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Arizona Basketball Recruiting is Heating Up

By Shereen Rayan

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Things are about to get a lot more fun and interesting in Tucson as Arizona basketball recruiting is heating up across the country.

T.J. Leaf‘s announcement left Wildcats fans stunned as he tweeted out that he decided to de-commit from Arizona.  It also left his AAU Coach of the Compton Magic stunned as well according to Josh Gershon of Scout.com’s Bruin Report.

"“Leaf’s decommitment was shocking even to his Compton Magic AAU coach, Etop Udo-Ema.”This was very sudden,” Udo-Ema said. “When we were in Atlanta [for the adidas Uprising Championships], he was all in. I had long conversations with him and he was completely in.”According to Udo-Ema, Leaf’s decision was mostly about making sure he made the right decision."

Lots of sports writers and fans are speculating as to the reason he wanted to leave, most conversation centers around three themes:

1) Leaf went to play for Isreal when he was denied a spot on the USA team by Coach Miller, people think he is still mad at Miller.

Comments: This has to be absolutely false. Miller didn’t vote on who made the team as stated on the USA Website, it was a committee who chose who made it and who didn’t so I don’t know if this is correct. Here is an excerpt from our article on how the team was selected:

"Note that the decision of whom makes the final cut for the team is done by committee, a committee led by Syracuse Head Coach Jim Boeheim in which Arizona Coach Sean Miller is not included."

2) Leaf wants to skip college and go play overseas in Isreal then enter the NBA draft next season.

Comments: T.J. just got back to the states literally this last week from playing in the U18 European Championships, winning MVP honors. This makes sense, but not so sure he will want to give up playing in the NCAA.

That said, it did work for Emmanuel Mudiay who went to play in China then entered the draft this year and was drafted No. 7 to the Denver Nuggets. As a side note, Mudiay will be playing with our own Nick Johnson who just got traded to the Nuggets from the Rockets.

3. Leaf is an “Adidas” Compton Magic AAU player who would prefer to go play for UCLA with his Compton Magic teammate Ike Anigbogu because UCLA is an “Adidas” school and Arizona is a “Nike” school and Compton Magic is a UCLA feeder team.

Comments: This Adidas vs. Nike argument is ludicrous IMO, although I did hear it happens in football.  I cannot believe that someone cannot move from Adidas to Nike at this age, before his or her professional career.

Note: Kentucky came calling right after he de-committed to Arizona, and that’s huge!

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Come to think of it, it’s probably pretty hard to have teammates all excited about a rival school like UCLA and you are the only future Wildcat on the team. This decision of Leaf’s was a shock to everyone, they all thought as we did; he was all-in for Arizona. So I am thinking this probably isn’t the reason, but I am not ruling it out.

I spoke to Compton Magic founder and director Etop Udo-Ema to get his response since a lot of folks are speaking for him on his program on his team only feeding UCLA. He explained, “Stanford has three Magic guys right now, CAL, OSU, ASU, and Colorado have all had multiple Magic guys in the same year. Arizona, Washington State and Oregon all have Magic players on them. UCLA doesn’t have a Magic player on the roster this year and hasn’t had one in over 10 yrs.”

Well there you have it, a lot of folks don’t have their facts straight, and Udo-Ema has explained this to plenty of sports media and other sports outlets in the last 24 hours in this whirlwind of social media commentary.

MOVING ON….

This brings us to top class of 2017 recruit point guard Jaylen Hands who is on an unofficial visit to Arizona today, his second. Hands is still deciding between schools and UCLA and Arizona seem to be at the top of his list. He thoroughly enjoyed his first visit when he attended a game against Stanford last season on March 7. According to Bruce Pascoe of the Arizona Daily Star, Hands was impressed:

"“It was crazy. The environment was crazy,” Hands said. “The campus was beautiful, the coaches were great, the players were great. It’s a great place.”"

https://twitter.com/JHANDS08/status/629700536485318656

Rawle Alkins , a Class of 2016 6’4 small forward out of Brooklyn New York, has just been offered by Arizona! He is ranked No. 22 in the ESPN Top 100. Alkins is also offered by many schools including Kentucky, Kansas, Indiana, Louisville and Maryland to name a few.

Also planning a visit to Arizona is Utah small forward Brendan Bailey who is 6’8. Brendan has been offered by rival Arizona State as well as Utah.

In recent articles we have mentioned both Power Forward De’Ron Davis out of Colorado and Point Guard De’Aaron Fox out of Texas both considering Arizona and drawing buzz on social media as of late. Both in the class of 2016.

In addition, we found this tweet from Jordan Schultz (see below.) We don’t know how on target he is, but this would be HUGE! Coach Sean Miller coached Josh Jackson on the U19 USA team who won FIBA Gold this past summer.

Maybe this is the reason T.J. Leaf decommitted? You never know.

Then there is Mitchell Lightfoot who is a 6’8 210 pound power forward from Tucson, Arizona. Lightfoot has promised Sean Miller that Arizona would be his last visit of the three in his plans according to Scout.com: Kansas, Utah and Arizona. There were multiple sightings of Coach Sean Miller and his staff watching Lightfoot in Las Vegas a couple weeks ago.

There’s life after Leaf for Arizona, and there is plenty of exciting decision-making left to be made in the Leaf family home.

Next: T.J.Leaf De-commits from Arizona, what can you say?

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