2021 Recruiting - WBB

DFW_Horn said:
Nice to see Kyndall working hard but not sure how to feel about a professional trainer using it to drum up business. Then again, I am a bit suspicious of everyone’s motives.

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Why is that suspicious? Thats what most in the profession do.....

Access to fame/talent = $$$. That has always been true
 
She should be able to maintain the FT average. I expect though that she'll be defended a lot more closely on the threes once she gets to Texas.
 
CreakyHorn said:
She should be able to maintain the FT average. I expect though that she'll be defended a lot more closely on the threes once she gets to Texas.
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In the big 12 they do play a lot of zone and Vic does run the dribble drive against the zone and that could really benefit her game. If you remember, Texas did get a bunch of open 3 point shots against the zone all season long but we just couldn't make our shots consistently up until the end of the season. With the shooting of Hunter and Kobe, Texas will make a bunch of teams switch to zone. Rori, Hunter and Kobe bring consistent shooting to this team.
 
Jacob Johnson said:
In the big 12 they do play a lot of zone and Vic does run the dribble drive against the zone and that could really benefit her game. If you remember, Texas did get a bunch of open 3 point shots against the zone all season long but we just couldn't make our shots consistently up until the end of the season. With the shooting of Hunter and Kobe, Texas will make a bunch of teams switch to zone. Rori, Hunter and Kobe bring consistent shooting to this team.
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And Matharu.... Also, Audrey is a very decent outside shooter, but having to play out of position last season didn't allow her to focus on that part of her game. I expect that to change some next season.
 
From that NJCAA list, the POY, Australian Forward, Rebekah Dallinger, signed with KSU earlier this week.

Karen has the NJCAA player from Blinn headed to UTSA.
 
UTSA only won 2 games last season and went 0-14 in conference; Karen has already signed some good players, she’s gonna make some noise in CUSA within a few seasons.
 
brnkj said:
And Matharu.... Also, Audrey is a very decent outside shooter, but having to play out of position last season didn't allow her to focus on that part of her game. I expect that to change some next season.
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JJ and Brnkj make good points. My thinking was simplistically that she will face better competition. You are saying that she will also have better teammates. Defenses always have to focus on those who are most dangerous. Hopefully we'll have an inside presence that opens up the outside. I'm remembering the Desoto - Cy Creek championship game.
 
So, Arkansas' head coach tweeted a hog emoji earlier today which indicates they landed a player; most believe it is former Baylor signee, Maryam Dauda. One thing's for sure, she won't be attending Baylor . . .


 
Free article from another site (247sports):

Harmon & Hunter: How Cy Creek's two All-Americans could help shape the future of Texas women's basketball

When Texas women's basketball coach Vic Schaefer arrived on campus in April of 2020, buzz about the future potential of the women's basketball program started to reach heights that the program hadn't seen in over a decade. And in his first season as head coach, Schaefer didn't disappoint and instead surpassed early expectations for how his first-year squad would perform.

Not only did he lead the Longhorns to their first Elite Eight appearance since 2016, but he was also the first coach in UT history to have a player go No. 1 overall in the WNBA draft after Charli Collier went first to the Dallas Wings in this spring's draft.

The success has been there on the court, and there are signs of it improving even more in the 2021-22 season, but possibly Schaefer's strongest achievements to this point are what he has been able to do on the recruiting trail.

Texas' 2021 class finished among the best in the nation with multiple top 25 recruits inking with the Longhorns, spearheaded by a duo from the same Houston-area high school, five-star point guard Rori Harmon and four-star guard Kyndall Hunter, that tore up the Houston-area basketball scene for four years at Cy Creek High School.

From the moment Harmon and Hunter stepped on campus at Cy Creek, head coach Jennifer Alexander knew that these two would be the best players to touch her court for years to come. As a result, they were given the keys to the team at a young age and directed the program into the most success it ever saw in the school's history.

“As eighth graders, we knew that they were very talented," Alexander said. "When they stepped on the scene early on, they just played. When you’re the two best players, you gotta play them. There was obviously a lot of learning and growing with shot selection, playing both sides of the ball for 32 minutes. But they were the best two on the floor from the moment they stepped on the court their freshman year in August.”

Even still as a player in middle school, Rori Harmon emerged early on as a twitchy playmaking two-way guard that put her in an elite class as one of the best point guards in the country on both sides of the ball. While it became a completely different game when she reached the high school level, having the experience early on as a freshman helped grow her into the player she would become by her upperclassman years.

