Coach K Calls on Tarczewski
Tuesday was the first day that players in the class of 2012 were allowed to receive calls from college coaches and, as predicted, Kaleb Tarczewski’s phone was ringing off the hook.
“It started off with Harvard,” Tarczewski said. “Coach Amaker called at 9:30 in the morning.”
But that was only the beginning as Tarczewski had heard from a long line of BCS level coaches by the time he spoke to the New England Recruiting Report just prior to 11pm.
“I didn’t even know today was the first day we could get calls,” he said. “I was talking to Alex [Murphy] after Harvard called and he told me. He said ‘you wait you’re about to get a ton more’.”
It turns out his St. Mark’s teammate was right.
By the time the day had come to an end Tarczewski had received calls from Arizona, Texas, Ohio State, Florida, and Marquette in addition to Boston College head coach Steve Donahue, Marquette head coach Buzz Williams, West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins, and Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski.
“It was a surprise, that’s for sure,” Tarczewski said of his call from Coach K. “He just told me that I had a lot of potential and that they were interested and to keep working hard.”
While the St. Mark’s big man said that he doesn’t have any favorites at this point, the University of Kansas appears to have established a little bit of a head start, having had Tarczewski on their campus twice already this spring. His first trip came with his New England Playaz team when they competed in the Jayhawk Invitational and most recently when he returned for the school’s Elite Camp.
“It was great,” Tarczewski said of the camp. “I got to work out with [assistant coach] Danny Manning and some of the players. We worked on footwork a lot and talked about different angles that could help my game. I got to learn a lot about Kansas basketball. It was a real interesting weekend. I had a lot of fun.”
Kansas has already offered Tarczewski a scholarship as have a variety of other high major programs including Indiana, West Virginia, Arizona, Boston College, Providence, Arizona, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, and Marquette.
This newfound attention is all still a little surreal for the New Hampshire native as he looks back on how far he has come in such a short period of time.
Two years ago no one in the basketball community had even heard his name when he registered for the Hoop Mountain Big Man Camp.
“Actually I almost didn’t even get into the camp,” he recalled. “It was the day before the camp that I learned I could go.”
“Mr. [Jay] Murphy was the head of the big man camp. I heard he had played in the NBA and I thought it was the coolest thing so I went up to talk to him and told him I was from a small town in New Hampshire but that I loved the game and really wanted to pursue something in basketball.”
Murphy immediately saw Tarczewski’s potential and the very next day St. Mark’s head coach Dave Lubick was in the gym. The rest is history as Tarczewski transferred to St. Mark’s and continues to prove himself among the elite big men in the national class of 2012 while running with the New England Playaz.
“It’s been pretty crazy,” Tarczewski admitted. “Getting a call from Coach K, going to Kansas… If you told me two years ago that this was all going to happen I never would have believed it. I’m obviously around great people so that really helps. I’m learning a lot from my coaches and really having fun.”
Kaleb Tarczewski