Four-Star Recruit Dwight Powell Chooses Stanford Over Harvard

Yet another top-tier basketball recruit has dashed the hopes of the Crimson faithful. Highly-touted prospect Dwight Powell ended his recruitment Saturday, verbally committing to Stanford. The 6’10” center, a Canadian native attending IMG Basketball Academy in Florida, chose to join the Cardinal over Georgia Tech and Harvard.

“…next year I will be attending Stanford harvard is a great institution and has a great coaching staff and I wish them luck with the posative [sic] direction they are going in but Stanford is the place for me,” Powell said via text.

Rated a four-star prospect by Scout.com and the third-best center in the nation by ESPN, Powell rose steadily up the recruiting rankings as an athletic big man with a variety of perimeter skills.

Stanford was long regarded as Powell’s favorite, but his September visit to Cambridge gave some hope that the big man might join the Crimson. In the end, the lures of an athletic scholarship and Pac-10 competition ended up being the difference.

After having missed out on upper-echelon recruits Rod Odom (who committed to Arizona) and Keala King (Arizona State), Harvard coach Tommy Amaker and his staff will now focus their efforts on players more typical of an Ivy program in building upon a recruiting class that so far consists of one commit—Northfield Mount Hermon’s Matt Brown.