“I definitely didn’t expect a lot, I was just expecting to play basketball," Harmon said. "I thought it would be a lot like middle school, I didn’t even know there were playoffs. But I had to step up as a leader early on as a freshman and that taught me a lot.”

While she was able to maintain one of the highest scoring averages in the Houston area during her time at the high school level, Harmon especially excels on the defensive side of the ball where she averaged 4.8 steals per game across her four year career at Cy Creek.

“Defense is my first thing," she said. "How to get easy buckets is to get steals, that’s how I think. Playing defense is hard and you gotta learn how to play defense. I let defense turn into transition, you wanna make the game as easy as possible and transition creates that.”

Coach Alexander has been able to see the growth in Rori firsthand as she has grown into one of the best defending guards in the country.

“There’s no doubt that she’s a talent on both sides," Alexander said. "That’s probably the biggest draw is that she plays both sides. She can lock down anybody with the exception of maybe some 6-foot-4 post player, but she can lock down any guard in the country. She’s just an impact player.”

Kyndall Hunter first met Rori Harmon in a crosstown middle school clash that had most of the city of Cypress buzzing. With rumors about two of the best guards in Houston facing off against each other in a middle school game starting to pop, the hype around the two only started to grow.

“I first heard about Rori playing AAU," Hunter said. "7th grade came and everyone was saying it was a battle between the best guards in Houston. It was crazy because there were so many people there for a middle school game. Of course we were competitors on the court but our relationship grew when we got to high school together.”

Talented in her own right, Hunter is one of the best pure scoring guards in the country as she can knock down a shot or execute a tough bucket at all three levels and can find unlimited range behind the three-point line.

“One of the biggest things is that she grew into her body and became stronger," Coach Alexander said. "That’s what’s helped develop her range, the kid can pull up from near the logo. And I tell you what, she’s in the gym nonstop. She puts in the work and I just think that’s special. All kids train and most play AAU, but what are they doing on their own?”

It was a struggle early on for Hunter to be able to do things on her own as early in her basketball playing days, she would have to sneak into her brother's AAU practices to get some work in the gym.

“I started off watching my brother play AAU," Hunter said. "My dad actually didn’t let me play basketball, I played the piano for quite some time. Once my dad saw that I really wanted to play though, I would sneak into practice with my brother’s team and my family wouldn’t know about it. My mom would ask why I’m so sweaty. It kind of started from there and I haven’t looked back.”

When it comes to true gym rats, it's hard to find one like Hunter. On good days, you can find her getting some shots up to make it even better, and on bad days, you can find her finding refuge in getting shots up and focusing on the game.

“The gym is probably my favorite place in the world," she said. "If I’m having a bad day, I’ll just get up and go to the gym. When I’m in the gym, nothing else matters.”

The success that Harmon and Hunter saw at Cy Creek was boundless, and their four-year record of 141-13 goes to show how dominant the Cougars backcourt had become. While there were some challenges dealing with that much firepower at the guard positions, Coach Alexander was key in helping the duo manage expectations early on and just play basketball.

“I’ll take this challenge any day with players like this, but there are extremely high expectations," she said. "That is the challenging part. Even early on, we would have anywhere from 25-to-30 coaches in the gym almost daily, so every day in practice they have to be on. You have to be on when you’re in the spotlight as the two best guards in the country. What’s made it easy is that they are great kids and great people. At the end of the day, they just wanna win games and have fun doing it.”

“Coach A has done everything for me," Harmon said. "She’s really the one who taught me how to step up and be a leader. I didn’t want to be the freshman coming in and knocking off all of the seniors but she let the team know that there were gonna be a couple of freshmen coming in that are high-level basketball players.”

In four years, Harmon and Hunter excelled at feeding off of each other's game as Harmon increased her facilitating abilities along with Hunter increasing her scoring abilities.

“Kyndall’s just a good scorer," Harmon said. "She’s good all-around of course but her scoring ability is amazing. I’m a point guard and I like when people can score. I can make the pass and I can trust her to make the shot.”

Despite consistently leading Cy Creek to the national rankings and finishing the season among the nation's best teams, Harmon and Hunter's Cougar teams never were able to reach the ultimate pinnacle of high school basketball and win a state championship. Their four seasons culminated with a state semifinal appearance in 2017-18, a fourth round appearance in 2018-19, and a state runner-up finish in both 2019-20 and 2020-21.

