AKRON, Ohio - A bit of news, a bit of recruiting movement, but no dunks. On the news side James Price, the 6-11 center ranked No. 66 in the nation by Scouthoops.com and No. 72 by Rivals.com, said Tuesday he is packing his bags, leaving St. Edward High for the city of horses and cardinals, Louisville, where he orally...
Price
-
(Special to The Plain Dealer)
AKRON, Ohio - A bit of news, a bit of recruiting movement, but no dunks.
On the news side James Price, the 6-11 center ranked No. 66 in the nation by Scouthoops.com and No. 72 by Rivals.com, said Tuesday he is packing his bags, leaving St. Edward High for the city of horses and cardinals, Louisville, where he orally committed prior to his junior season.
"I'm moving there," he said following a hard 90-minute session of drills at the LeBron James Skills Academy at Akron's Rhodes Arena. "I'll be moving by the end of this month."
Price said he does not know what high school he will be attending, but is excited about the change.
"I'm looking forward to it," said Price, who averaged 11.2 points and seven rebounds. "I don't feel I was able to develop much at St. Edward. I don't feel, if I stayed there, I would be getting any better. When I get into the AAU circuit, or I get into these camps, I'm able to feel free. I don't feel hindered by anything.
"The word's gotten around [in Louisville]. It's crazy to see how much love is down there."
Said St. Edward coach Eric Flannery, "We haven't seen Price all summer. Talking to his family [last week], they told me they wanted to move closer to prepare him for Louisville. We have moved on without him since the summer.
"Obviously we have our history with big guys and we've developed quite a few. The last 15 years we've sent 8-9 big guys to Division I [colleges]. That's their own personal issue."
Movin' on up: It is not unusual for players to make a jump in the national recruiting rankings going into their senior season. JaKarr Sampson, the 6-7 forward from Akron's St. Vincent-St. Mary's High, is the latest.
If he was ranked at all in the spring, it was as a power forward and low on the Top 100 lists for the major recruiting services, Rivals.com and Scouthoops.com. But the latest rankings posted this month by both to coincide with the start of college recruiting find Sampson in the Top 50, now as a small forward.
Rivals ranks Sampson at No. 37 while Scouthoops has him at No. 22.
The rise, according to Sampson, has come from visibility through the summer circuit and improvement in his perimeter skills. "Everybody thought all I had was an inside game," he said following a morning of drills. "I worked on my dribble, and my outside shot, so now I can play a bit of both."
According to Sampson already this summer he has camped in Los Angeles, Houston, West Virginia, Chicago twice and this week Akron and Cleveland.
"I still have to go to Orlando for (AAU) nationals, back to Chicago for an AAU tournament and Milwaukee for an AAU tournament," he said. "And I still have some (college) visits I want to get in. I haven't narrowed that list down yet."
Among the schools Sampson said he is considering are St. John's in New York, USC in California, and regional teams Xavier, Dayton, Louisville, Michigan State, Cincinnati and Ohio State.
"I already (unofficially) visited Michigan State, O-State, Xavier, Cincinnati, Dayton," he said. "I'm going to visit Louisville sometime this summer. And USC and St. John's, those will be official (visits)."
Sampson said he hopes to make a college decision sooner rather than later.
"I'll do something before the high school season, and after AAU season," he said.
No dunk, here: Last summer the buzz coming out of the LeBron James camp at Akron was the dunk by Xavier's Jordan Crawford during a pick-up game between college campers, James and others. In Monday's opening evening James showed up for a light workout again, but this time, there were no dunks by anyone James was guarding, or anyone guarding James.
In fact, twice when James settled in the mid-post -- a rare happening -- he blew his own whistle against 6-7 Chris Wright from the University of Dayton. Wright, laughing, said it was no big deal.
"It's his camp, he can call "em like he wants," Wright said. "I've known him for a couple of years, and some of his teammates in high school, Romeo Travis. It was fun. I think he just wanted us to keep playing defense. I know I didn't foul him. He's too strong to feel a foul. You can't stop him. If he gets one or two buckets, that's shutting him down, to me. He got me for three, so I was one bucket away from shutting him down."