[MoonlightGraham]

November 1, 2012

Good news first: combo guard Armando Brown commits to Lafayette today!

Armando won't dazzle the recruiting experts who rank each program's incoming class. He's ranked #1436 in the Class of '13, and he's barely among the top 300 players at his position nationwide. But if you've been reading for a while, you know we've liked him all along. We won't need Armando to step into the starting lineup as a freshman, not with Billy Weiler, Hubert Song, and Willard Davis all returning next year. Coach Sims can afford to be patient with Brown, letting him develop his ballhandling and passing abilities. He looks like he'll be ready to play our kind of defense as soon as he arrives. Armando is also a very good student. It's great to have you aboard, Mr. Brown.

Not-so-great news next: Dorsey Hicks continues to weigh his college decision, trying to decide whether to pick Loyola or Lafayette. If there were another player we liked nearly as much, I probably would have withdrawn Dorsey's offer and given it to the next man up. Right now, that man would be Leroy Bonin, who doesn't have any offers yet.

I think I'm going to court Hicks one more time. Meanwhile, I'll continue to invest in recruiting Bonin, and I've picked two more players from our contact list to visit: Lamar Pickens and James Robbins. I'll give you more information about them if they become high-priority recruits.

I won't be redshirting anyone this season. The only player willing to sit out a year is sophomore center Louis Hewett, who probably won't ever play very much for us. Our incoming big men, James Sanders and Rhett King, passed him on the depth chart from Day One, and his classmate, Clark Nolan, will start for us this year.

Training camps are about to begin, in anticipation of our season opener, at home against NJIT on November 18.