Tharpe Sits Atop 2011

NewEnglandRecruitingReport.com | Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

While there hasn’t been enough basketball to re-shuffle too many of the 2011 rankings in the last month, recent reclassifications have reshaped the list a bit. 

Naadir Tharpe’s reclassification at Brewster Academy, along with Alex Murphy’s decision to repeat his freshman year at St. Mark’s, gives Tharpe top billing in this class.  With three more years of prep school basketball still to come in his career, Tharpe is sure to be the recruiting target of a variety of high-major programs.  In fact, he recently visited the campus of the Big East’s Providence College for an unofficial visit. 

He played some of his most inspired basketball during the first half of the month of July this summer.  He was at his best at the Adidas It Takes 5ive Classic where he earned rave reviews from a variety of national recruiting services, media outlets, and college coaches alike. 

Like all young players, Tharpe needs to continue to mature and improve areas of his game in order to reach his potential, but it is hard to imagine him not having a tremendous college career down the line. 

Andre Drummond, Derrick Wilson, Mike Carter-Williams, and Anthony Jernigan round out the rest of the top five while Michael LaPlante, Joe Sharkey, Egi Gjikondi, Jared Johnson and Billy Soriano are next in line. 

One of the things that we find particularly interesting about this group is that the vast majority are true sophomores.  Tharpe is the only member of the top five to have reclassified to the best of our knowledge.  Meanwhile #2 ranked Drummond is actually a year younger than most of his peers and be all rights should just be entering his freshman season.  In total, 7 of the top 10 players are entering their true sophomore seasons.    

That could be a big reason why so many of these players are talented but still very raw.  It will certainly be a lot of fun to watch them develop over the next three years.