6–foot-4 Mount Vernon senior wing Sherrod Wright and 6–7 junior Ron Roberts of St. Peter’s Prep. The Rams, who have two ships for next year, are also involved with junior forward Joel “Air Jamaica” Wright of Thomas Jefferson.
***Got a call from Matt Furjanic, the head coach at Polk (Fla.) Community College. He says 6–8 forward Quincy Hankins is “wide open now” and is hearing from Seton Hall, South Florida, Arizona, Oklahoma and others.
“[Hankins] told me St. John’s is really not contacting him that much,” he said. “He really has a lot of interest in Seton Hall. He’s getting a lot of phonecalls from a lot of other schools right now. He’s really non-committal right now. It’s all new to him. Since he’s been playing so well every day we get different phonecalls, Arizona, Oklahoma, just general calls.
“I know he has a serious interest in Seton Hall and he definitely is going to visit them. Outside of some mid majors Seton Hall and South Florida are the only Big East schools that have shown any interest.”
***Mark Adams, the adviser to 7–footer Beas Hamga of Cameroon, said Hamga will decide this weekend between Rutgers, South Carolina and Valparaiso. Hamga, who is transferring from UNLV, visited Rutgers Wednesday for the Marquette game. “He’s thinking about it and we’ll know something Sunday,” Adams wrote in a text.
***North Carolina-bound guard Dexter Strickland (pictured) will not play this weekend, according to comments made by St. Patrick of Elizabeth coach Kevin Boyle to The Star-Ledger.
Strickland had an MRI on his knee this week, but there is no structural damage to the knee.
“The good news is there is no structural damage at all, but there is still a little bit of swelling,” Boyle told the Ledger. “We just may have to weather the storm this weekend without him and do the best we can.”
St. Patrick, No. 1 No. 4 in the USA Today national rankings, meets Trenton Catholic Saturday and St. Augustine on Sunday.
***St. Benedict’s routed Life Center Academy 84-43 Thursday night behind a game-high 25 points from Texas-bound big man Tristan Thompson.
Rice-bound guard Tamir Jackson added 15 points and uncommitted junior Aaron Brown added 12.
The win came two days after the Burlington (NJ) school had beaten St. Patrick of Elizabeth. Both St. Patrick and St. Benedict’s (12-0) are among the Top 5 schools in the nation. Read Ron Jandoli’s stellar write-up here.
