Birch Transfers to UNLV

New England Recruiting Report | Monday, January 9th, 2012

Khem Birch announced on Monday that he would transfer to UNLV for the second semester of his freshman season, after playing the first 10 games of his college career in a Pittsburgh uniform.

Former McDonald's All-American Khem Birch is a big addition for UNLV coach Dave Rice.The pickup is the latest major score for a UNLV program that is seeing a revitalization of sorts under first-year head coach Dave Rice.

Rice already delivered a widely-celebrated class during November’s early signing period including DaQuan Cook (Baltimore, Md./Digital Harbor), Demetris Morant (Las Vegas/Bishop Gorman) and ESPNU 100 guard Katin Reinhardt (San Juan Capistrano, Calif./Mater Dei). And Birch essentially becomes the fourth member of the 2012 class (although our class rankings won't reflect it).

Birch will become eligible during next season’s semester break and have three and a half years of eligibility remaining at that point.

To put Birch’s commitment in perspective, it’s consequently only appropriate to consider him as if he were a member of the Class of 2012 -- which he in fact was a little more than a year ago.

Birch began his senior season at Notre Dame Prep initially intent to do a post-graduate year and had been listed in the Class of 2012 since first arriving in the United States from his Canadian home two years ago.

It was in November of 2010, that Birch “declassified” or announced his intention to rejoin the Class of 2011 by signing a with the University of Pittsburgh. At the time, Birch was the second ranked player in the ESPNU 60, behind only Andre Drummond (now with UConn).

To read the rest of the ESPN story please click here.