Weekly Breakdown: DIII Recruiting, IU Hosts Talent, FW North
The season is now underway and we are already seeing some developments with regards to recruiting and games. Today, we breakdown DIII recruiting schedules, Indiana hosting talent for Duke game, and Fort Wayne North’s destruction of Blackhawk Christian
DIII Recruiting About To Heat Up
For those who aren’t up on the schedule of recruiting for different levels of schools, DIII recruiting is about to get going pretty quick here. Because of their inability to offer athletic scholarships, their schedule is quite a bit different from others. The middle of December is usually when official roster spots are “offered.” We word it that way because there is a difference between offering a scholarship and offering a spot to he team.
With spots being offered in the month of December, that will be when you see more action getting going. You will see more visits, “offers,” and general recruitment happening. NAIA’s have been finishing up their major recruiting over the last month but look for schools like Wabash, Anderson, Franklin, Hanover, and many others start to pop up in the next couple of weeks. It is now their time.
Indiana Hosts Talent For Duke Game
The early season games for teams like Purdue and Indiana are huge recruiting tools for them. The Big Ten/ACC Challenge is a time when they can get big time games on their home courts and use that to spur their image into another level among some of these players.
For Indiana, they hosted a bunch of players including Isiah Thompson, Colson Montgomery, Khristian Lander, Andrew Carlton, Trayce Jackson-Davis, and Curt Hopf who all hail from the Hoosier state on Wednesday night for the Duke game.
High-major game visits are quite impressive, especially if you are a teenager with your first big experience as a player on these teams radars. Especially when you have an environment like IU had for Wednesday. That is a huge coup for them to play well until the end of the game in a year where they aren’t expected to do a ton.
Fort Wayne North Destroys Blackhawk Christian
In probably the most surprising result of the season so far, Fort Wayne North just absolutely destroyed Blackhawk Christian earlier this week. Not that the result was surprising, you would think that North would likely win the game. However, Blackhawk getting run out of the gym was.
The biggest takeaway was North’s defensive ability. They held them to just four points in the first quarter and just nine points at the half. Blackhawk should be a really good offensive team but North, we were a little unsure with a bunch of new pieces, just how their defense would work this year. From all accounts, Brandan Johnson was really good and obviously Keion Brooks is going to be impactful. But, if they are going to be able to shut down a team like this, we are really interested to see how they do against a better roster matchup in their game Saturday against Hamilton Southeastern. That result could tell us nothing, but it could also tell us the true upside of this Fort Wayne North team.