Nathan Rawlins-Kibonge commits to WSU basketball

Washington State Cougars coach Kyle Smith secured his first commitment for a future class when Portland-area forward Nathan Rawlins-Kibonge announced his commitment via Twitter on Monday night.

Rawlins-Kibonge is a 6-7 forward who is listed at 240 pounds by 247sports.com ... as a defensive end. He doesn’t have a basketball profile or rating. There’s a reason for that! Check out his Twitter bio:

[in a very dramatic voice] “COMPUTER: ZOOM IN.”

“NOW, ENHANCE!”

He’s a ... sophomore? What in the name of Patrick Simon is going on here??

Rawlins-Kibonge’s only other offer is from the hometown Portland State Vikings, and that came about six weeks ago, according to his Twitter timeline. The WSU offer appears to have also been fairly recent, but it looks like the love affair took off quickly. Via Jed Tai at Prep Hoops Oregon:

“When I went up there for my unofficial visit I loved it – everything about the place was great,” Rawlins-Kibonge “I loved the city – the town doesn’t have a lot of distractions, the academics are great, and the way they are talking about turning the program around with us Northwest (guys) – that’s something that I feel that no other school is bringing to the table. I was just so attracted to it, it was too good to pass up. ...

“The coach loves my work ethic and he’s all about scrapping and dirty play, blocks and defense and that’s something that I do. Everything that he does with his program – he’s won like 20+ games like the last seven years. And the players he looks after – I just fell in love with the school as soon as I got up there.”

As you might anticipate, there’s not a lot of information out there available on Rawlins-Kibonge; WSU is way ahead of the typical recruiting curve on this kid. That said, the little amount of video on his Twitter timeline suggests that he’s already quite developed and already a heck of an athlete:

With that, here’s how the scholarship situation currently looks. You’ll note that Marvin Cannon is back on here — Cannon is officially coming back to WSU. You can track all the roster movement here.