Amaker Welcomes Touted Prospects

One of the most intriguing story lines of Friday’s football game against Brown has nothing to do with football.

For the fifth year in a row, men’s basketball coach Tommy Amaker will welcome a number of highly-touted high schoolers to campus during the weekend of the football team’s home opener in an effort to persuade them to select Harvard and turn down offers from major schools in the process.

The former Michigan and Seton Hall coach will have his hands fuller than ever on Friday, as he hosts eight prospects from the high school classes of 2012 and 2013—six of whom are currently in the MaxPreps.com Top 100 rankings for their year.

Amaker has employed the football night game tactic recently with varying success. Neither of the two top targets that visited two years ago is currently on the Harvard roster, but exactly one year ago, current freshman Kenyatta Smith committed to joining the Crimson during his official visit.

But this time around, Amaker’s recruiting targets have set him apart from not only his peers in the Ivy League, but also his own track record.

“An Ivy League school staying in the mix with these guys is shocking,” Jeff Borzello, a college basketball writer at CBSSports.com, said. “There’s been high-major head coaches at mid-major schools before, and it doesn’t work like this. I think it’s really impressive.”

CLASS OF 2016?

The star-studded list of visitors begins with Harvard-Westlake School (Calif.) senior Zena Edosomwan, one of the premier big men on the West Coast.

“Very much a kid who plays hard in the lane, a finisher,” ESPN analyst Dave Telep said. “Kind of a blue-collar guy that has really erupted in the last year or so. A back-end top-100 player, just a very trustworthy power forward.”

The 6’8”, 230-lb Edosomwan, who carries a 3.0 GPA and will be taking the SAT next month, is considering a final list of five schools: the University of Southern California, University of Washington, UC Berkeley, University of Texas, and Harvard. He will decide in November after completing his official visits.

“[Assistant coach Yanni] Hufnagel is someone I really respect, and I met Coach Amaker some time during the spring,” said Edosomwan, who is ranked the No. 12 power forward in the nation by Scout.com. “They’ve recruited me very hard. I really understand and see where they’re trying to take this program.”

Fellow front-court presence Mike Hall, standing at 6’10”, 195 pounds, will be making his way to campus as well.

The Rivals.com three-star prospect is coming off of a trip to UPenn last weekend and has also made an official visit at George Mason. He said recently that Harvard rounds out his top three schools but that he also has offers from Northwestern and Memphis. A senior at Woodward Academy (Ga.), he has a 3.4 GPA and plans to retake the SAT soon.

“Hall is a long-term stock as a four- or a five-man,” Telep said. “Length and ability to change ends and run the floor are two of his calling cards. The next step for him is going from prospect to player.”

“In the Ivy League, he could dominate,” Borzello added. “By his junior year, people could be saying, ‘How did he get to Harvard?’”

Completing the trio of 2012 attendees is Siyani Chambers, a Hopkins High (Minn.) senior given three stars by both Rivals.com and Scout.com.

A friend of current Harvard freshman Jonah Travis, the 5’11”, 160-lb point guard said his top two choices are Harvard—which he said began recruiting him in eighth grade—and UC Davis, to which he has a trip scheduled. He is also speaking with UC Santa Barbara and Loyola Marymount.

“I think he’s a really solid point guard and he would be a good fit for Harvard,” said Borzello of Chambers, who possesses a 3.7 GPA and recently retook the ACT for the third time. “He could run the show for four years.”

THE BIG SHOTS OF 2017

Perhaps even more eye-opening is the fivesome of high school juniors also exploring Cambridge this weekend. Amaker and his staff are welcoming an impressive array of high school talent; all are consensus top-100 players, and several of them are among the best 50 in the country.

In short, they are unlike anything Harvard has ever seen before.

Because they are not seniors, the five are embarking upon self-financed unofficial visits.

“They could be going to Louisville, they could be going to Georgetown, and they’re paying their way out to Harvard,” Borzello said. “I think that shows something.”

“I would almost guarantee that 2013 group is unparalleled in terms of any campus [hosting players this weekend],” Borzello added.

