rutgers gets lamizana

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SoCalHoops Recruiting News

Rutgers Loses One To L.A., Gets
Another Away From L.A.--(Oct. 14, 1999)

Rutgers may have lost Josh Moore (7'-0" Gr. PF/C) to UCLA when he failed to qualify (Josh is taking classes at a JC in New Jersey and plans to move to L.A. in January and enroll at Santa Monica CC while he gets eligible to play at UCLA), but they picked up one that another L.A. Pac-10 school had been chasing pretty hard:

Herve Lamizana (6'-8" Sr. PF) from St. Patrick in Elizabeth, New Jersey, who had an official visit at USC, was obviously not too impressed with the Trojans because he made it official today for Rutgers, giving them a verbal commitment. According to Clark Francis at the Hoop Scoop, "This is important for several reasons. First, it is big for Scarlet Knights to continue to get the top players in North Jersey. Second, it establishes that they can get players from Patrick High School, which is a program that has traditionally sent its best players to Seton Hall (i.e Shaheem Holloway and Samuel Dalembert). Third, Lamizana isn't a finished product by any means, but he is one of the best athletes in the class and, as a result, he has a lot of natural talent and potential. Plus he's a great kid!"

The elimination of Lamizana means that the Trojans will be looking even harder at guys like Jared Jeffries (6'-10" Sr. PF/C) from Bloomington, Indiana, and the word is now that they've offered his buddy, A.J. Moye (6'-4" Sr. SG) from East Point HS in Westlake, GA, who is rumored to be best friends and perhaps the closest confidant of Jeffries. The two of them have their own specialty web message boards over at Insider's Report, where people are fawning all over the two young players, requesting that they commit to a particular fan's school, and asking all kinds of personal questions. . . it's really a pretty unique concept, sort of a single topic message board, where the only real topic is the recruit.

But back to USC. So with the elimination of Lamizana, Jeffries, and perhaps even Andrew Zahn, takes on added importance for the Trojans. Where does this leave players like Nick Enzweiler (6'-6" Sr. SF/SG) Campolinda HS, in Moraga, CA, or Brennan Martin (6'-6" Sr. SG) from Trabuco Hills? Well, if USC gets both Moye and Jeffries, something which would just drive the Indiana folks nuts (sorry, no offense intended to those B. Knight fans), it's probably safe to say that both Nick and Brennan would be out, because right now, after the Farmer commitment, it looks like USC still only has two scholarships (but that's because they are short one due to the problem which occurred last year where they had one too many players over the limit, which is why it pays to have a good compliance officer). But if Jeffries and Moye don't come, then it's certainly going to open things up again for a guy like Zahn,and for Nick and Brennan. Stay tuned, because this could be a big weekend, since Moye will reportedly be at Indiana's Midnight Madness and Jeffries will be at Duke's (with Adam Boone).