Men’s, women’s UT teams land star basketball recruits,
Men’s basketball team scores while coach is in China.
This has to be a first: Texas signed two men’s basketball recruits Wednesday while the coach, players and staff were in another hemisphere.
Guard Jacob Young and center James Banks both sent their paperwork to Austin. But coach Shaka Smart and his assistants tried to keep calm in a Chinese hotel on Thursday, waiting for any positive news from the UT compliance office back home, where it was still Wednesday afternoon.
“They’re both our kind of guys, which is really important,” Smart said in Shanghai, where the Longhorns open their season Friday night against Washington. “Culturally they fit really, really well. They both love to work and love to play. You’re not going to have to beg them to get in the gym.”
Young, a 6-1 shooting guard from Houston Yates, was ranked the 85th-best player in the nation, according to Scout. Banks, considered the nation’s 45th-best player, has played organized team basketball for only three years. Still, he averaged 23 points and 14 rebounds last season at La Lumiere School in Indiana.
Women’s basketball
signs four: Texas women’s basketball coach Karen Aston’s signing-day haul included the second- and sixth-rated overall recruits in the nation. The Longhorns added 6-3 forward Joyner Holmes of Cedar Hill and 5-8 point guard Alecia Sutton of St. Louis.
The class also includes 6-foot wing player Jada Underwood of Mesquite Horn and 6-3 forward Audrey-Ann Caron-Goudreau, who will transfer from Gulf Coast State College in Panama City, Fla., following the season.
Baseball adds 12: Five players from the Austin area highlight a 12-member baseball class. The locals are Akins INF Austin McNicholas, Lake Travis RHP Tate Sandford, Round Rock’s RHP Mason Thompson and OF Austin Todd, and San Marcos’ INF David Hamilton.
Switch-hitting infield Ryan Reynolds, of Monroe, La., is the only non-Texan among the 12 signees. Reynolds is the son of Shane Reynolds, a former Longhorns pitcher who played in the major leagues from 1992 to 2004.
Also pledging to Texas was Katy Seven Lakes’ Conner Capel, the son of former Longhorns pitcher Mike Capel, who went 13-1 in the 1983 national championship
season. Rounding out the class are catcher Jaxx Groshans (Magnolia), RHP Blair Henley (Fort Worth Arlington Heights), LHP Kyle Muller (Dallas Jesuit), RHP Kevin Roliard (Spring Klein), and INF Andres Sosa (San Antonio Reagan).
Track and field gets
top hurdlers: The Longhorns added the nation’s top 110-meter hurdler, Isaiah Lucas of Houston Cypress Falls. Also joining the class was 110 hurdles state runner-up Medric Roberson of Mansfield Summit. On the women’s side, Texas landed Desoto’s Alexis Duncan, who ranks No. 1 in the world in the 100 hurdles.