The NBPA Top 100 Camp in Charlottesville, VA is widely considered one of the best camps each summer. There are a lot of instructors/coaches/speakers that the players recognize including current and former NBA players and the talent pool of the campers is very deep.
Here are the PC recruits that are in attendance this week:
Kobi Simmons – 2016 – 6’5 PG – St. Francis HS/Atlanta, GA
Starting at midnight on June 15th, coaches can begin making unlimited phone calls (among other methods of communication) to members of the class of 2016. Prior to this date contact was pretty well regulated for members of that class. Who a coach calls on June 15th will be a pretty good indication to the player and fans of a particular program what player(s) are being made a priority for 2016.
Ed Cooley will be out in Colorado coaching the USA Basketball U18 squad until June 26th but here are four candidates from the class of 2016 to get a call from Ed Cooley on June 15th:
Braxton Blackwell
Jalen Lindsey’s former teammate at CPA in Nashville, Braxton Blackwell is having a really solid AAU season running with the Atlanta Celtics who compete in the Adidas Grassroots events. So far during the Spring, Blackwell and the Celtics have played in Dallas, Indianapolis and Orlando.
He is a consensus top 30 player in the class of 2016 per the ranking services. Rivals has him at 29th and ESPN has him at 25th.
Miles Bridges
Another former teammate of Jalen Lindsey’s, though this time from Huntington Prep in West Virginia, Miles Bridges has had one of the better Spring AAU seasons of anyone in the country in the class of 2016. He is running with The Family on the AAU circuit and he has carried them at times throughout the Nike EYBL season. His numbers from the 16 games he played in the EYBL regular season are 14.1 ppg on 46.7% from the field 6.7 rpg 1.0 spg, 1.4 bpg in 27.9 mpg. He has hit a number of game tying or winning shots and had a 17 point, 15 rebound game against Team SCAN in May in Hampton, VA.
Bridges has shot up the player rankings in the class of 2016 as well. He cracked the top 10 in the ESPN rankings released on June 4th, coming in at number 8 overall in the class. The Rivals list has him at 33rd but it was released March 28th which was about a month before the Spring AAU season began. I would expect him to rise rapidly on their list if he keeps playing like he has.
Joshua Langford
Another player that may be getting a call from Ed Cooley is Blackwell’s AAU teammate, Joshua Langford. Langford is a force. Plain and simple. He is a consensus top 25 player in the class right now and has finally been able to fully showcase his game after dealing with some injuries. He was Mr. Basketball in Alabama as a freshman in 2013. His high national ranking is largely due to his past play and reputation but he is now fully healthy and reinforcing that ranking. ESPN moved him up to 11th while Rivals has him at 21st.
Kobi Simmons
If you haven’t noticed by now, the Atlanta Celtics are LOADED on the AAU circuit. Kobi Simmons is teammates with Blackwell and Langford on that Celtics squad. PC has offered 4 out of the 5 starters from the team (Kaiser Gates is another highly ranked 2016 player) and with good reason. Simmons is a big play-making point guard, measuring 6’4. He was on the 2013-14 USA Basketball Men’s Developmental National Team and recently was in Treviso, Italy playing in the Adidas EuroCamp. He is ranked 28th by Rivals and 29th by ESPN in the class.
Well the Spring struggles continue for Ed Cooley and the Providence Friars. Antoine Mason choosing Auburn is a blow to PC’s quest to find a guard to fill the void after Josh Fortune bailed on Providence a few weeks ago.
While it’s slightly different because it’s a 5th year graduate transfer, this adds to Cooley’s Spring whiffs that most notably includes former Brewster Academy and St. John’s player Jakarr Sampson. While logic seemed to dictate that Mason should end up at Providence because of the plethora of minutes available at the shooting guard position and the chance to be on a team that went to the NCAA Tournament a year ago, for Mason it seems like the relationship that his dad has with Auburn assistant coach Chuck Person and Person’s NBA pedigree were deciding factors. Mason told Adam Zagoria “It was close but [I liked the intangibles].”
