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SoCal College Recruiting News

UCLA's Recruiting Class:
We Get Letters...Man, Do We Get Letters--(May 8, 1998)

A couple of days ago, we wrote that in our humble opinion, we thought UCLA's recruiting class was the No. 1 class in the country, ahead of DePaul's incoming group of freshmen. Several people though wrote to point out a couple of errors or to complain about the article.

First: Yes, we know that Ryan "Moose" Bailey (not to be confused with Jerome "Moosey" Moiso) is not going be a freshman. We are aware that he will be a sophomore, having red-shirted last season after attending Penn State for his freshman year before transferring to UCLA. We should have changed the stupid chart which the Times created.

Second: We agree that omm'a Givens was far and away the prize recruit in his class. No offense intended, and we hope none was taken.

In fact, as one of our readers, who signed his letter only "Rob", pointed out, Givens was the "only one who was a top 20 prospect. And a McDonald's AA to boot."

Rob also got pretty passionate about our comparison of Barnes and Young to Bailey and Henderson. He wrote:

"As far as comparing Barnes and Young to Bailey and Henderson- the comparison may work as far as the type of players they are, but clearly the Barnes-Young duo is more highly regarded coming out of high school than the others. Ray Young is a consensus top 20/ McD AA- neither Bailey nor Henderson were close to this. So overall I agree with your assessment, just think you missed a couple of points."

And Rob also pointed out that Farnam's scholarship was always well-known to be conditional, and subject to year to year review. We knew that, but should have made that a bit clearer. "So it is pretty clear that he is a candidate for no scholarship. It's unclear who has higher priority between he and Bailey, but almost certainly it will be one of them."

Rob also had some definite opinions about Ryan Bailey being a possible walk-on if Farhnam keeps his scholarship or if UCLA wants to give someone else a ride after Loyd graduates next year:

As far as Bailey goes, I found it bizzare that the Times listed him as a freshman, and that you did not correct this. The guy started as a freshman at Penn St. Now he is a sophomore, period. While I can see him being on scholarship this year over Farnham, unless someone either tranfers or leaves for the NBA next year, he almost for sure will be a non scolarship player. It seems pretty clear that UCLA feels it has a least 2 rides to give next year to the group of Boozer, Kapono, and Rush, etc.... If this is true they will need Loyd's after he graduates, plus the 13th from this year. This seems to point to Bailey being a walk-on for much of his career. It seems very possible with big bro making some NBA money, that the family may have felt it was worth it for Ryan to pay his own way to be able to play at the family's favorite scool and so close to home. Then, if a few of these vaunted recruits do leave early, he might pick up a scholarship again later on.

Er, um. Ok.