Virginia's Fab Five... er... Six

K.T. Harrell

UVA's incoming class of basketball recruits are now on campus, playing pick-up ball with the holdovers.  Here are two GREAT pieces from the Daily Progress, highlighting Virginia's Fab Freshmen:

The experts weigh in on Virginia’s recruits, Jerry Ratcliffe

Bennett’s Six Shooters, Whitelaw Reid

My favorite excerpt from the articles:

“This game is pretty simple when you’re Tony Bennett,” said Telep. “If you look, he’s been successful when he’s brought in guys that he likes, that fit how he plays. You’re not winning at Virginia right now even with Ed Davis [who chose UNC over UVa a couple of years ago]. However, you’re fighting to get to the place where you can legitimately show Ed Davis [or someone like him] that this is where we are, take us to the next step. This is a foundation class.”

Francis said this class kind of reminds him of some of former Virginia coach Terry Holland’s recruiting crops.

“Right off the bat, you get four or five players that can really play in that first recruiting class, then be selective and bring in two or three guys that are in the top 30 to top 100 range, get a good nucleus and have those guys together for three or four years,” Francis said. “Holland had it right, and if you get a Ralph Sampson on top of that, great. If you’re Virginia, you don’t have to win the ACC, you just have to be three, four or five every year. Do that consistently and you’ve got a nice string of NCAA tournaments going.”

Adding these six frosh to the nucleus of a [reportedly rededicated and driven] Mike Scott, Sam Zeglinski, Mustapha Farrakhan, Assane Sene, Jontel Evans, and Will Sherrill could lead to a pretty interesting season in 2010-11.  I know I can't wait to see these new Hoos in action.

Also, with the freshmen now officially enrolled, the updated roster has just been released on virginiasports.com  Some interesting notes:

-- As part of Mike Scott "reinventing his game," he has changed jersey numbers.  He will now sport the #23 recently vacated by Jeff Jones.

-- James Johnson is listed at 6-9 and 230 pounds.  Plenty of beef to bang in the ACC.  J.J. will wear #34.

-- Will Regan is not far behind, at 6-8, 220.  He's wearing #4.

-- The rest of the freshmen numbers: K.T. Harrell -- #24, Joe Harris -- #12, Billy Baron -- #15, and Akil Mitchell -- #25.