It was a close decision I would like to thank every school who had interest in me
Well as I said to someone last night, PC is now scraping at the bottom of the barrel to try to find someone to play a significant role for this team next season. There have been mentions of PC’s interest in guys like Amari Hamilton and Armel Potter. If I had to pick one of those two I’d take Potter because he can scored a ton in high school and PC needs some scoring on this roster. There is also the possibility of Tramaine Isabell who is visiting Missouri on June 19th. Isabell is better than the two guys I mentioned above but there have been whispers about him being able to qualify next year. It will be interesting to see if maybe they try to pressure a kid like Dupree McBrayer, who they just had on campus for a visit last weekend, to go back to 2014 and come to PC next season. I also wouldn’t be surprised if a name we have never heard of surfaced, possibly an international player. Cooley and staff have made trips to the Canarias Basketball Academy in Spain in the past so maybe there is a guy they can pull from there. There is no question the Friars have a hole at the 2 guard spot right now and their roster doesn’t seem to have an obvious answer.
With most AAU events for the spring already behind us, many of the top players attended individual camps last weekend. The most notable of those camps was the invitation only Pangos All-American Camp. While the dynamic is a bit different at an individual player camp than an AAU team event, the cream still rises to the top. More on that later. This was also a big week for ESPN and Scout to release updated player rankings for the classes of 2015, 2016 and even 2017. Scout only jumped into the mix with their updated class of 2015 rankings but there was a fairly significant amount of movement and also a few PC recruits made their debut or were no longer part of the top 100. For the Scout 2015 rankings, click here. For the ESPN 2015 rankings, click here. For the ESPN 2016 rankings, click here. For the ESPN 2017 rankings, click here.
Isaiah Briscoe moved up 10 spots, from No. 26 to No. 16. Briscoe has performed tremendously at every stop this spring and summer, showcasing a leaner body, quicker first step and more controlled (but not too controlled) style. He ranks among the most talented, confident and aggressive scorers in the class.
Antonio Blakeney (pictured, above) vaulted from No. 39 all the way to No. 20. He has emerged as one of the most prolific shooters and scorers in the EYBL and now projects as a potential, or even likely, McDonald’s All-American.
When Malik Beasley is in the house, people tend to notice. Beasley is one of the country’s most explosive leapers and also is a capable, if streaky, jump shooter. He had been unranked but now sits at No. 58. If he can tighten his ballhandling, he’s another prospect who could make another big jump later.
And then there’s another spring wonder, Steve Enoch. The athletic and skilled power forward from Connecticut debuts in our rankings at No. 61 and may be able to rise from there. He has proved he can hold his own against other national-caliber big men and now simply needs more exposure to solidify his place. His recruitment likely will blow up in July.
ESPN updated their class of 2016 rankings from the top 25 to the top 60 today. Providence is involved with more than 10% of the ESPN top 60.
Similar to Adam Finkelstein yesterday with the class of 2015, Reggie Rankin offered “Ten things to know about the ESPN 60”. The below are excerpts where a PC recruit is mentioned by Rankin:
3. There are some big-time wing scorers in the Class of 2016. These bucket-getters attack defenders and are difficult to deal with when they have the ball in their hands. Shooting guards Malik Monk and Josh Langford, small forwards Mario Kegler and V.J. King and SG Tyus Battle lead the top 20 players.
5. Combination forward Miles Bridges and point guardDennis Smith are fresh faces in the top 10 because of their consistent production. A few dominant performances this spring on the travel circuit clearly separated them from their peers.
8. There’s a lot of variety and versatility in the 2016 class. Many players can play and excel at two positions, both in the post and on the perimeter. A few examples are Bridges, Omari Spellman, Amir Coffey, Vance Jackson and Kobi Jordan-Simmons.
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