another 2010 recruit???

[skip-zip]

In the true spirit of overanalyzing, I've found a little more info on Darrell Blanton.

He does not show up in an internet search prior to 2007. At the end of his junior season in high school, he shows up on the All-Ohio D1 third team along with none other than Alex Sullivan. In their senior HS seasons, Sullivan moved up to 2nd team and Blanton fell to honorable mention.

Hoop Scoop rated Blanton the 40th best Ohio HS player in the class of 2008, and the 11th best wing forward. For comparison, Hoop Scoop rated Humpty Hitchens the 9th best player in that class and the best point guard, with Sullivan 21st overall and 3rd best PG.

As a freshman at Fort Scott Community College, Blanton averaged 18.2 points, 7.5 rebounds and an impressive 56% from the field to earn all-conference honorable mention.

That's about as much as I can find. Blanton is just not on anyone's radar, as you might expect for a walk-on junior with two years of eligibility. Expectations should be low, which means that any contributions he might make will be a bonus.

Nice work Dave.

There's been plenty of discussions on here about JC players. The one thing you always have to keep in mind is that sometimes even an average high school player can really grow during 2 years of JC ball. I've used the "late bloomer" tag on many of these kinds of guys over the years. But in Blanton's case, he was pretty well regarded coming out of the high school, and appears to have done nothing in the last two years to show that he's not keeping a good pace in comparison to other players his own age. To get that kind of guy as a walk-on certainly appears to be a great coup at this point. We'll see.

[Dave in Green]

There's really no end to the kind of stuff you can dig up if you keep digging. I just discovered that rivals.com offers the option of searching an entire recruiting class (including jucos) by position, and then sorting by height. So I called up all forwards from the class of 2010 and sorted by shortest to tallest.

The shortest forward listed in the class of 2010 prospects is 6-1. There are also four 6-2 forwards. Darrell Blanton is among 29 forwards listed at 6-3.

The concept of 6-3 forwards not having a chance of making quality teams is blown out of the water by the fact that both Texas and Oklahoma have each signed a 6-3 forward from the class of 2010. Utah, Utah State, Stephen F. Austin and Akron are the others schools listed as having signed 6-3 forwards. It will be interesting to see how many of these recruits are able to contribute as D1 college forwards and how many are converted to guards.

None of these shorter forwards have been given any stars by rivals.com, which is pretty interesting when you consider that teams like Texas and Oklahoma are generally expected to sign only multi-star players. The shortest forward with any star rating from rivals.com is 6-4 Justin Coleman from Huntington, WV, who has a 4-star rating out of 5.

Anyway, here's a link to the site in case anyone else is interested in playing with the numbers:

rivals.com link

[Dr Z]

Nice work Dave.

Agreed.

[ZachTheZip]

Looks like he ended up going to Gannon on scholarship.

[Dave in Green]

Reading down near the end of the Blanton comments made by the Gannon hoops editor, another familiar name appears:

* The info related to Blanton's high school days that really jumped out to me were the statements made by his former assistant coach at Euclid when talking about a current EHS player. Tedd Kwasniak, who won back-to-back state championships as the head coach at Villa Angela-St. Joseph in 1994 and 1995, is an assistant at Euclid. Talking about Demetrius Treadwell, Kwasniak "brought up names such as former NBA player Ruben Patterson, current New Orleans Hornet forward James Posey, former VASJ standout Jerome Davis, former St. Joe's and Ohio State standout Treg Lee, and former All-Ohioan Darrell Blanton - a Euclid grad."

If Blanton and Treadwell are similar in talent, and Blanton is 6-3 and Treadwell 6-9, I'm pleased that the Zips ended up with the much taller of the two.