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WeR1 Summer Finale Notebook (July 22)

07/23/2017, 12:15am EDT
By Josh Verlin

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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PHILADELPHIA — A pair of live period events took place just down the street from each other, as the Elevate Hoops Summer Showdown invaded Jefferson University while the WeR1 Summer Finale brought several shoe-sponsored squads to Penn Charter for some showcase games.

Here’s a short notebook featuring prospects and action from a pair of games at Penn Charter on Saturday afternoon:

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Xander Rice (above) is the son of Monmouth coach and former UNC guard King Rice. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

Monmouth coach Rice’s son seeing other side of recruiting process

For the last six years, Xander Rice has seen his dad, Monmouth head coach King Rice, bring prospects to his campus, show them around, and try to sell them on becoming a part of his Hawks program.

Now, he’s the one that college coaches are calling to show off their schools.

“Yeah, it is a little weird,” he acknowledged, “but now I  know what it’s like so I know what the process is like because of that.

A 6-foot-3, 175-pound combo guard, Rice has an offer from Monmouth (of course), but also holds scholarship offers from Pitt and Rutgers, as well as Manhattan and UNC-Greensboro. Stanford, Yale, Penn and Tulane have all been in touch, though the high-academic schools are waiting on an SAT score before they would potentially offer.

It’s clear that though Rice is clearly tracking to be good enough to play for his dad in the MAAC, he’s by no means married to the idea.

“It would be cool to play for my dad, but I just want to make sure I’m making the right decision, looking at the right schools,” he said. “Him helping me out recruiting-wise has helped me learn how to talk to different coaches and introducing me to different coaches and putting me on the radar, that’s helped me out a lot.

“He likes to kind of just support and not really be a coach for me,” Rice added. “He just likes to be my dad, and then if I’m doing something really wrong, he’ll give me little pointers here and there that will help my game out, but it’s more him supporting me as a dad and wanting me to do well.”

Rice showed off his well-rounded skill set in a win over Elite U on Saturday afternoon, scoring 16 points while hitting a pair of 3-pointers. He was comfortable in either guard spot, with the ability to catch-and-shoot or take his man off the dribble and get to the rack.

For his first two years of high school, Rice had the opportunity to learn from the most famous high school coach in the country, Hall of Famer Bob Hurley Sr. at St. Anthony (N.J.). But with the announcement coming this spring that the famed but financially-troubled Jersey City school would close, Rice will be headed to Mater Dei Prep (N.J.) for his junior season.

“Playing for a legendary coach...it taught me a lot, made me a lot better, not just as a player but as a person,” Rice said. “(Hurley) helped me out a whole lot, I can’t even describe how much he helped me, how much he taught me.”

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Quick Hits
-- No matter where he plays, Elijah Kiah-El has one thing on his mind: rebound the basketball. The 6-6 power forward -- who’s every embodiment of the term -- was a force to be reckoned with on the glass yet again against the D.C. Blue Devils at the WeR1 Summer Finale, coming up with seven of his 13 rebounds on the offensive end to help him to a 11-point outing and his team to a 65-64 overtime win. Kiah-El, who just graduated from Martin Luther King (Pa.) and will be doing a prep year at Coastal Academy (N.J.), picked up his first offer last week, from Hampton, and then added those from Coppin State, Wagner and Eastern Kentucky. Coppin State head coach Juan Dixon and an assistant were at Penn Charter to see Kiah-El on Saturday. “I just want to get stronger for college, that’s all I’m working on,” he said. “That’s what I’m going for prep school for,

-- Benedictine (Va.) shooting guard Gibson Jimerson had the hot hand to start off a game against Philly Pride, as the D.C. Blue Devils sniper knocked down a left-wing tray, hit a smooth one-dribble pull-up in the lane and then a catch-and-shoot from the right wing; the 6-5, 205-pound wing guard finished with 13 points in the overtime loss. So far, he’s got two offers, but they’re nothing to sneeze at: Kansas State and Cincinnati; Stanford, Yale, Princeton, NC State, Virginia and Colorado have also been following his progress.

He’s coming off an appearance in the Under Armour All-American Camp, where he certainly held his own against some of the top prospects in the country, many of which were a year older than he. “It was a great experience, that was one of my goals to get invited to that camp this year,” he said. “It was good to hear that I got invited, it was definitely a great experience playing against that kind of competition. It just made me a better player, playing up this year.”

-- Leading the way for Philly Pride offensively in the win over the D.C. Blue Devils was Neshaminy rising senior Chris Arcidiacono, who buried six 3-pointers to get to 20 points in the game. The 6-3 combo guard ran most of the point guard duties for Philly Pride, doing a good job of distributing and limiting his mistakes though his assist total was low due to a combination of him hitting most of the outside shots and the overwhelming amount of second-chance points the Philly Pride frontcourt put together. Lately, Arcidiacono said he’d been newly hearing from Fordham, St. Bonaventure and Loyola (Md.), though it’s previous offerees Quinnipiac and Mt. St. Mary’s that he said had been on him the hardest. Either way, a decision isn’t likely to come soon; unlike his brother, who committed to Villanova during his junior season, Chris Arcidiacono said his commitment will come “probably towards the end of next year.”

-- It looks like a front-runner has emerged for Friends’ Central (Pa.) 2018 wing Justin Steers. Though 10 different schools have offered the athletic 6-6 forward, who thrives in transition and attacking the bucket from the high post, it’s UMass and new head coach Matt McCall that’s really catching Steers’ ear. “Basically it’s like, I’m their number one recruit they’re looking at right now, they really want me, they’re just telling me I’ll fit perfectly in their system, they’ll use me really well,” he said. A visit is being planned for the fall; it’s not clear yet whether it’s official or unofficial, though Steers said he was leaning towards making it official. Steers said he’d also been talking to LSU, Dayton, Eastern Michigan and Rider, but also mentioned that his recruitment is “wide open” and he won’t be cutting his list until the beginning of the school year.


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