Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 7, 1990 TAG: 9006070492
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Doug Doughty
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The Warriors, ranked third in the country last season by USA Today, will add Alexander and 6-foot-7 Thomas Burroughs from Charlotte, N.C., to a cast of returnees that includes 6-8, 240 Ben Davis and 6-9 Wilfred Kirkaldy.
Recruiting analyst Bob Gibbons said Alexander, Burroughs and Davis will be ranked in the top 15 and that another newcomer, 6-6 Willie Cauley from Niagara Falls, N.Y., will be in the top 40. Kirkaldy is a certain top-100 choice.
"It's the most talented group I've ever seen at the high school level," Gibbons said. "It could almost be the freshman All-America team [in 1991-92]."
The opportunity to play with Davis, Kirkaldy and Co. was at least one of the reasons Alexander chose to transfer to Oak Hill.
"Everybody's goal is to be the best," Alexander said. "I feel I can make that team the best high school team in America."
Alexander spent his junior year at Flint Hill Prep in Falls Church, but he passed up the chance to join his Flint Hill coach, Stu Vetter, at Harker Prep in Potomac, Md. Vetter left Flint Hill after the basketball program was de-emphasized from a national to a local scope.
"I left a message on Coach Vetter's answering machine," Alexander said. "I haven't talked to him, but it's over with. My decision had nothing to do with Coach Vetter. I just felt that Oak Hill was more of a high school with dormitories while Harker was more of a college prep."
Alexander, who said he considered returning to Waynesboro, already has met Proposition 48 guidelines for freshman eligibility with a score of 930 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test and a grade-point average of nearly 3.2.
"At Flint Hill, we traveled to Hawaii," Alexander said. "At Waynesboro, I think the longest trip was to Broadway."
That's Broadway, Va., not the Great White Way in New York.
\ Virginia Commonwealth basketball coach Sonny Smith has confirmed that Rams signee Kendrick Warren, a high-school All-American from Thomas Jefferson in Richmond, has scored more than 700 on the SAT, but, in order to be eligible as a freshman, Warren must post a grade-point average of 2.0 or higher in a core curriculum of college-prep courses.
In his first year as Virginia head coach, Jeff Jones will get something he didn't order: A tour of the Midwest with stops at Minnesota, Marquette and Notre Dame.
The Cavaliers were scheduled to play in a holiday tournament at Marquette, but when the tournament was moved up to the first week of the season, associate athletic director Jim West scheduled a game at Minnesota on Dec. 29, followed by a game at Marquette on Jan. 2.
"I'm not sure that's exactly how we would have done it, but the contract was signed," said Jones, who begins his tenure with an appearance, the program's first, in the Great Alaska Shootout. "It was an awkward situation."
In Minnesota, the Cavaliers will face a team that reached the final eight and a coach, Clem Haskins, who has questioned Virginia's choice of Jones, 29, as coach.
Haskins said UVa's other assistant, Craig Littlepage, was the man for the job. UVa athletic director Jim Copeland cited Littlepage's 23-63 record at Rutgers as a major consideration.
"People talk about his record at Rutgers," Haskins said. "That's bull. What about his record at Penn [where Littlepage was 40-39]? I'm very upset. He's qualified. He's coached there and they give the job to a kid.
"That's the problem [black coaches] have. There's always a copout for not giving a guy a second chance. We've made the top 16 [for] two years in a row, the elite eight last year and I guarantee you, if Clem Haskins were fired tomorrow, he would be at the end of the unemployment line."
\ If Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski goes to the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association, it will be interesting to see if the Blue Devils go after Xavier coach Pete Gillen. Gillen twice rejected overtures from Virginia this spring, but Duke probably would not repeat UVa's mistake of not committing to Gillen as its No. 1 choice.
If Krzyzewski departed and Gillen were not available, the Blue Devils almost surely would go after former assistant Bob Bender, who took Illinois State to the NCAA Tournament in his first year. Virginia inquired about Bender for its vacancy but instead received an endorsement of Jones from Krzyzewski.
\ It appears the ACC was guilty of some double-talk when conference officials told Mark Collins of the Roanoke Civic Center that games in the ACC-Big East Challenge would be restricted to buildings with a seating capacity of 13,000 or more.
The Roanoke Civic Center seats 10,056 for basketball, but the Richmond Coliseum, announced Tuesday as one of the sites for next winter's doubleheaders, had a capacity of only 11,051 for last year's NCAA Tournament.
Richmond will be the site of a double-header Dec. 3 featuring Virginia and Pittsburgh followed by Maryland and Boston College.
\ Chris Toomer, a 6-foot-2 guard from Anchorage, Ala., has signed with Liberty. Other late Liberty basketball signees include 6-2 Matthew Hildebrand from Sturgis, Mich., and 6-2 Brett Anthony from Winter Park, Fla. . . . Steve Gibson, 6-foot-8 center for Northside High School, has accepted a grant-in-aid to play basketball for Central Wesleyan College in Central, S.C.
\ Roanoke native Mike Stamus, a product of Northside High School and Virginia Tech, has been appointed director of publicity for baseball at the Goodwill Games in Seattle. Stamus is an assistant sports information director at Georgia Tech, where he handles media relations for the baseball team.
by CNB