Yesterday, Kyle Anderson committed to UCLA and our recruiting class for 2012 quickly shot up to number 2 in the ESPN rankings, right behind Arizona.
Anderson is a great get for the UCLA program - a possible point forward, who is nicknamed Slo Mo, but as long as he's willing to work hard and learn how to play Ben Ball, he could join many of the warriors that have come out of the UCLA program recently.
The commitment of Anderson also marks a new era in UCLA Men's Basketball - or more accurately, a return to being a national recruiting force. Our current commitments are:
- Kyle Anderson is from St. Anthony High School in New Jersey.
- Jordan Adams currently attends Oak Hill Academy in Virginia but is originally from Georgia.
- Dominic Artis is from Richmond, CA and attends Findlay Prep in Nevada.
Our current targets are:
- Shabazz Muhammad, the top recruit in the class of 2012, from Las Vegas, NV.
- Shaq Goodwin, the #12 recruit, from Georgia (and wants to play football too!)
- Tony Parker, the #31 recruit, from Georgia
You will notice that of our six top targets, five are not from California. With a lack of high school All Americans coming out of California, UCLA must look outside of the West Coast in order to continue the success we expect as Bruins. With two commits already from the East Coast, the traditional media cannot ignore that UCLA is looking to bring in players from all over the country.
A break down on our recruiting classes over the past five years, after the jump.
The Class of 2011 is a small class, with Norman Powell and De'End Parker both hailing from California, and Khalid McCaskill walking on to the team, from New York.
The Class of 2010 brought us four new recruits, although one is Matt Carlino, but two from out of state - Lazeric Jones from Illinois, and Joshua Smith from Washington.
In 2009, our only out of state recruit was Mike Moser, and he's still West Coast. We all know what happened to Moser.
2008 is the class that time can only bring us to forget, with only one recruit left on the team, but only J'Mison Morgan from out of state.
2007 brought us Kevin Love and our last Final Four trip in 2008, but he is West Coast based.
If we want to bring another banner back to Westwood, we cannot depend on talent from California. John Wooden managed to lure some guy named Lew Alcindor to Westwood. They had a pretty successful time here.
This recruiting class will help, in a big way, to push us back into the national spotlight much like our Final Four runs a few years ago, and bring us back into national prominence. Every top recruit in the country should have UCLA on their radar now.
You can't ignore UCLA forever, east coast media.