The suspense is over when it comes to Tacoma guard Ahmaad Rorie, the Oregon Ducks and Dana Altman are the proud winners in what has been a heated battle since Rorie de-committed from Cal a few weeks ago.
Rorie’s decision doesn’t really crush the Cougs’ recruiting efforts, but it certainly takes a bit of the shine off of it, especially after having Tremaine Isabell released from his letter of intent a week ago. One can now only imagine what an Isabell/Rorie backcourt would have looked like for the next four years (and it would’ve looked pretty nice under Ernie Kent’s system).
The Cougs move on now to South Carolina’s Brandon Chauca, who is thought to be even between going to Cal under their new regime or going to WSU under theirs. Any other recruiting for this 2014 class might be very limited and relegated to waiting for transfers (JC, D2 or FBS). So far the class consists of PF Aaron Cheatum, G Jackie Davis Jr. and another G, Nye Redding.
All three of those players are scorers, in particular Davis and Redding from their respective prep schools in Cali and Arizona, but they don’t possess the star power or learning curve that the other two (previously) potential Cougs did. Still, if the Cougs can land Chauca (even if they can’t, but especially if they can), they should be in great shape to begin developing the Ernie Kent style of play in Pullman in year 1.
The tw0-deeps look pretty solid when considering the returns of DaVonte Lacy, Que Johnson and Junior Longrus. Beyond that everybody needs a lot of work to truly become Pac-12 caliber but the potential is ultimately there in spades. We’ll look more at that later but for now the Cougs are still trying to figure out exactly what their roster might look like next season. With two spots to fill, it could be over or a couple additions could once again change some dynamics around.
At any rate much like Mike Leach in year 1 of his time here at WSU, there’s more bad news than expected in the recruiting game for Cougar basketball.