Morillo with 21 pts 9-12 fg vs Swiss today
Might end up being a top 40 recruit. Announcers keep mentioning “UCLA and Marquette amongst others recruiting Morillo” the disrespect to UVA
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Tipton with the missed opportunity to full-name him as Billy “Blanco” White III
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Same date as Bo Ogden?
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August 30 for the White visit, football opener. Same as Cole Cloer is planned, It’s all tentative this far out though.
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Top 25 is really high. I think I’d be much more confident if it was top 40 instead. I just have a hard time seeing a top 15 kid commit to the new staff without seeing a bit more proof of concept. I think we can get Cloer but I also think it’s very possible he may finish just outside the top 25 when it’s said and done.
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because you are used to Tony Bennett recruiting. We are in a new ERA of Ryan Odom basketball, embrace and be happy we know can get top 25 recruits to UVA…$$$$$$
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New staff and in the new era I expect a lot of these top HS kids to commit much later when theoretically we will have some proof of concept to show.
Also I feel like we see it all the time where a new staff will get one or two big recruits right off the bat (and then often fizzle in later years).
Not many HS recruits are won with money, and that probably becomes even fewer with revenue sharing restrictions. The reason is pretty simple, the HS players worth giving a lot of money are NBA prospects who are more concerned about the big picture. Deron Rippey is looking for the place that will help him be a first round pick next year, whereas Jacari White is getting what he can now while he can. You can break a tie, that’s about it.
And I think you’ll find 95% of 2026 recruits will be committed this fall like always. There is some motivation for the true cream of the crop to wait until spring, as they’re essentially competing with transfers for roles. But it’s not in the interest for the vast majority to get caught up in that. Jordan Smith is the one guy UVA is involved with who’ll probably hold out.
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I ran a prompt of this through the Magic 8 Ball UVa pessimism Catch-22 GPT LLM and it parsed it this way:
NO. UVa will NEVER sign any top 25 recruit.
It then asked for a beera
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I have no confidence we’ll land Smith lol
What recruits would you say we’re the furthest along with right now?
I feel like I have the best vibes coming off of Gibson right now, and that the staff has clearly put a priority on Rippey, but could be totally misreading that.
I think we are swinging too high but hope I’m wrong. I fear the portal (NIL) is going to be our new sweet spot. The days of evaluating and developing is probably over for us.
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Well I wouldn’t say they’re further along with anyone exactly because it’s all going to be decided in the fall, or maybe later in a few cases. Odom isn’t Bennett…he doesn’t zero in and hawk recruits the same way, there’s no pushing to speed anyone up, at least not until the fall. And truthfully with the changes now, that’s a thing of the past anyway. There used to be annual rush of commitments right now ahead of the July live periods. Now, nothing.
Christian Gibson, Billy White III, Cole Cloer, Latrell Allmond. Those are serious targets. But for Odom, there’s not the same level of investment as under Bennett. It’s just get fall visits, try to put them in order of preference as much as possible, and take what you can get. This is how most teams have always recruited. TB was different.
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Not getting great vibes on Allmond. Kids with weird lists seem like red flags. Idk what he’s looking for. Also thought the move to Petersburg was an odd decision (yes I know he’s just following his coach but it was a similarly odd nice for his coach). Get the sense that Adidas is calling the shots in that recruitment (even though he’s mentioned some non adidas schools).
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Lucas Morillo has 10 pts at half-time for the DR against Australia:
Good evaluation opportunity here, as Australia has got some legit talent (Dash Daniels is the headliner).
You’ll all be glad to know that the Johnny Furphy mullet is no longer en vogue with the Australian youth teams, not even his little bro has that cut cc @HoozGotNext
Morillo is being guarded by Dash Daniels and Roman Siulepa, who is a very good athlete with questionable decision-making on offense. Pitt’s recruiting Siulepa I believe.
Morillo’s guarding Dash Daniels.
Oof, the DR’s big man is so overmatched. DR has a structural issue where they want to play a lot of pick and roll, but their PG and C are probably their worst decision-makers. The PG especially, he’s got a bad case of tunnel vision.
#21 on DR looks like he could be a college player (I say as he blows a wide open layup). 21 ppg through their first 3 games, but doesn’t look like he’s got much going on in terms of recruitment.
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DR keeping it interesting, were down 8 with 4 mins to go but starting to drop the rope.
Morillo up to 22. Not sure if he can shoot, but he’s a player for sure.
Lil Furphy having a nice game. Has been the beneficiary of the DR being unable to contain drives from Daniels and Siulepa, leading to some wide open 3s.
Siulepa’s game is aesthetically displeasing, he’s a FT merchant whose decision tree consists of 1 step “Get Ball → Drive Ball”, but he’s a load going to the rim. Not sure if his game works against guys who are athletically similar to him though, and he’s not that good of an athlete. Does look like a high major player though.
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We are in Cole Cloer’s top 8
https://www.instagram.com/p/DLqIzj8SvJr/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
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