Recapping Cincinnati’s Last 24 Glorious Hours On The Recruiting Trail

Yesterday at noon everything was quiet on the recruiting front and there was also a giant goose egg on UC’s 2016 class. 24 hours later Cincinnati owned the #7 recruiting class in college basketball according to 247 Sports.

Then at around five Eastern the Bearcats picked up a commitment from 2016 three-star center Nysier Brooks. Most of you woke up this morning to the news that NC State power forward Kyle Washington announced that he was transferring to UC. Then at noon today four-star shooting guard Jarron Cunningham cast his lot with the red and black.

And just like that the Bearcats had reloaded their arsenal for the next two years. Let’s go through those glorious 24 hours in detail, shall we?

It all started with center Nysier Brooks from Burlington, New Jersey. He visited Clifton earlier this week and committed to UC, interestingly enough, following his walk through at Xavier. Brooks will have an opportunity to earn significant playing time from game one with Coreontae DeBerry graduating following this season. Not unlike many recruits during the Mick Cronin era, it seems Brooks’ strength is on the defensive end rather than the offensive side. He’s sort of like the anti-Quadri Moore, which is a good thing considering they’ll likely split time at the five come 2016. But if Brooks is merely tasked at banging around down low, grabbing rebounds, and getting a few garbage put backs, Cincinnati may have really found a future star in him.

Next came Kyle Washington, a transfer from North Carolina State. If you want to consider him a “recruit”, he’d technically be counted as a member of Cincinnati’s 2015 class. After all, he’ll be on campus within the next couple of months just like Tre Scott, Justin Jenifer, and Jacob Evans. But he won’t be able to play until the 2016 season like the other two. At which point, Washington will be a redshirt junior and both DeBerry and Octavius Ellis will be gone. So he should be plugged in right away just like Brooks.

Finally, just hours after Washington’s commitment came Jarron Cumberland’s, a player the Bearcats have been after for a while. I’m sure Mick Cronin and the coaches will sleep well tonight knowing he’s in the fold. An elite level shooting guard from right up the road in Wilmington, Cumberland boasted offers from several top programs including Xavier, Purdue, Iowa State, and West Virginia with the likes of Michigan sniffing around. He averaged 22.6 points per game as a high school junior and with Farad Cobb and Shaq Thomas gone by the time he comes to campus in 2016, could also earn significant minutes as a true freshman.

Overall, this whirlwind of a day has transformed the outlook of this team. Yesterday we were brimming with questions about where this staff would go with the next cycle of recruits. Lo and behold, all we had to do was wait for the calendar to flip to July to have them answered. I’m not sure if Mick planned it out like this, to receive three commitments in less than 24 hours, but boy was it exciting.

Even more so is the fact that the Bearcats are pretty much set for the next three years.

The 2015 team is absolutely loaded and while they lose Ellis and DeBerry to graduation after that season, Brooks and Washington will be ready to step in and keep the front court right on dominating in 2016. The back and mid court lose Cobb and Thomas but Cumberland will be there waiting for his opportunity along with Jacob Evans and Tre Scott in expanded roles. UC will miss Troy Caupain in 2017 but Justin Jenifer should be ready by then to lead this offense from the point.

At the end of the day what Mick Cronin’s accomplished since yesterday is instill stability in this program, which is the building block of future success. If these highly rated recruits live up to their expectations there’s no telling just how high this team’s ceiling is.