The headline act of the show is likely 6’7”, 190-lb Brannen Greene, who along with his 4.0 GPA, boasts offers from Florida, Florida State, Georgia Tech, UConn, Louisville, and Kansas, among others.

Given a 97 by ESPN and ranked No. 16 in the U.S. by CBS, Greene visited Florida State last weekend and UConn yesterday. He’ll also be heading to Kansas for its Midnight Madness event.

“I love Coach Amaker, and I love Coach Hufnagel,” Greene said. “I’m looking forward to seeing what it’s like up there and taking it from there.”

“His stroke is fantastic, really deep range,” said Borzello of the Mary Persons High (Ga.) junior. “I think that would be an unbelievable get for Harvard.”

Greene said he will make a short list around November and a decision the month after.

Greene will be meeting up with his friend Stephen Domingo of St. Ignatius High (Calif.) in Cambridge. A 6’7”, 195-lb wing player with a 3.4 GPA, Domingo has visited Georgetown and UC Berkeley and plans to visit Arizona and Washington as well.

“The schools that are getting visits, I really want to see what they have to offer. There’s something about those schools,” said Domingo, dubbed the 28th-best player in the nation by ESPN and called one of the best prospects on the West Coast by Telep.

MORE TEAMMATES, MORE FRIENDS

Converging in Cambridge will be another a pair of AAU teammates, Davon Reed and Austin Colbert.

Reed, a consensus four-star guard standing at 6’5” and 190 pounds with a 6’10 wingspan, holds offers from Boston College, St. Joseph’s, Temple, and Xavier (among others) and will be visiting Virginia Commonwealth next weekend.

“The way he and Austin [Colbert] carry themselves—it’s rare today, especially rare for elite athletes, to be that humble, that well-spoken, and that level-headed,” said Paris McLean, Reed’s coach at Princeton Day School (N.J.).

“He’s a really good scorer, he can shoot the ball, can get to the rim well,” Borzello said. “I think he’s a top-50 guy in the class.”

According to Fred Benjamin, his coach at the Hotchkiss School (Conn.), the majority of Big East schools are showing interest in junior Austin Colbert, including North Carolina, Louisville, Villanova, and Xavier.

“Another four-man who has a tremendous amount of natural ability,” Telep said of Colbert, Scout’s No. 7 power forward in the country. “He is a face-up ‘4’ who can give you something on the defensive end as well.”

The final visitor will be 6’7, 215-lb Alex Foster, rated four stars and No. 82 in his class by MaxPreps.com.

Foster has visited Valparaiso and Tennessee—which he said are his only offers so far—and is interested in Wake Forest, DePaul, and Notre Dame.

“Me and [Coach Hufnagel] have been tight ever since [we met],” Foster said. “He calls me his ‘little brother.’ Me and Coach Amaker, we’ve only talked once, but I’m sure he’s a pretty cool guy just like Yanni is.”

“Butler’s heavy on him,” Borzello said of the De La Salle Institute (Ill.) junior. “He runs the floor well.”

It’s hard to imagine that the weekend could have had an additional blue-chipper. Junior guard Nigel Williams-Goss of Findlay Prep (Ariz.), rated 40th in the country by Rivals.com, said he would have liked to visit but could not, due to his school’s travel schedule.

‘A VERY, VERY BIG DEAL’

Regardless, the significance of this weekend for Harvard basketball cannot be understated.

“To score a single commitment from that package of players would be a very, very big deal for Harvard,” Telep said.

And it’s also a big deal for Amaker, who was tempted by a job offer from the University of Miami in April but chose to stay in Cambridge.

Add the fact that the league presidents voted this summer to raise the minimum Academic Index required for prospective athletes to enroll in an Ivy program, and it’s possible that if none of these high school students commit to Harvard for the long haul, Amaker might not either.

And so, the Harvard coaching staff will do its best to make this opportunity count.

“It all comes down to one thing,” Telep said. “How many of those kids do you get?”

—Staff writer Dennis J. Zheng can be reached at dzheng12@college.harvard.edu.