Recruiting, 2013

[AppGrad78]

Thanks Firemoose. That would probably explain our recent interest in Christian Hairston.

[firemoose]

Thanks Firemoose. That would probably explain our recent interest in Christian Hairston.

Yep...Kinda figured something must be up. Either we were going to lose another current player or a recruit. Guess this answers the question.

[firemoose]

Possible news. It's being reported that Devonte' Graham has asked for a release from his LOI. The tweets below are a couple of a lot about this.

Corey Pegram‏@CoreyPegram
Devonte Graham has asked for a release from App State per @Justinbyerly. Big news. Gonna be a lot of schools chasing. Heck of a point guard

Justin Byerly‏@Justinbyerly
Devonte Graham of Broughton HS (NC) has asked for his release from Appalachian State

Guess we wait for the offical announcement but I wanted to at least get this out, just in case.

[AppGrad78]

It'll be interesting to see how we handle this. Usually athletes are granted a release when there is a coaching change ... Christian Hairston comes to mind. But this will plow new ground for us.

[T-Dog]

The person who originally Tweeted the news has since deleted the Tweet.

[firemoose]

The person who originally Tweeted the news has since deleted the Tweet.

Hope you're right. I've been seeing a bunch of his friends and fellow players talking that they weren't surprised and that he said he didn't fit here. Who knows. They might have been taking it off the original tweet. For what it's worth I haven't seen anything on HIS page about it. Hopefully we'll see something soon.

[hapapp]

I hoe next March we aren't replaying the Spike Albrecht story. At least he hadn't committed already.

[T-Dog]

Looks like there's more smoke. His AAU coach is saying Graham has asked for his release and is waiting on a response.

[firemoose]

Looks like there's more smoke. His AAU coach is saying Graham has asked for his release and is waiting on a response.

Going to be interesting to see who it is who offered him and who knew what when after he signed. It's been tweeted 4 times that WKU is where he wants to go but none of those are even close to official. Rivals shows him as having a WKU offer when he signed. As I've said before if the kid doesn't want to be here then I don't want him here but I hope we fid out if there were any violations.

[mtnjax]

If there are/were violations, then WKU should be punished obviously, but Graham should also be told he is not allowed to accept any offer from the offending program and either stick to his original commitment or sit out a year. Harsh, but thats what you should get for supposed "back room" dealings

[firemoose]

If there are/were violations, then WKU should be punished obviously, but Graham should also be told he is not allowed to accept any offer from the offending program and either stick to his original commitment or sit out a year. Harsh, but thats what you should get for supposed "back room" dealings

I agree. Whether it will happen or not is anybody's guess. He signs with us, has a great playoff run with MVP honors, and then he wants out of his LOI. If he wanted to go someplace he already had an offer from then why did he sign with us in the first place? And as I said those tweets aren't even close to creditable in my book and it might not even be WKU but something happened and I would love to know what.

[Kgfish]

Not good to speculate on what's going on. Tell him goodbye and let the NCAA deal with the matter.

[eggers76]

Just reminds me of the Donte Minter episode, after he blows up in the state tournament, suddenly he is looking at "better" options. Too many people offering these young players advice, except the important one of keeping and honoring your commitments. Of course in the long run we need to develop the kind of program in basketball that players want to be a part of.

[proasu89]

[quote="eggers76"]Just reminds me of the Donte Minter episode, after he blows up in the state tournament, suddenly he is looking at "better" options. Too many people offering these young players advice, except the important one of keeping and honoring your commitments. Of course in the long run we need to develop the kind of program in basketball that players want to be a part of.[/quote

The first thing I thought of was Donte when I read this last night.

[firemoose]

Per Twitter and internet reports we've offered SG/SF Jimmy Marshall for 2013. We've also had an offer to SF Christian Hairston for a month now so I've put up pages for each of them in the "Offered by App State" section on the 2013 Recruiting Page. Their listing are below and videos are on their pages.

SF Christian Hairston (6′ 7″ 185) of Greensboro Day School in Greensboro, NC (posted March 27, 2013). Hairston is showing offers from Elon, Wofford, UNCG, Richmond, and Davidson, some of which are older offers.

SG/SF Jimmy Marshall (6′ 7″ 180) of Douglas Freeman High School in Richmond, VA (posted April 24, 2013). It's reported Marshall has 16 offers with his top 5 being Northeastern, App, Toledo, Hofstra, and GaSou.

[AppGrad78]

According to the Greensboro News & Record, Greensboro Day School guard Christian Hairston (6-6, 185) has trimmed his list to two: Elon and Wofford.

[asu66]

Looks like there's more smoke. His AAU coach is saying Graham has asked for his release and is waiting on a response.

Going to be interesting to see who it is who offered him and who knew what when after he signed. It's been tweeted 4 times that WKU is where he wants to go but none of those are even close to official. Rivals shows him as having a WKU offer when he signed. As I've said before if the kid doesn't want to be here then I don't want him here but I hope we fid out if there were any violations.

The LeClair guy at VerbalCommits.com read me the riot act for questioning Graham's motives in asking for a release. He as much as said that Graham is a goner from our Apps; but couldn't produce evidence of an official release from Peacock/Cobb/Capel. I didn't like his goody-two-shoes attittude even a little bit. It's more of the Minter/UVA/Herrion crap--only this invloves WKU. More later today!


Read it here and here...

(1) http://verbalcommits.com/players/devonte-graham

(2) http://verbalcommits.com/schools/western-kentucky

[asu66]

College basketball's spring signing period for the Class of '13 closes on Wednesday. May 15th. To date, I can find no indication that Devonte Graham has been released by ASU. His twitter account has been laced with "free D-tae" messages for two weeks. As of an hour ago, his friends are still spreading that word. I interpret that to mean as of now he's still obligated to App. Anyone have a different understanding?

VerbalCommits.com removed him from their ASU basketball page on April 24, assuming that his release would be a gimme. They even updated his recruiting "wish list" to include Richmond, High Point, Rhode Island, WKU and Gardner-Webb. Yep, that does say GWU.

What's going on with Mr. Graham? Academic concerns? There's a big, wide divide betweem UR and GWU!

All of these schools are smaller than ASU except WKU at 21,124. URI is close to App at 16,350. Does he seek a small school or a big school?

[firemoose]

Chuck, I wish I could tell what's happening. I've been watching those same tweets and also looking for SOMETHING to show up somewhere from us or talking about our direction before I posted anything. Nothing from this end except the cicadas are showing up (man, I forgot how loud those things were). Rivals still shows him to us and all those schools that they are showing as his "updated" list were schools that had already offered him. The only one they left out was Jacksonville. I've got calls and messages in to several people and hopefully I'll hear back from someone by the first of the week.