T-More’s Quinn finds college landing spots for all his players
Jere Quinn ran down an impressive list of where his St. Thomas More players are heading to play college basketball next season.
Cornell. Yale. UNC Charlotte. Rider. La Salle.
Those are just some of the destinations.
Nothing new for Quinn, who's spent his legendary prep school coaching career developing players and preparing young men for the next step in their life's journey.
What is different is Quinn has had to help his players negotiate some new obstacles during the coronavirus pandemic.
"We've done okay," Quinn said by phone from his St. Thomas More office where he still occasionally works. "We got pretty much everybody (covered). The whole objective is to find these guys a place to go to school, which we do."
Some already committed to college prior to the shutdown, while others were still trying to pick a school without being able to take a visit. Take Jair Currie. Currie wanted to visit a couple of schools before committing somewhere but couldn't. He ended up picking University of Maryland Eastern Shore.
In all, six Chancellors will be joining a Division I program and the rest Division II or Division III.
Here's where they're headed: Currie (Maryland-Eastern Shore), Jack Shannon (Post University in Waterbury), Elijah Perry (Rider), Charles Williams (Sonoma State), Chris Manon (Cornell), Jared Garcia (UNC Charlotte), Emir Buyukhanli (Yale), Derrius Ward (La Salle) and Zeke Blauner (Springfield), Justin Hemphill is considering several offers from Division II programs.
The long list of departures means
Quinn has to restock his roster.
That's something any prep school coach is accustomed to doing every year.
It's a bit more complicated this spring because players are unable to visit the St. Thomas More campus in Montville due to restrictions. But they can take a virtual tour of the school.
'The biggest disruption is that kids couldn't come to see St. Thomas
More, which they've always liked to," Quinn said. "Thank God there's so much social media and you can go on line and do a virtual tour of St. Thomas More or most colleges.
"But, yeah, it's a challenge. But there's so many kids looking to come so that's mitigated that challenge to some extent."
Quinn, who just completed his 42nd season at STM, already has 11 players lined up and two others could commit in the next couple of days.
He's received more inquiries from players than most years due in part to the fact high school players lost out on their opportunity to play in their state tournaments and spring AAU events.
He's just focused on bringing in post-graduate players for the upcoming season.
"We're just really dealing with kids who are going into the post-graduate year, so the same obstacles and adversities that they would have going to a college are similar to the bumps in the road that you would have coming to St. Thomas More," Quinn said. "There's a couple of juniors who wanted to reclassify and do two years with us. We recommended that they stay in their high school this year and contact us the following year."
Players haven't expressed any concerns about traveling to St. Thomas More despite the uncertainty ahead. Some future Chancellors are coming from Japan, New York and Florida. The only exception: two players from Spain wanted to wait until August to make a decision but Quinn couldn't promise them an opportunity at that time.
One thing for sure: Quinn will have a competitive team next season. He always does, never finishing a season with a losing record in his long and successful career.
He can live with losing some higher profile players to other prep schools. He's done just fine by sticking to his game plan and helping overlooked players reach their potential.
Just ask former Chancellors Eric Paschall and Damion Lee, two members of the Golden State Warriors, and Andre Drummond, a two-time NBA all-star center now with Cleveland. Or Omari Spellman of the Minnesota Timberwolves and Yuta Watanabe, who's appeared in 16 games for the Memphis Grizzlies this season.
"We're going to do what we're going to do and that's never changed," Quinn said. "And I'm very comfortable with that. Look at the team that we had this year. We have five kids go Division I. Next year, we'll have about five or six Division I players, three or four Division II players and two or three Division III players."
... We've had some high profile kids. But the majority of the kids are similar to the kids that we've always had." g.keefe@theday.com