The late signing period begins tomorrow, so we should probably get acquainted with how this thing works. The late period is different than most of the NCAA signing periods. Instead of a rapid fire response like football signing day, basketball letters of intent will trickle in to schools over the next month. Think of it like contract slotting for draft picks in football. The high ranked recruits will decide and the rest will begin to fall into place after that. It seems this year that everyone is waiting for the top ranked players to pull the trigger. This may not mean much for us, but it can also mean that a backup plan for one school may fall to a Pac-10 school because a higher ranked recruit bumps them.
The question on all of our minds concerns what Ken Bone is going to do with his two open scholarships. There really isn't a solid answer to this right now. What the Cougs need is depth at guard and perhaps a complimentary big man. The consensus has been that we need another low post player to compliment Casto. I, on the other hand, think Bone is looking for a face up power forward to go with him. We've got post players on the roster, albeit undersized, and Casto is our center for the next two years. I'm guessing he targets an athletic guard first (they're easier to find) and looks for a big that can run to go along with him. Bone will probably get both types of players, but the smaller guy is going to be the prize, unless he's able to land a big time forward out of nowhere.
The trend with Bone is to field a team of athletes that can run and shoot and not to look for an Aron Baynes type player. As far as names go, that's all up in the air at this point. We've seen some names floated so far, but the feeling I get is that they are all backup plans. Looking at the small sample of who Bone has recruited here so far yields a JC guard, a prep school point guard, and a big man who got out of an LOI somewhere else. All of this shows me that he finds talent in places that are atypical. It also means we shouldn't be surprised if a name shows up out of nowhere.
The next few weeks, or maybe less, should be exciting because we'll truly get to see what Bone can do with some open scholarships. We may not know how he can recruit as a head coach at a major conference school right now, but we should be closer to an answer by the end of the signing period.