Wenyen Gabriel has sort of gotten lost in the shuffle of Providence recruiting talk over the last couple of weeks. Gabriel blew up this summer and received offers from some of the most blue blood programs in college basketball. He cut his list to a final 5 and included Providence but the Friars were the last of his 5 to have an official visit date set so Friar fans were not feeling optimistic, having been spurned by their top target before in previous recruiting years. Gabriel did set a visit date for an official visit to Providence on Wednesday and Friartown is abuzz with talk of what this means for their chances of landing the top 20 recruit.
It’s fair to say that Justice Kithcart‘s recruitment has taken off recently. At this time last year Kithcart’s offer list consisted of only Northern Arizona. The Lumberjacks play in the Big Sky conference. Kithcart has received 10 offers since the first evaluation period in April and 6 of those 10 came from school’s that would be considered high major, including the Friars. Ed Cooley is casting a wide net in his attempt to replace the dynamic Kris Dunn next season and Kithcart likes what Cooley has been saying enough to include Providence as one of the 5 schools that will get an official visit from the North Carolina native.
Providence was among 10 teams to make 2016 PF Kevin Marfo‘s cut down list in mid-August. Marfo’s plan was to entertain all 10 of those schools and for each of them to present their case to the New Jersey native during visits to his school. The first day that could happen was September 9th when the recruiting period began and schools trekked to Worcester Academy to try to convince the powerful big man to buy their recruiting pitch. Marfo decided to cut his list down even further on Tuesday night to a final 5.
2016 PF Kevin Marfo of Worcester Academy and BABC cut his list to a final 5 last night and Providence was among the finalist. The other 4 schools on the list are Boston College, DePaul, George Washington and Rhode Island.
USA Basketball has become a big part of Providence’s basketball program because head coach Ed Cooley has taken on growing responsibilities with the organization over the last few years. In the summer of 2013 Cooley was a court coach during training camp in Colorado Springs. In 2014 Cooley was named as an assistant coach on Billy Donovan’s staff for the U18 USA National Team that participated and won gold at the 2014 FIBA Americas U18 Championship. After Donovan took the head coaching job with the Oklahoma City Thunder Cooley’s fellow assistant on Donovan’s U18 staff Sean Miller was promoted to head coach of the U19 team and Cooley remained as Miller’s assistant for the 2015 FIBA U19 World Championship. That squad also brought home the gold from Crete, Greece.
The search for a point guard is heating up for Ed Cooley and his staff and they have a lot of irons in the fire. They extended another offer to a 2016 lead guard on Monday with Word of God Christian Academy’s Jalen Harris being the recipient. Harris was visited at his home on Sunday by Providence coaches, according to Jamie Shaw of PhenomHoopReport.com. Shaw was the first to report the offer being made and he also tweeted that Harris plans to visit Providence officially on October 9th.
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