Alrighty, here is the men's basketball recruiting notes thread for May.
The thread for April is here.
First of all, with the addition of
Jared Bynum, Stanford has 11 players on scholarship for next season. So that means they have two scholarships to play with. We'll see if they'll be able to add anyone else into the fold or not. I'll try my best to see if I can find out what they're planning to do with those scholarships, but my guess is that it's a very fluid deal. I'm sure they're looking to add someone else if they can, but admissions always makes things tricky.
Rivals has released their final rankings for the 2023 class. I was thinking about doing an article on this, but I figured I would just mention it in this thread instead since neither commit made a jump and instead both fell a bit in the rankings.
Andrej Stojakovic finishes as the 40th best recruit overall and 11th best small forward in the 2023 class as a 4-star.
Kanaan Carlyle finishes as the 57th best recruit overall and 17th best among point guards. He too clocks in as a 4-star.
I think the reason why they've fallen is for different reasons. I think with Andrej, there's concerns about his physicality and readiness to make an instant impact at the next level. The talent is there and his ranking is still really good, not to mention him being a McDonald's All-American. But, I think his defense and just overall strength/physicality is why he isn't rated higher. Stanford is going to have to really make sure they give him open looks and allow him to be in a system where he comes off screens and gets clean looks at the basket.
As for Kanaan, I think his lack of a consistent jumper has hurt him and then also, he played against tougher competition at Overtime Elite and that might have exposed him a bit. The good news there, though is the jump to college shouldn't be as big of a deal for him since he's used to playing against similar level of competition and in some cases better competition for the past year. So, in that sense I think odds are better of Carlyle making more of an immediate impact than Andrej.
And then as a reminder, Stanford also has a preferred walk-on coming in:
Cameron Grant, who is a small forward listed at 6'7", 175. While Andrej and Kanaan have both fallen in the rankings, it's still a very strong class. Especially when you consider how big if a need point guard has been.
Regarding 2024 prospects,
@SamuelMcF posted at the very end of the April thread that 5-star shooting guard
Annor Boateng out of Little Rock, Arkansas landed an offer from Stanford. Boateng is now the second 5-star shooting guard Stanford is looking at as 5-star
Kon Knueppel is a major target as well, visiting back in October on an official visit.
Stanford is also hot after two other key shooting guards: 4-stars
Sir Mohammed and
Gicarri Harris. Mohammed included Stanford in his top six and then
in a recent interview with Rivals, Harris made it clear that Stanford is among the top teams that are on him. Purdue looks like the front runner, but Stanford very well may be the biggest thread to pull him away from the Boilermakers.
Point guard wise, 5-star
Zoom Diallo is is the top target there, but the more realistic get is 4-star
Trent Perry. Now, Rob Cassidy in our network has put in a FutureCast for UCLA for Perry. He put it in at the end of last week, so it's recent. I have shot him a note to see what he's hearing and why he made that prediction. I'll of course let you all know what he tells me once he gets back to me about that. One thing that does help Stanford with Perry is they've been on him for a long time, long before he was even rated by Rivals, so they saw the talent right away. And he visited, granted it was back in August of last year, but he has visited. I'll also check to see if he has any plans to visit in the future as well. That's the status with Perry.
I think for 2024, given that it's possible Carlyle is a one and done guy (I think he'll play two, but you never know), it's really imperative that they land somebody at the point guard position. There's a lot of wings they are after, so I'm highly confident they're gonna land somebody out of that group. But point guard is a real need. And then also, they gotta do a better job recruiting big men. Staton posted below would be a really nice get, but he's a 2025 kid. Ideally they get someone in 2024 who is a big, but looking at the offers list, it's not clear how that will happen.
That's pretty much all I got. For a list of who they are in 2025,
click here. It's just the offers list. The most recent 2025 offer is to 7-footer
Xavion Staton who is currently not ranked as I created his profile at the time of his offer. Fresno State and Xavier have also offered. He's out of Sierra Vista in Las Vegas.
n.rivals.com
