Slap the Sign
Fansided

Notre Dame Men’s Basketball: Sunday recruiting roundup

By Greg Hadley

Feb 24, 2015; South Bend, IN, USA; A wide angle view of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish stand for the playing of their school song after the game against the Syracuse Orangemen at Purcell Pavilion at the Joyce Center. Syracuse defeats Notre Dame 65-60. Mandatory Credit: Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports
Feb 24, 2015; South Bend, IN, USA; A wide angle view of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish stand for the playing of their school song after the game against the Syracuse Orangemen at Purcell Pavilion at the Joyce Center. Syracuse defeats Notre Dame 65-60. Mandatory Credit: Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports /
facebooktwitterreddit

Notre Dame men’s basketball program, still searching for its first commit of 2017, made it through the initial cuts for two of its targets and offered another big man this week.

Searching for a replacement for Demetrius Jackson, Notre Dame got some good news Sunday when two of its targets for the class of 2017 at shooting guard announced via Twitter that the Irish were among the finalists in their commitment processes.

Related Story: Notre Dame, still searching for first 2017 commit, offers combo guard

D.J. Harvey, a 6-foot-6 prospect from Hyattsville, Maryland, narrowed his list to 10 on Sunday afternoon. He is a rising senior at DeMatha High School, where Irish head coach Mike Brey used to teach and coach and where several Irish players have matriculated in the past few years.

https://twitter.com/TheRealDJHarvey/status/757294463441965056

According to Nick Ironside of 247Sports, Harvey will take an official visit to Notre Dame on Sept. 9-11, putting the Irish in good position for when Harvey makes another cut to his list.

Harvey is rated as a four-star prospect by both 247Sports and Scout and is also a consensus top-10 shooting guard in his class nationally. He has the length to play the wing and with a little more bulk could easily play small forward for Notre Dame.

The other guard to include Notre Dame among his finalists was Brandon Randolph, a 6-foot-6 native of Norristown, Pennsylvania. Randolph’s announcement came just minutes before Harvey’s, and like Harvey, he is still considering Arizona and Louisville, in addition to Notre Dame.

https://twitter.com/brandolph902/status/757293209399595008

Randolph rates just behind Harvey in 247Sports’s positional rankings but is still a top-50 prospect nationally and a four-star recruit. Like Harvey, he still has plenty of muscle and size to add his long frame, but he has a smooth jumper and an explosive crossover that makes him a threat to contribute immediately for whatever school he does end up choosing.

Notre Dame has a bit of an inside edge with Harvey, whom Brey has personally recruited and who has seen others from his area flourish in South Bend, including Jerian Grant and Martinas Geben. Randolph, on the other hand, is more a long shot at this point, as he has seemed to show especial interest in Louisville and North Carolina and has yet to announce which schools he will officially visit.

Finally, Mike Brey made another offer this week, to center Luke Garza of Washington D.C. Garza is a 6-foot-10, 235-pound big man who would be Notre Dame’s tallest commit since Geben in 2014. 247Sports has Garza rated as the 13th best center in the country, and he has shot up the rankings in the past few months.

At this point, the Irish are a bit late to the party with Garza, who already has taken two official visits and has more than a dozen other offers, but he has seemed interested in at least considering Notre Dame, which could really use an effective, true big man in the future. But perhaps the most interesting thing to come from Garza’s offer is this little tidbit he offered to Irish Illustrated’s Pete Sampson.

Um, huh? Last two seasons aside, I always thought Notre Dame and Brey have been infamous for their inability to get past the first weekend of the NCAA tournament. In the 14 seasons before 2014-2015, Brey got his team to the Sweet 16 just once.

But hey, whatever works for Garza, right?

In all seriousness, it’s these kinds of situations where Brey needs to spin the team’s recent successes as indicative of the future rather than an anomaly. ESPN recently named Brey the most “stable” coach in the ACC, which is good, but the hallmark of Brey’s tenure in South Bend has been that his teams have always overachieved with mid-level talent.

Next: What the new ACC Network means for Notre Dame

Players like Jackson and Grant lifted the Irish past that and to a whole new level of basketball, and it’s on Brey’s staff to start recruiting like a top program to ensure the team stays on that level.