Wednesday, October 29, 2003

Ra'Sean Dickey to announce decision at press conference Wednesday

Well, hold your breath, keep the fingers crossed and say your prayers. Hoopsmasters is reporting that Ra'Sean Dickey has called a press conference for this afternoon to announce where he will attend college and play hoops. All "sources" indicate GaTech is the likely decision. We will see.

It also appears that Jeremis Smith will make HIS decision known on Friday and it appears that there might be a GT lean here as well. So this will be a huge week for Georgia Tech and our future.

As mentioned before, if both these guys sign, that leaves ZERO scholarships to sign Randolph Morris, who appears to be the real #1 target of the coaching staff. After perusing the discussion groups and asking a few questions, here is what I found out about our ability to sign 5 players with 4 scholarships:

- Some of those "in the know" believe that the coaching staff will NOT jeopardize their chances to sign Morris. He remains the top priority
- This means if both Smith and Dickey commit, the coaching staff PROBABLY knows a way to sign a class of 5 guys with 4 'ships.
- This could be done either with knowledge on their part about a certain player that may transfer before the start of next year (like Nelson this year), opening up a 'ship.
- Or it could mean a player leaving early again (like Bosh). Certainly BJ Elder could be a possibility for that to happen.
- Lastly, there is a possibility that they could take away one of the existing kid's 'ship. They recently awarded Mario West a 'ship for his hard work, but he will not likely see much PT this year. So I speculate he could be the guy. Certainly would not be a popular option but an option none-the-less.

The signing of 5 players I am guessing was really being reserved for the remote possibility that Dwight Howard wanted to play a year at Tech. Who knows if the staff actually believed they would be in the final running for so many top-flight players. No matter how this plays out, we have to give kudos and major props to Hewitt and his staff. They have proven an ability to recruit with the best. They have put themselves in position to land some major talent and have gotten on the short list of MANY top prospects this year. That is all we can really ask from a recruiting standpoint.

The only problem is that he is building up very lofty expectations about the future of this program, so we all want to see more "W"s, but there could be worse problems for a coach.