UM Hoops.com

Darius Morris is planning to announce his decision tomorrow:

Morris, a 6-foot-3 rising senior at Los Angeles Windward High School, has kept Michigan among his top college choices, saying that Wolverines coach John Beilein has shown him “a lot of love” in the past year.

Morris, who also has offers from USC, Oregon State and Kentucky as well as drawing interest from schools like Arizona and several other PAC 10 schools, attended Beilein’s Elite Camp last month. According to an online diary, Morris wrote that he got a good feel for the school and Michigan’s program, spending time with guard Manny Harris during his stay.

It’s not a secret that Michigan has led for Darius for sometime so the decision date is certainly a positive.  Sealing the deal on Morris would be Beilein’s first big time impact recruit at Michigan. MLive also has a quote from Darius’ coach:

“I know Michigan is high on his list and I think coach Beilein has done a great job with him,” Villegas said. “He’s got something that you can’t teach – he’s got that knack – that basketball savvy that you can’t find. He’s a scoring guard, he’s 6-3, he can see the court. He’s a hard worker – you’re going to get a great package when you receive Darius Morris.”

Tomorrow could be a huge day for U-M basketball and we may have found our point guard of the future. I have said all along that the only worry with Darius’ recruitment would be if he kept pushing back his decision date. He stated he wanted to decide in late summer all along he appears to have stuck to it and the time has come.

For old articles about Darius Morris click here. Stay tuned to UMHoops today and tomorrow for the latest (hopefully good) news on Darius Morris.
Continue reading ‘Darius Morris Announcing Tomorrow’

NBADraft.net has listed Darius as one of the top 15 2009 prospects at the RBK championships.

Darius actually grew a few inches since participating in last summer’s RBK. Now standing a legit 6′3 ½ which is great size for a PG. Darius was very impressive in Vegas. Not only is he an excellent floor general, but showed the ability to score when called to do so. In his teams first game of the RBK, he put-up a solid line of 20pts 4ast & 3stls against D.C. Triple Threat. The quiet rumor around the gym…Michigan may be the winner for the West Coast PG.

There seemed to be more of a negative vibe to the reports about Darius’ play in Vegas (part of this my fault) and the numbers certainly as good as they had been for D-Mo earlier in the summer but he still got some positive ink from a national site. Of course it is also good to hear that NBADraft is hearing positive things about U-M and Darius.

Here is another video from the Pangos All-Star Game (Darius is #54)

Here is a video of wing man Roger Franklin as well:

• Updates have been a little light lately, I’ve been busy and it’s just been pretty slow.
• Summer AAU ball is slowing down and we are getting toward Darius Morris’ expected decision date of “late summer”/August. I’ll try to work on updating the hot board this week as well.
• Beilein hired Jeff Meyer to replace Tracy Hamner. Interesting that we would hire an administrative assistant from IU after the mess that took place in Bloomington.
• Mike W passed along this link to a rumored schedule for Northeastern. From the link it appears that the two opening games in the Coaces vs. Cancer region in Ann Arbor will be UMass vs Northeastern and Michigan vs Campbell (9-20 last year).
• A couple of Illinois tidbits, respected message board poster MHoops notes that Jamar Smith may be getting the boot; meanwhile 2009 big man Meyers Leonard verballed to Bruce Weber tonight.

Since news has been kind of slow lately I’m going to leave a couple open ended discussion questions.

• Realistically how do you see next season going? Conference projection? NIT? NCAA? Losing record?
• Who is Michigan’s #3 scorer next year? How many players average over 10ppg?

Solomon Hill committed to Arizona, U-M’s chances were a long shot but it’s worth mentioning.

Darius Morris and Belmont Shore were unable to defend their title and were sent home early. Tough week for Darius and probably not evident of his true ability. He had 15 points in Belmont’s loss to Arizona Metro Elite. Here are his complete stats for the week (averaged 11.8 ppg).

Jordan Morgan and King James actually won yesterday. Heres what ESPN had to say about Jordan’s game Thursday:

Leading the way for the victors was 6-foot-8 Jordan Morgan from the University of Detroit Jesuit. He made 9-12 shots good for 20 points and grabbed five rebounds.

King James plays Spiece tonight at 8:45 EST and if they win they will play again at midnight.  Watch live AAU games here. I don’t think Jordan’s game tonight is teleivsed but they have a blank spot in the time slot so maybe they will play it. Jordan’s play has certainly been encouraging in Vegas and hopefully he keeps stepping up. Here’s the full bracket (PDF) as well.

It also sounds like Roger Franklin had quite a battle in a loss to Jordan Hamilton and Team Odom.