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Big 5 stocking up on area talent in 2015

08/07/2014, 1:30pm EDT

By Josh Verlin

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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When Trey Lowe committed to Temple on Thursday night, he only became the latest in a trend this year that’s nothing but good for hoops in the City of Brotherly Love.

Lowe–a Ewing, N.J. native–is already the seventh player from within an hour of Philadelphia who’s committed to playing his college basketball in the Big 5. And many of those kids have been from Philly’s own Public League and Catholic League, keeping local talent around for years to come.

“The Big 5 has always been fun, and this just makes it even better with all of these guys committed locally,” said Lower Merion wing Jule Brown, who’s committed to Penn. “It’s just fun to see all the local schools get some of the top prospects in the country.”

Villanova got on the board early, landing commitments from Blair Academy (N.J.) forward Tim Delaney and then Salesianum (Del.) guard Donte Divincenzo before their junior seasons even began. Penn then got on the board, landing Brown in June and then Cherry Hill East point guard Jake Silpe last week. Saint Joseph’s picked up a pair of local commitments this past weekend in Chris Clover (St. Joseph’s Prep) and Lamarr Kimble (Neumann-Goretti), both products of the PCL.

And none of these schools were settling for their recruits. Silpe picked Penn over a dozen other schools, Lowe could have gone to VCU or Southern Methodist, Kimble spurned Creighton and the Big East to stay home; Divincenzo and Delaney ended their recruitments before many high-major schools even got a chance to persuade them otherwise, but both have showed through their play they’re certainly going to make an impact at the high-major level.

Divincenzo, Kimble and Lowe were all teammates on the AAU circuit with Team Final, making that trio’s games even more special.

“I had no idea either of them were going to commit. I didn’t know any of their recruitment, we kind of kept it to ourselves,” Divincenzo said about Kimble and Lowe. “It’ll mean a lot…knowing the people from playing AAU and having two other really good friends of mine, playing against them will be fun.”

They’re not the only AAU teammates who’re both headed to the Big 5, as Silpe and Brown played for the Jersey Shore Warriors–but they’ll stay teammates in college.

Expand the range a little wider and there’s a few others who will stay fairly local. Math, Civics & Sciences forward Mike Watkins is committed to Penn State, and Paulius Zalys, a Perkiomen School forward, is committed to Lafayette.

Other than Penn commitments Jackson Donahue and Collin McManus, both of Northfield Mt. Hermon (Mass.), every single player committed to the Big 5 next year at this point is from close enough to the city itself to call Philly home.

“It makes everything more competitive,” Lowe said. “This class had the choice to go anywhere for school. They want to stay close to family and friends, and that fit them well.”

For the foreseeable future in the Big 5, almost every matchup will feature one Philly kid going up against another in the backcourt. La Salle has redshirt freshman point guard Amar Stukes likely playing a big role for the next four years, with Silpe and Kimble potential four-year starters at their respective institutions.

It’s a big jump from this year, which has only two members of the senior class going into the Big 5: Great Valley’s Mikal Bridges (Villanova) and Pitman’s Darnell Foreman (Penn); Drexel features a local incoming freshman in Roman Caholic’s Rashann London. Penn State also got an area player in London’s backcourt partner Shep Garner, and Lafayette got a pair of South Jersey products in Matt Klinewski (Eastern) and Eric Stafford (Pitman), but that group in total doesn’t even match the amount of players staying in the city next fall.

In fact, it reverses a recent trend that’s seen the local schools increasingly go elsewhere to bring in talent.

Saint Joseph’s brought in a four-man recruiting class this year, with players from New York City, West Virginia and North Carolina; the only Philly kids on the roster are redshirt freshman Jai Williams and Penn Wood grad Aaron Brown, who transferred back from West Virginia last year. Villanova’s got more players from the Maryland/D.C. region than from the state of Pennsylvania, and Penn’s top two contributors this season will likely be a Chicago native (Tony Hicks) and Washington State native (Darien Nelson-Henry); aside from Foreman, the Quakers won’t have any local players on the roster this year.

They’re just like every other school around–one or two local players, but for the most part made up of pieces from around the country.

Temple has local players on the roster in Jaylen Bond (Plymouth-Whitemarsh) and Devin Coleman (Friends’ Central), both both began their college careers elsewhere–at Texas and Clemson, respectively–before coming back to N. Broad Street.

La Salle’s got Dobbins product Jerrell Wright, a senior forward, and Stukes at guard, but the two transfers the Explorers took in last year (Jordan Price and Cleon Roberts) are not Philadelphia natives whatsoever; Price is from Georgia and transferred from Auburn, while Roberts is a Miami native who transferred from Georgia Southern.

That’s not to say that national recruiting is a bad thing, though many of these schools used to rely almost exclusively on players from within a 50-mile radius. Getting more local kids to stay home only increases the familiarity in the Big 5 city series games, which still remain relevant even in today’s changing Division I landscape.

As one of the first to commit, Divincenzo didn’t realize he would be starting a trend.

“When [Kimble] committed, I thought ‘he’s staying too,’ and then Clover committed, and I said ‘he’s staying home as well,” he said. “And then Trey Lowe committed and I said ‘wow, that’s three people in a week.'”

And that group of eight is only poised to grow larger, with quite a few scholarships left open. Temple (four), Villanova (three), La Salle, Saint Joseph’s and Drexel (two each) are all still looking at quite a few area players, while Penn’s always able to add another piece or two with the Ivy League’s lack of athletic scholarships.

There are a few targets that have multiple local schools on them. Penn and Temple are both in Haverford School and top-150 guard Levan “Shawn” Alston‘s final six schools, as is Penn State. Temple and Saint Joseph’s have also been in heavy pursuit of Archbishop Carroll forward Ernest Aflakpui, while Villanova is after his Carroll teammate Derrick Jones, a top-20 wing. Samir Doughty (Math, Civics & Sciences), Ahmad Gilbert (Constitution), Malik Ellison (Life Center) also have Philly schools heavily involved.

By the time it’s all said and done, there could be as many as a dozen or more kids from within an hour’s drive of City Hall who are playing in the Big 5, with a few others (Gemil Holbrook at Rider, Myles Stephens at Princeton and more) who will also be playing their college basketball nearby.

Ultimately, all the top local talent staying home only means good things for Philadelphia basketball. These are going to be kids playing in front of friends and family, against players they’ve been on the courts with for years and years.

The next few years are going to be fun in the Big 5.