Renardo Sidney visiting this weekend.

S

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Renardo Sidney is the #1 player in the country for the 2009 class. He's a 6'10 240 beast who can shoot from outside. If we were to compare him to Beasley (who he is not as good as) he's not as athletic, but he probably has a better perimeter shot (although Beasley's is very good) and Sidney's post game isn't as good, IMO --- which again, is not really a slight on Sidney.

His mom and dad and AAU coach are flying in to Austin for the weekend. I would think they'd catch the state playoff games at the Erwin Center, as well as tour the campus and attend the Oklahoma State game.

It's an unofficial, which means it's on their own dime. I have a sneaky suspicion Reebok might be helping to fund the trip, but that's just conjecture on my part. I don't think Reebok would help bring him to Texas, but I don't think they'd stand in the way of him going here if that's where he and the family choose, mostly because LaMarcus Aldridge came to campus as a Reebok guy, and left the same way, and TJ Ford came as an adidas guy, and left the same way.

Right now Arizona State leads after the family was blown away by their trip there. Herb Sendek hired James Harden's coach (although I can't recall his name at the moment), and that guy coached Sidney as well when the two of them were teammates.

Still, I have a great deal of confidence in what kind of visit the folks at Texas will be able to give him. The Texas recruiting visit has become one of the most powerful in the country. If UT is losing a recruiting battle these days, it's usually because they couldn't get the kid to campus in the first place.

A class of Renardo Sidney, Jordan Hamilton, and Kenny Boynton --- 3 top 10 kids for 2009 --- is a distinct possibility in the early going. All of them have told folks UT is their favorite at one time or another. Hamilton has been on campus and loved it. Sidney will be on campus this weekend. Boynton will probably be here for the Elite Camp.

That wouldn't be too shabby.
 
Coming in for the state high school tournament will make the state's basketball fanbase appear slightly different than what it is, as well. For the people who have never been to one, you ought to try to go. The atmosphere is electric.
 
I went to the state finals when TJ and Daniel Ewing were seniors at Willowridge... That atmosphere was as electric and energized as the Superdome was for the Final Four 2 years later. Amazing event.
 
Yes, Wesley Witherspoon is also coming in for an official visit. I was going to put up a separate post about him today or tomorrow.
 
It won't hurt that the weather is going to beautiful this weekend....

Sunny with highs in the mid to upper 60's.
 
Appreciate the heads up. If that projected class came, would they all likely be one and done types?

Any thoughts on our 2010 recruit?
 
Sidney would be for sure, and yeah, I'd think Hamilton and Boynton would be as well. But they can't stick around for a second year until they're there for the first one. Brandon Rush was a one and done type when he was recruited. Darrell Arthur didn't expect to spend two years in Lawrence. Both Aldridge and Gibson thought they'd head to the league after a single season when they signed.

Tristan Thompson is going to be a great player. It's exciting Texas has his commitment, and I do feel like it's a strong commitment, but that's still a long ways to go.
 
Another great post as usual SL. A class with just 1 or 2 of the 3 you mentioned would be a great one indeed.
 
Err, SL, love to have Boynton, Hamilton, and Renardo (obviously)...who would be some potential role players for the class at this point (though I know we've discussed this before). I know he's not really a role player, but how's it looking now with Nolan Dennis. It just seems like so many people are interested in UT for '09 that I see no way we don't land a top 5 class at the worst! {Goosebumps chilling my spine just thinking about this class}.
 
Witherspoon had a great visit over the weekend. I don't know anything about his thoughts on the game or afterwards, but he seemed to be having a good time.

The Sidneys didn't get in until noon time Sunday. They'll go back to Los Angeles on Tuesday, so nothing to report there. They were playing it cool at the game.
 
I saw Witherspoon smile and point out the sign that Pom Guy made up that had his name on it. Wasn't Brown coming this weekend as well? The Statesman only mentioned Sidney and Witherspoon.
 
Hey SL, was Renardo wearing a light blue shirt in the upper-middle area of the black seats? What are our chances with Witherspoon, he seems like a guy that could at least come in and give us a tall wing...which is always needed with the kind of tiny guards we chronically recruit.
 
It would be pretty awesome if these guys just got together and just decided to all do their one and done's at Texas.

Come in..win a NC...leave. On one hand, that would be cool. on the other, it would suck to start from scratch the next year.
 
Renardo was the guy in the light blue shirt. I don't know if he was acting cool or if he was bored but I did not see him stand up once.
 
He stood up towards the end of the game.

None of the recruits over there --- the HS senior, junior, or all the sophomores, or any members of their family, stood up.

Too much can be taken away from that. They're not fans. They're on something of a business trip.
 
Where do you guys sit relative to these recruits? How obvious is it that an apparently significant subset of the Texas fanbase is watching kids in the crowd as opposed to watching the game?

Kinda creepy. Part and parcel with recruiting in general, I suppose. I just hope we don't have a bunch of binocular-wielding middle-aged wannabe hoopsters drooling over some kids in the crowd.
 
He was about ten rows directly in front of me. My seat was on the aisle. His seat was on the opposite side of the aisle.

He's 6'10, 250lbs. He kind of stands out.

And yeah, we're just staring down a high school kid while the game is going on. Have you been to a game, jimmyjazz? You realize that every now and then there's a stoppage of play?

As far as the standing up and sitting down thing, there were probably about 20-25 people making up the recruiting section of two full rows, stretched from aisle to aisle, about 15 rows up from the floor at around the free throw line. When those whole two rows aren't standing, and everyone around them are, it's pretty obvious. You don't have to be someone gawking or even studying it closely to see it, especially when you're someone who is only 10 rows behind them. Hardwood Horn's seats are real close to mine, so he's in much the same boat.

I'm not saying I'm the mental health example for the nation. I follow recruiting in football and basketball way too closely for that, as well as the college athletic teams in both sports. And that's probably the least of my eccentricities. Heck, all of us posting as regularly as we do on a friggin' message board qualifies as a bigger eccentricity in my opinion, when you get right down to it.

Nonetheless, observations made of the biggest person in the arena, who was sitting so close I could have thrown a miniature stuffed Chik-Fil-A parachuting cow at if I'd been able to obtain one, doesn't seem all that creepy to me.

But you're welcome to come to that conclusion if you wish.

I will say I'm glad I found the internet a good 15 years ago, because before then I wasn't sure if people with my level of fanaticism about this stuff existed. I understand there aren't many on this board, but there have been enough I've met over the years where I feel like less of an outlier than I did as a pre-teen, teenager, and young adult.
 
He probably loved it. He's a big 6'10 kid who wants to play on the perimeter. The way the team completely ignored the low post, he was probably getting excited --- although it wasn't doing much for me.

The program he was most excited about before coming to Texas was Arizona State. If you've watched Herb Sendak's offenses before, either this year or when he was with North Carolina State, you know that ugly wins are par for the course.
 
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