Three top recruits, three different recruiters for the Huskies

Rahsool Diggins, a crafty Philadelphia point guard in the A.J. Price mold.

Jordan Hawkins, a dynamic athlete and shooter from Maryland’s vaunted DeMatha Catholic.

Samson Johnson, a 6foot-11 stretch-four from New Jersey with unlimited potential.

A trio of four-star recruits committing to UConn over the past 15 days. And, in a testament to the recruiting abilities and depth of Dan Hurley’s staff, all three had different UConn assistant coaches as their lead recruiter.

Tom Moore took the lead on Diggins — ironic, since back in Moore’s first tenure with the Huskies under Jim Calhoun, he led the recruitment of Price. Kenya Hunter, with his strong ties to the “DMV” (D.C., Maryland, Virginia) area, spearheaded Hawkins’ recruitment. And it was Kimani Young who led the charge for Johnson, a former teammate of incoming UConn freshman Adama Sanogo’s at the Patrick School in New Jersey. Young was the point man for Sanogo’s recruitment, as well.

And, of course, overseeing it all is Hurley, a man who thrives on the competition of recruiting, whose

name resonates in the New York/New Jersey area but has pull throughout the East Coast, and who has developed a reputation of being able to close with the best of them.

“I knew they were gonna do a good job recruiting,” said John Mosco, Diggins’ head coach at Archbishop Wood in Philadelphia. “And then, when they announced last year they were going to the Big East, I said that’s gonna get them back to where they were. Because they’re all hard-working guys, and they all know talent. I think they’re doing a tremendous job in getting involved with players and getting players to go there.”

It's tempting to carve up and assign recruiting territories to the three assistants. Moore, Calhoun’s longtime assistant as well as Quinnipiac’s head coach for a decade, has strong ties with New England prep coaches and could be considered the “New England guy.” He’s currently spearheading the recruitment of Bristol’s own Donovan Clingan, a 7-foot-2, Class of 2022 center.

Young, the Queens native who had two stints as the athletic director for the New Heights Youth, Inc. program in New York and has strong ties in the NYC metro area, would be the “New York/New Jersey guy.” Hunter, who helped bring

Roy Hibbert, Greg Monroe and Otto Porter to Georgetown in six seasons as a Hoya assistant, the “DMV guy.”

But it doesn’t always work out that way. Sometimes, when an assistant is the first to see a guy as a young player and really likes what he sees, he’ll run it by the other assistants and take the lead on the kid’s recruitment, no matter where he’s from.

Take Diggins. Mosco has known Moore for 20 years, and also coached against both Hurley (at St. Benedict’s Prep) and Hurley’s Hall of Fame father, Bob Sr. (at St. Anthony’s High). Last summer, he told Hurley to give Diggins a look, but Diggins didn’t play great.

In December, Moore watched Diggins pour in 26 points in a seven-overtime loss to Pius VI of Virginia.

“Sool was the best player on the court,” Mosco recalled. “That’s when they really started recruiting him, and Tommy led the way.”

Young has long had ties to The Patrick School in Hillside, N.J. While an assistant at Minnesota, he brought in a pair of Patrick School players: Dupree McBrayer, a four-year starter for the Golden Gophers, and Jamir Harris, who transferred to American University after Young left for UConn.

Over the past 21⁄2 months, he’s helped lead the charge to bring both Sanogo, a four-star, Class of 2020 center, and Johnson, a power forward, to UConn.

“(Over the past eight years), he’s been in our gym every opportunity he gets, even to come see some of our young kids, to get an early jump on kids,” said Patrick School coach Chris Chavannes. “He did a fabulous job with our kids and getting to know them when they’re young and following right through to when they’re juniors and seniors, ready to make a college decision. He’s tremendous.”

Hunter is certainly the Huskies’ man in the midAtlantic, from D.C./Maryland to North Carolina. There had been a recent push for Lucas Taylor, a 6-6 shooter out of Wake Forest, N.C., until the Huskies nabbed Hawkins.

While it’s fair to say that Moore and Young generally split the northeast, from about Philly north, with Hunter focusing more on the DMV, in fact, all three assistants – along with their head coach, obviously – have strong ties throughout the northeast corridor.

When Hurley came aboard in March, 2018, he talked about eventually broadening UConn’s recruiting scope to a national level. After all, that’s how Calhoun built the program, after realizing he couldn’t beat out Georgetown, Syracuse, St. John’s and Villanova for top northeast recruits.

Hurley’s doing it in reverse, mining his and his staff ’s local recruiting ties until the Huskies break out with a Sweet 16-type season, at which time he’ll likely start focusing a bit more nationally. In fact, he already has, to a degree: UConn kicked the tires on Tyrese Hunter, a point guard from Racine, Wisc. who has a strong connection to fellow Racine product Caron Butler, before securing Diggins’ commitment.

The Huskies even have an international recruit joining the team this season in 7-footer Javonte BrownFerguson of Toronto. It was Hunter who led the recruitment of Brown-Ferguson, who did play one season at Mount Saint Joseph in Baltimore.

STILL LOOKING AT 2021

The pledges from Diggins, Hawkins and Johnson fill up UConn’s scholarship allotment for the 2021-22 season. But the Huskies aren’t totally done recruiting for that class. James Bouknight would appear highly likely to declare for the 2021 NBA Draft, so UConn will continue to look for players. Bouknight’s decision wouldn’t come until after this upcoming season (if it’s played), and most of the top 2021 recruits will likely be off the board by then. But the Huskies will be keeping an eye on the grad transfer or regular transfer market.