Hoops recruiting: Goins sets up USF visit

Making a lot of basketball recruiting calls, and had meant to get this up yesterday, but there's encouraging developments for USF in the recruitment of 6-foot-10 center Steve Goins from Chicago's Curie High.

The biggest news is that Curie has lined up an official visit to Tampa -- the only one he's made with a top-level program -- and will come to Tampa with his mother the weekend of March 8. He's also likely to visit Connecticut, and the only program he's previously visited is hometown Illinois-Chicago. Another indication of Goins' interest in USF is that he, his mother and Curie assistant Larry Wallace attended USF's road game at DePaul two weeks ago and met briefly with coaches after the game.

Not convinced Goins is a Big East player? Wallace said Goins showed a lot Saturday, when Curie went up against Chicago Farragut (where Kevin Garnett played) in the city playoffs and Goins held his own against 6-foot-9 Michael Dunigan, an Oregon signee who is a five-star recruit according to Scout.com, a McDonald's All-American rated as the No. 3 center nationally in this class. Goins finished with eight points and nine rebounds; Dunigan had 14 and seven as Farragut posted a 20-point win.

One more Goins note: he's a high school teammate of 6-foot-5 forward Wayne Blackshear, considered one of the top prep freshmen in the country. Curie opens the state playoffs tonight ...

Two new names to offer: USF coach Stan Heath was out in Idaho a few weeks ago to look at Juan Pattillo, a 6-foot-7 forward from the College of Southern Idaho, according to Barret Peery, coach at the juco powerhouse.

Pattillo has come on strong this season, leading a 26-0 CSI team with 17.7 points per game and ranking a close second on the team with 7.2 rebounds. It's also worth noting he's hitting more than 70 percent of his free throws. Pattillo, who is from Las Vegas, has some heavy hitters on him, with Arizona, UCLA and Oklahoma among his other top suitors, along with hometown UNLV. Pattillo won't set up visits until after his season ends in another two weeks or so, but USF figures to be in the mix.

Another juco forward USF is watching is Zvonko Buljan (sounds like bull-yon), a 6-8, 220-pound sophomore at Vincennes University in Indiana. Coach Everick Sullivan said Tuesday that USF has had coaches in to see him "a couple of times," but that Buljan has 15-20 schools interested and he won't start narrowing down his list for visits until after the season ends in 2-3 weeks. Buljan is averaging 13.0 points and 9.4 rebounds -- "a great rebounder, very skilled, can step out on the perimeter, very athletic, can guard 3s if he needs to," Sullivan said. I hesitate to even mention this, but Buljan is from the same Croatian city as former USF center Frane Markusovic. Again, that's all I know them to have in common. These guys don't have offers as Goins does, so all we're saying is USF's looking at them, and we'll check back as these guys start to line up visits ...

Comments

[Miles Lamoureux]

Whatever happened to Frane?
Greg, is there a way for fans to track the status of some former USF baseball players that got drafted this past season (W. Diaz, Y. Higgins, D. Otero)??

[Bull Hooper]

thanks for the updates, Greg. In the midst of the USF Football frenzies, Please remember that some of us live for USF Mens' Basketball. Myself, personally, I live for Bulls Hoops. / Bull Hooper

any news on brumbaugh? we need him

[Ari Hinkelberger]

Brumbaugh is the only guy that matters.

Without him, we are 14-16 next year.

Give me a ring if we ever sign that guy. If I was Heath I would just rent the apartment or house next to his and ask him every day if there is anything he can do to help

i agree with ari

[Big East is Scary Good]

We need all of 'em: Brumbaugh, Goins, Patilla, Buljan +++ and let half the current team go to compete with the top BEast teams. Heath needs to cast a very big net. Reality for recruits: Play time here vs. sit the bench with all-americans elsewhere. Come to USF and make us the media darling of the BEast. And besides, the weather is much nicer !!!

[Ari Hinkelberger]

Mike Jenkins ran a 4.38 forty yard dash..

Seems like a lock to be a first rounder now.

[The Champ]

13-16, 5-7, 0-1 was HCC record with the great Keith Brumbaugh which tells me that USF needs more then him to be a factor in the Big East next season.

As BEISG said above we need a few Big East caliber players coming in next season not just one man.Hopefully Heath and Staff can convince some of these guys to come here and build something from the ground into a upper level major conference school.

USF has nowhere to go but up so the question is how fast will the movement up be?

[Reality]

Is the power on at the Sun Dome?

[Dave W]

Frane just was not a good player. Plain and simple. I met him in Argos a few times, and he was really soft-spoken. I felt bad for him.

Ari is right- Brumbaugh is the most important guy left to recruit. ESPN put Espinosa in their national top 150, which is nice, but we need more than one big (and Espinosa is only 6'7"). The problem with Goins is how does a legit BEAST caliber player at 6'10" not draw significant interest offers from DePaul or the A-10? Basketball players from Chicago are evaluated constantly, and it seems to me that Goins must be missing something. However, he's tall, which is nice. Patillo sounds like an important player on a great team. BUT isn't that one of the myriad places where David Sills came from?

[G.A.]

I can't get anything past Dave. Yes, David Sills was briefly at CSI.