Roche Signs with Santa Clara in ‘16

New England Recruiting Report | Tuesday, April 19th, 2016

Proctor Academy center Julian Roche signed a National Letter of Intent with Santa Clara on Monday just eight days after helping to lead his D.C. Blue Devils AAU squad to the championship at the Northeast Hoops Festival.

Roche is a native of New Brunswick, Canada who initially arrived at Proctor Academy as part of the 2016 class but opted to reclassify to 2017 following a torn ACL last March that cost him the entire AAU season.

Roche rehabbed hard enough to return for the beginning of his senior season at Prcotor and then applied that same work-ethic to his conditioning, shedding 40 pounds from his 6-foot-11 frame to get himself into the best shape of his career to date.

Santa Clara began to express interest shortly after Herb Sendek, the former head coach at N.C. State and Arizona State, took over last month and they were on hand this weekend to watch Roche and the D.C. Blue Devils at the Hoop Group Spring Jam Fest in Pennsylvania. The Broncos officially offered on Friday night and 72 hours later they had a signed National Letter of Intent in their hands and thus de-classified back to his original class of 2016.

"I"m really proud of Julian," D.C. Blue Devils head coach T.J. Thompson said. "He set a goal to be a division I player, and he had to fight through a lot of adversity coming back from the ACL injury, but he reached it."

Roche becomes the fourth Blue Devils product to accept a full scholarship in the class of 2016 joining Nathan Knight (William & Mary), Luke Rosinski (New Hampshire) and Eamon Joyce (Southern New Hampshire).

 

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