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Basketball: PF prospect to visit this weekend
By Jeff Faraudo
Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 at 11:24 am in Basketball, Recruiting.
Power forward prospect James Johnson will make an official campus visit to Berkeley this weekend, his coach confirmed. The trip will coincide with the Bears’ football season opener Saturday night against Maryland.
The 6-9, 220-pounder from Elsinore HS in Wildomar is rated as the No. 21 prospect in the country by scout.com, although he is just the No. 99 prospect, according to rivals.com.
Coach Pete Rettinger of Elsinore said Johnson has pretty much narrowed his list to five schools: Cal, Arizona, Arizona State, Virginia and Oklahoma. He has a trip to Virginia set up for a week from now, and wants to pick a school in time for the November letter-of-intent signing period, his coach said.
Wednesday night update: Talked tonight to Johnson’s father, Ted, who said Oklahoma State also is among his son’s finalists. He confirmed the campus visits to Cal and Virginia, and said James hopes to limit himself to three or four trips before settling on a school.
Cal has been involved from the beginning, he said, and is very much in the hunt.
After a strong performance on the suummer camp circuit, according to Rettinger, “even more colleges now are calling.” UCLA and Notre Dame are among the recent suitors, but Rettinger said, “I don’t know if they’re really in the mix.”
Johnson, a native of Alberta Canada, spent last season at Morse High in San Diego, but was not cleared by the CIF to play because his family lived in the Lake Elsinore area. So he transferred to Elsinore over the summer and has impressed his new coach.
“Oh gosh, very talented,” Rettinger said. “But before being a great basketball player, he’s a great young man, just super on and off the floor. He’s an extremely hard worker, very conscientious. Whomever gets to land him, is getting a blue-collar worker. He’ll work every day.”
Rettinger said his involvement with Johnson began only about four weeks ago, but he has watched him play in several game and practice situations.
”He’s just very gifted, very athletic. He moves very well up and down the floor, jumps very well, attacks the rim very well. He shoots the ball well from the perimeter,” Rettinger said. “Whomever lands him, they’re going to have a very versatile player.”
Robert Sumler, his would-be coach at Morse, said Johnson carries a 3.6 grade-point average.
“He’s a great kid, a leader,” Sumler said in a June interview. ”When we got the word that (the CIF) denied him, he still came to practice. He didn’t have to. He sat on the bench and cheered on his teammates.
“He’s just an ideal student-athlete for a coach. He comes without any baggage, a real humble kid, from a Christian family. He’s going to go real far, not only as a student-athlete but as a young man.”
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September 2nd, 2009 at 4:29 pm
The Bears really need another big man in this class if he’s the guy Monty is targeting I hope he pulls the trigger for Cal.
Go Bears
September 3rd, 2009 at 10:20 am
Well, based on this list of schools, I would certainly think Cal is going to be the choice. Oklahoma and Ok State? Are you kidding me? Dude is going to take a trip to campus and ask himself what he was thinking? Unless grandma is baking apple pie nearby…
And while I often recommend to youngsters to move away for college, U. VA. is hardly on that list. It’s WAY too far away from D.C. (a great college town) to be interesting, in my humble opinion.
Meanwhile, Berkeley is a great school in a great region. Johnson, coming from Canada via San Diego WOULD be going away to college if he comes up here. And Monty is a big man’s coach. Sounds like a great fit.
Let’s show him a great time. Go Bears!
September 3rd, 2009 at 10:54 am
Double Uh Oh:
“I have some grandparents in Oklahoma,” he told OUHoops.com. “And some aunt’s and uncle’s, too. We go there as much as we can, but we hadn’t gotten out there in a while. They’re OU fans, all the way. If I go there they’re going to be die hard fans for sure. They definitely want me to be out there.”
http://ouhoops.com/?p=500
September 3rd, 2009 at 11:42 am
Final thought on Johnson:
OU lost Taylor and Blake Griffin in the post to the NBA draft, but has 2 centers joining the team as freshmen this fall: 6’9″ Andrew Fitzgerald (4 stars), and 6’8″ 290 lbs Keith Gallon (5 stars).
Would Johnson view this as a negative – that there are highly rated players in front of him who might cut down on his playing time? Or would he view it as a positive – that he’d have some more serious practice competition at OU (compared to who Cal will have)?
At Cal, he and Solomon could start as a rising tandem right away. At OU, he could be buried on the bench for some time.
September 3rd, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Oklahoma has a lot more recent history as a good program than Cal does. You shouldn’t dismiss their chances just because Bay Area would turn up their nose at living in Oklahoma. That said, I think Cal has a good chance with this kid.
September 4th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Yogi:
you are right. I came off snobbish and regionally biased. However, if you aren’t going to play ball professionally after college, then I think recruits shouldn’t concern themselves with how successful a program has been on the court – at least not to the extent of splitting hairs between the Cal and OU teams. Rather, the overall college experience should come into play, and the degree one earns. In this regard, I think most nationally would point toward Cal over Oklahoma.
Johnson doesn’t sound like a future pro. There are only about 45 per year, very rare!