The week’s big recruiting news

Add another local kid to the list:

Hopewell High basketball player DeMon Brooks, the I-MECK 4A player of the year, has committed to Davidson and will sign next week.

Brooks is a 6-foot-8 center who averaged 18 points and 10 rebounds last season. In college, he’ll play with his high school teammate, Hopewell 6-6 senior guard Jordan Downing.

Telep in an e-mail: Undersized power forward. Worker. Big motor. Solid pickup.

Overlooked

Why coaches miss.

JP: SoCon Freshman of the Year

Back on Dec. 4 in Charleston: These two rookies. And: The Southern Conference Freshman of the Year is going to be a Davidson Wildcat. Today: Kuhlman joins current assistant coach Landry Kosmalski and Stephen Curry as the only Wildcats to claim the coaches’ Freshman of the Year accolade. With Jake, of course, on the all-rookie team, too: It’s the first time Davidson has had two players on the All-Freshman Team since 2003, when Ian Johnson and Brendan Winters earned the honor. Telep in August. JP in Jacksonville. JP Kuhlman from St Paul's Middle School ...: Florida Hoops.

On his way

Telep on Jordan: “He’s just a guy who finds the winner’s circle. He’s not an attention hound and he has a great feel for the game. I love the fact that he can shoot from mid-range and play multiple wing positions. He’s a guy, ultimately, who will end his career underrated because he was always a really good player on really good teams but wasn’t a guy who needed the spotlight.”

Kuhlman a rookie to watch

Robbi at the N&O:

No one can fill the void of Stephen Curry, but the 6-3 combo guard should steadily earn more and more minutes as a back-up ballhandler and perimeter shooter.

Here I’ll offer a reminder of one Dave Telep. Telep has a good eye. He was the first recruiting analyst who looked at a 16-year-old Chris Paul and said not “Too small” but rather “Watch out.” On Stephen? He kinda had an inkling. And on Kuhlman? “He has it. The mysterious it.”

Telep on Kuhlman

Today on the phone: “I’m telling you. Winner. Toughness. No nonsense. Gets after it. He has intangibles. He has it. The mysterious it.”

The newest Wildcat

Downing and Droney. Has a nice ring.

It’s big because it’s early. It’s big because he’s local.

Some stuff:

Scout. Snippets: “has had a very strong pre-senior summer” ... “isn’t afraid to defend.”

Telep on the BlackBerry: “Good player! Winner!”

ESPN in April: Downing is a good athlete with great length on the wing. He runs the floor in transition and can get to the rim with ease. In the half court he scores with a nice mid range game. He can knock down the jumper to 18 feet after one or two rhythm dribbles. He is a good rebounder on both ends and can clean the defense glass and go coast to coast. Downing can finish in the lane using his length to elevate over smaller defenders. He is a good on ball defender that is capable of defending both wing positions. Downing is a very good all around guard with good upside.

Quick-culled info off Nexis: His Hopewell team went 29-1 last year before losing in the state semis and was 20-0 in summer league play. ... He was on the All-Observer second team last April. ... Also all-conference. ... Langston Wertz at the Carolina Challenge last March: “OK, he missed a wide open dunk, but he continues to show improvement in his ball-handling and shooting. He was one of the bigger surprises of the day.” ... Downing in the Observer in January: “North Meck-Hopewell is like Duke and UNC,” Hopewell basketball player Jordan Downing said. “The fans are crazy. The schools are close to each other and when we play, the temperature is just hot.” ... And in January after scoring a team-high 16 points in Hopewell’s win over Vance: “I think we were tougher.”

More on this week’s commitment

Droney: “Coach McKillop sees me as a kid who is comparable to Steph and I just think I could have a great career in that system.” Observer brief.

Scout.com says ...

Telep on the BlackBerry: Good pick up for them. Got their top target.

May 14, 2008

Jeff Jackson on the phone: “They recognize who is supposed to take the shot, and when, probably better than any team in the country.”

Dave Telep on the phone from Wake Forest: “I remember vividly the first time I ever saw him. Bojangles at Charlotte Latin. His sophomore year. He was falling out of his jersey.”

Kevin Cary at the Brickhouse: “You knew when the Georgetown game was over. My cell phone was going crazy. My sister in Ohio called me. That was the crossover moment.”

John Kuykendall at the union: “I think he sees in people here some points of contact. I’m a Presbyterian preacher and an academic, and he’s an Irish Catholic and a coach, and we connect.”

Steven Suflas on Detroit: “The greatest weekend that ever sucked.”