"We had a good four years," Harmon said. "Yes, it is upsetting that we didn’t win a state championship but we made a lot of history. I don’t want to let all of the negative fuel me, but I am learning how to turn that negative into positive.”

In their senior season, they led Cy Creek to an undefeated 32-0 record into the state championship against powerhouse DeSoto. However, a stifling DeSoto defensive effort kept the Cougars in check as DeSoto defeated Harmon and Hunter in their final high school game, 53-37. Despite the loss, the duo feels confident that it will only fuel their future endeavors at Texas.

“After we lost the state championship, I talked to Rori and said that this was a part of our story," Hunter said. "This will make us work harder because we know what it’s like to lose again and again. Sometimes when you’re overly successful, you get satisfied so that’s something that will drive us to stay hungry.”

While a state championship never came to fruition, the success still came as their performances on the court led Hunter and Harmon being named McDonald's All-Americans for the 2020-21 season, making them the first pair of women's basketball high school teammates to ever be chosen in the same season.

“It was so cool," Hunter said. "Me and Rori were together when we found out and we both had a feeling we would get it. We had been waiting for this for a long time and it was a goal for both of us. I think it shows that we were both deserving and that we couldn’t have done it without one another.”

While both Harmon and Hunter ended up signing with Texas, each of their recruitments involving the Longhorns went a little differently.

For Harmon, she had developed a strong relationship with Vic Schaefer when he was at Mississippi State. Schaefer had been recruiting her for years at that point and his move to Texas just made their relationship that much stronger.

“We started that relationship when he was at Mississippi State and it was really strong," she said. "I thought that the coaching staff was really amazing. They cared for you as a person, not only as a player. Basketball doesn’t last forever so you wanna be able to fall in love with the people that will be there along the way.”

Shortly after Harmon committed, Hunter started to pop up on the radar of Schaefer and his newly-assembled staff at Texas, and a phone call from Schaefer to Coach Alexander during the height of the COVID-19 shutdown started what would eventually become the beginning of Hunter's story as a Longhorn.

“With Kyndall, Coach Schaefer had called me right after she was named Houston-area Player of the Year," Coach Alexander said. "He said, ‘I don’t know why I’m not recruiting the No. 1 guard in the state of Texas,’ and I said, ‘I don’t know why you aren’t either, Coach.’ She knows that playing at a place like Texas will help her be a pro one day. I’m just excited about both of them.”

Harmon and Hunter are less than two weeks out from reporting to campus for summer camp, and while this time will serve as a good reflection on the success the duo had on the high school level, the excitement about what they can achieve at the college level only continues to build.

“I wanna go and make an immediate impact," Hunter said. "And definitely before I graduate, I want to win a national championship and maybe even more than one.”

The determination to win a national championship remains strong for the duo, and they don't plan on wasting any time on working to achieve that goal as soon as they step on campus, but helping to change the game and perception of women's basketball along the way remains the ultimate goal.

“I want to change the game of women’s basketball and win some national championships along the way," Harmon said. "In the long run, leaving that legacy and changing the game, that’s my goal.”

For what they have been able to achieve up until this point, changing the game is all Harmon and Hunter have done. In asking Coach Alexander, the footprints of their successes will forever be etched in the state of Texas and its women's basketball scene.

“Them both going is one of the more special things for me as a coach," she said. "We built something here special enough where they wanna continue playing together, build something special and impact the game. They’ve changed the landscape of Cy-Fair basketball, Houston basketball and even Texas girls basketball.”
 
So, this has probably been covered already, but does anyone know when the incoming players, freshmen and juco transfers, will actually arrive on campus? If they will be here over the summer, are there official team activities or would it be just individual fitness/training?
 
CreakyHorn said:
So, this has probably been covered already, but does anyone know when the incoming players, freshmen and juco transfers, will actually arrive on campus? If they will be here over the summer, are there official team activities or would it be just individual fitness/training?
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I can’t remember which recruit said it but, sometime in the past few days, she said she’d be on campus in 2 weeks. Not sure about summer workouts but I’d be surprised if they aren’t allowed normal team activities once they are vaccinated.
 
CreakyHorn said:
So, this has probably been covered already, but does anyone know when the incoming players, freshmen and juco transfers, will actually arrive on campus? If they will be here over the summer, are there official team activities or would it be just individual fitness/training?
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June 1st is when they will arrive but don't quote me on that. If not the 1st then definitely during the first week of June
 
What happens over the summer? Will they be enrolled in classes? Organized practices? I have no idea what the NCAA allows these days.
 
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