WVU Recruiting Notes

September 6, 2005

West Virginia will be hosting Overland park, KS big man Casey Crawford in the next couple weeks. Crawford is a 6'9 BF/C that averaged 17 PPG, 9 rebounds and nearly 4 blocks a game as a junior. He is an excellent student in the classroom and has shown the ability to step away from the hoop and score, making him a nice fit for the West Virginia's system. Crawford was supposed to visit Minnesota this coming weekend, but with Coach Monson getting a commitment from Bryce Webster over Marquette, among others, Minnesota looks as if they will no longer be recruiting Crawford. At this point, the major players for Crawford appear to be West Virginia, Wichita St, Tulane and Texas A&M. He has visits set up with WVU and Wichita St in September and is expecting in-home visits from coaches from Tulane and Texas A&M as well this month. Although, he is not sure how Hurricane Katrina will impact visits to and from Tulane. Here is the article on Yahoo! Sports from Chris Monter: Crawford Modifies Visit Schedule.

As reported in our DePaul recruiting report, the addition of Will Walker as a verbal commitment to Depaul might push them a little farther in the lead for Devan Bawinkel. While this might mean another recruiting loss for WVU, as they are one of the finalists for Bawinkel, along with Georgetown and DePaul, it could open the door for Desean Butler, who is supposed to be checking it out West Virginia on an unofficial visit in the near future, if he has not already. Butler has said he would like to wait until after the SAT's to make a decision, which shoudl but West Virginia is good shape, especially with DePaul, his other favorite, likely to be out of scholarships with a Bawinkel commit. Whether Butler decides to look closer at schools like Providence, Seton Hall and Rutgers, all who have been interested in the past and showing more interest recently, is another matter.

West Virginia could use some good recruiting news in the wake of losing targets AJ Tyler and Dennis Horner this past weekend to the ACC (Tyler to Clemson and Horner to NC St). Crawford and Butler would be very nice additions to the program as they both have the type of styles that would benefit from a structured system. I think Butler is very underrated and under-recruited for the amount of versatility and unselfishness his brings to the floor. Crawford is not one I know a lot about, but he has been described to me as a nice fit for WVU.

We will keep the WVU fans updated on the progress of their recruiting.