Adam Stockstill in Huntersville: “After the Georgetown game, I walked up there, to the atrium of the RBC Center -- absolute hysteria. Everyone was losing their minds. It was an absolute shit show. Late 20s, early 20s, old people -- dude, it was a mosh pit. People were picking each other up, putting people on their shoulders, it just kept going on and on and on. It was like: I don’t want to leave.”

Mike Reed on the phone from Georgia: “I was just as nervous as a cat. I was sitting on the couch, sitting on the edge, with my wife next to me, and I was holding her hand, like we used to do when my son had a big putt.”

Bobby Cremins on the phone from Charleston: “This kid came in, and everything changed.”

His recruiting regret

Telep: “I wish I would have made Stephen Curry a Top 100 player.”

September 17, 2005

Dave Telep on Scout.com:

Stephen Curry reached a college decision Friday. The son of a former NBA marksman is staying close to home where he’s expected to have a major impact on one program.

Bob McKillop and the Davidson Wildcats have recruited some strong players over the years. On Friday night, they landed a guard who should have a major impact on their program. Stephen Curry, a point guard and son of former NBA standout Dell Curry, committed to the Wildcats after considering Virginia Tech and Virginia Commonwealth.

The 6-foot-1, 162-pound point guard averaged just under 20 points a game as a junior Charlotte (N.C.) Charlotte Christian.

“I just felt like it was the best fit for me,” Curry said. “I felt like they wanted me the most. I know Coach McKillop will work his players hard and I know that he’ll push me. Plus, I’ll have a chance to play right when I get there. It’ll set me up good academically right when I graduate.”

Curry, who has improved and grown in stature each season since his freshman year, is a major score for Davidson. While Curry is a strong mid-major prospect right now, he’s likely to blossom into a higher level player over the next few seasons.

When you consider how he’s consistently grown, advanced his game and maintains elite level family genes, Curry should be the type of recruit that leaves a stamp on the Davidson Wildcats program.

“No matter where I go, I have to play how I play,” Curry said. “I expect to be good in college no matter where I go.

“Physically I’m maturing a lot but every year, I’m getting bigger, and I’m working on my game whenever I can. I still have a ways to go.”

Curry’s father was a stud at Virginia Tech and the Hokies were involved with Stephen but the Hokies’ scholarship situation and recruiting plan dictated special circumstances that Curry would have had to accept if he decided on Blacksburg.

“I was going to go to Tech and my parents would pay the first year,” Curry said. “I don’t know if they were going to label me as a walk-on. I would have redshirted and I would have played five years but I wouldn’t have played my freshman year.”

Sitting out wasn’t something that Curry was ready to do. Instead, he picked a program that is losing perimeter firepower and guards from its rotation. McKillop will replace some outstanding seniors with a freshman who has a chance to become the best of the bunch.

Thoughts on Saturday

*** Stephen’s record-breaker I thought made for kind of an unexpectedly powerful moment. He had taken a three half a minute before that would’ve given him the record, and it was clearly consciously short-armed, but the two-point jumper that put him past Gerdy happened so quick and natural -- loose ball, dribble-dribble, from near the free throw line, absolutely in the flow of the game. And the instantaneousness and the oneness of the sound in that place at that point in time was … striking. There were 5,223 people there, and it felt like every one of them was standing, at once, all of a sudden, and clapping and cheering and hollering, and they stayed that way long enough for the experience to become actually quite moving.

*** The new uniforms: these tight, tunic-type tops, matched with more typically billowy shorts -- I don’t know. I was quite fond of the traditional and I thought very elegant outfits these new get-ups seem to have replaced.

*** It’s become amateur sport around Davidson to read too much into little-nothing quotes from Stephen. Here’s another one, from yesterday’s post-game presser, when he was talking about the seniors: “We’re truly going to miss them next year.”

*** Oklahoma City Thunder GM Sam Presti was on press row. So was Brian Winters. So was Dave Telep.

*** About five minutes into the game, when Frank was going for a rebound at the near basket, and maybe I was seeing things, but did his left leg kind of get caught on the top of a Georgia Southern guy’s head?

*** At the first media timeout, the score was 16-0, and Georgia Southern had taken two shots.

*** Davidson basketball, when it’s right, is about balance. Everyone’s heard that before. Here’s McKillop after the game: “I thought there was a looseness that accompanied the energy.”

*** I passed 100,000 miles on Friday night. On my ’06 Honda. I blame Davidson basketball.

*** Charlotte. Observations. The O List. AP. ESPN. Davidson. Georgia Southern. Gallery.

*** Okay. Back to Florida.