Where are the recruits coming from?

While only nine of the 29 recruits currently committed to New York City mid-majors are playing high school basketball in the state, that number is pretty deceiving about how well schools are mining the talent base of the city. Take a deeper look and see just what some schools are doing to revive and build their programs.

Note: This data was compiled by looking at ESPN, Rivals, Scout and even a little MaxPreps. If you have further additions, updates or corrections to the current classes please let me know.

Often it’s easy to see the identity of a school through its recruiting classes. Don’t let the Fordham’s class full of Massachusetts prep schoolers trick you, these are New York City kids. Jeffrey Short may be at Notre Dame Prep right now, but he’s from the Bronx and Devon McMillan and Bryan Smith are both from Brooklyn. In fact, the one guy that really stands out is Luka Zivkovic. How does a 6’8 power forward from Serbia via Indiana end up going to the Bronx? Beats me, but those guys should give Tom Pecora a foundation to build upon.

Hofstra’s in a similar boat. While the Pride went to California to get size in 6’11 junior college player Tyrone Lyons, the rest of the class (Jordan Allen, Malik Nichols and Moussa Kone) are all from nearby. In fact, it’s a 20 minute drive from Allen’s Long Island Lutheran High School to Hofstra’s campus.

Then there’s Manhattan. Assuming new head coach Steve Masiello can convince everyone to stay on, a bunch of New Yorkers will be Jaspers next season. They’ll be led by Brooklyn’s Davontay Grace and five of the six are from what one would consider “traditional” recruiting areas for Manhattan. (The sixth is Donovan Kates who is from Kentucky, which makes sense given the new head coach’s background.)

Of course, not all the schools are doing it this way. Columbia’s lone recruit, Noah Springwater, is from California. (But much more on why this makes sense in the Ivy League on Wednesday.) Unlike many postgrads, Stony Brooks’ Scott King is actually from Plymouth, NH. Lamin Fulton, the lone recruit for St. Peter’s, is from Philadelphia – which actually is a logical place for the Jersey City, N.J. based school to work.

In recruiting it’s all about utilizing the opportunities you have, so it’s good to see so many of the New York schools aggressively recruiting the city that has so much to give back to them.