NCAA Recruiting Period Opens
The NCAA's fall recruiting period opened this weekend, which means the beginning of open gym season in New England and throughout the rest of the country.
The fall recruiting period is very different from the recent July live period because division I college coaches are only allowed to watch recruitable student athletes compete at the school they currently attend and only against other recruitable student athletes from that school.
In layman's terms, that means D1 coaches can't attend any type of AAU or grassroots event, nor any type of workout that includes prospects from more than one school....thus the importance of fall open gyms.
While only a few selected schools got going this weekend, there were already plenty of college coaches in New England.
Cushing Academy held workouts on Saturday and Sunday and the visitors included head coaches from Providence, Villanova, and Virginia Tech to see unsigned senior guard David Duke.
Putnam Science Academy and Woodstock Academy, which are located less than 10 minutes away from each other in northeastern Connecticut, held workouts on both Saturday and Sunday as well with more than double figure coaches at both schools on both days. Woodstock junior Daniel Dade added an offer from IUPUI while PSA big man Josh Mballa added an offer from UMass in his first day on campus.
MacDuffie School hosted coaches Saturday morning that included both Rutgers' head coach Steve Pikiell and Wake Forest head coach Danny Manning who were on hand to see junior Ismael Massoud.
Later on Saturday, Manning and UConn head coach Kevin Ollie were both at Loomis Chaffee school to see fellow junior Jaiden Delaire.
On Sunday, it was another junior, Maxwell Lorca-Lloyd, who picked up offers from Baylor and California at the Northfield Mount Hermon open gym.
Things get rolling full speed this week as Brewster Academy, New Hampton School, Vermont Academy, St. Thomas More, South Kent, Tilton, St. Andrew's, and numerous others will be hosting open gyms.