Patrick Saunders Makes Decision
For years the Ivy League was always seen as a two horse race. Year after year the championship seemed to end up at either Pennsylvania or Princeton. But in recent years Pennsylvania has emerged as the conference’s powerhouse while Princeton has suffered from a high degree of turnover in their head coaching position that has resulted in their fall from grace within the league.
But when Sydeny Johnson, a former Ivy League player of the year at Princeton, accepted the school’s head coaching position in the spring it was a sign that the Tigers were once again poised to return to the top of the league.
A major piece of evidence came late last week as Patrick Saunders offered a verbal commitment to Coach Johnson. Saunders is a highly skilled player who will be entering his senior year at New Hampton next week. After a tremendous summer that saw him earn an invitation to RBK U and then star for his New Hampshire Wildcats AAU program Saunders was being pursued by virtually every school in the Ivy League, in addition to holding scholarship offers from programs in the Atlantic 10, Conference USA, and the CAA among others.
“I had narrowed it down to Harvard, Penn, or Princeton,” Saunders told the New England Recruiting Report, “and I was lucky because I felt like I couldn’t go wrong no matter what I decided to do, which made the decision tough. But it just felt like the right time.”
“I loved the [Princeton] campus, all the tradition there, and I felt most comfortable with their coaches…plus the fact that its Princeton.”
It appears as if Saunders’ decision will be a win-win for both himself and his new team. By adding the talented forward to the mix, Coach Johnson proves that he will be able to land the type of talented recruits necessary to return the Tigers to their championship days of old. Meanwhile Saunders will be one of the main staples of the basketball program’s rebuilding effort, while receiving an education from the institution that was recently named the number one academic university in the nation by U.S. News and World Report.
Patrick Saunders