The recruits:
F Jon Lane – 6-6 – Fieldston School (Bronx, NY)
Hailing from a school not known for its basketball, Lane comes to Penn as an unrecruited player and is expected to play with the junior varsity this year.
PF Justin Reilly – 6-8, 225 lbs – Jesuit HS (Dallas, TX)
Reilly was the first Quaker recruit to announce his commitment last winter, choosing Penn over Columbia and offers from other Ivy and Patriot League programs. The Texas native was one of two Ivy League recruits rated three stars by Scout.com and received a two-star rating from Rivals.com. All the eyewitness evaluations of Reilly seem to include some mention of his toughness and physical interior game. A number of assistants around the league who had seen Reilly play were very complimentary. He has a nice mid-range jumper and rebounds well, but will need to work on the other aspects of his game as a freshman.
PF Andreas Schreiber – 6-9, 235 lbs – Brentwood School (Taby, Sweden)
Schreiber is the other Ivy League recruit who received a three-star rating from Scout.com. Despite that recruiting service’s opinion that Schreiber was a “high major” prospect, his college choice came down to Penn and UC Santa Barbara in the end, after Princeton decided Zack Finley was the big man they wanted. A member of the Swedish Under 20 National Team, Schreiber played his high school ball in Southern California for a Brentwood team that didn’t have much talent surrounding him. Listed at 6-9, 235 pounds, Schreiber has great size and excellent strength. The scouting reports on him praise his rebounding and offensive game — particularly his play away from the basket and his jumper — with a perceived lack of aggressiveness being the main knock on his game.
SG Darren Smith – 6-4, 200 lbs – The Peddie School (Linden, NJ)
The previous staff thought very highly of Smith, who drew some comparisons to reigning Player of the Year Ibby Jaaber, who attended the same prep school (Peddie) as Smith. Smith had originally committed to Columbia over interest from Boston University and other schools following an impressive high school career at South Plainfield that saw him twice named to the New Jersey all-state team. After enrolling at Peddie, Smith ultimately opted for Penn in November over an offer from Iona. As a recruit, he was regarded by those who follow Ivy League recruiting as one of the top guard recruits in the league’s 2006 recruiting class. Chris Potash, his coach at Peddie, proclaimed Smith “easily the top recruit in the Ivy League” to the Daily Pennsylvanian. In that same article, Potash stated that Smith was more polished than Jaaber and had received recruiting interest from higher level schools. Now that Smith is on the Penn campus, those who have had a chance to watch him have observed a scorer with better shooting skills than Jaaber, but without the Penn star’s athleticism and dominating defensive abilities.
The fit:
In addition to being the consensus top group of incoming freshmen in the league, Fran Dunphy’s final recruiting class at Penn also addresses the two major weaknesses from last season’s squad: frontcourt depth and outside shooting. As Penn staggered to the finish line last season, Dunphy was forced to promote former JV player Greg Kuchinski to provide backup minutes in the frontcourt. And the Quakers shot just 32.3 percent from three-point range as a team last year — far below the program’s traditional performance from the arc.
With Mark Zoller and Steve Danley starting, Reilly and Schreiber figure to be in the mix for bench minutes in the frontcourt, along with sophomores Cameron Lewis and Brennan Votel. While each of them has deficiencies at this point, they bring different things to the table, which gives Glen Miller some flexibility with different options from night to night and opponent to opponent. If he wants some high-energy play in the post, Reilly fits the bill. Whereas if some frontcourt scoring is needed, Schreiber could get the call. Even if the two freshmen aren’t quite ready for prime time just yet, they’ll have a year to get acclimated to Division I while getting their feet wet as understudies.
For all of the attention Smith has received, he’s going to have to fight for minutes this season in a crowded Quaker backcourt. Would-be returning starter David Whitehurst was lost to academics over the summer, but junior Michael Kach announced in the spring he would be re-joining the team after leaving back in December of his freshman year. Kach, Jaaber, Brian Grandieri and Tommy McMahon are all going to be part of the rotation, and despite the fantasies of some Penn fans, Miller is not going to go to a 14-man rotation. This means Smith will be battling Kevin Egee, who showed a nice stroke from outside last year, and Aron Cohen for reserve minutes in the backcourt. If the freshman can establish himself as a reliable deep threat off the bench while playing adequate defense, he should have the inside track on a spot in the rotation.
Penn’s Class of 2010 may turn out to be the best in the league, but don’t expect a Rookie of the Year winner out of the group. Barring injury, it probably won’t be until next season until you see any of the three newcomers challenging for a starting job. But Smith and Schreiber — and possibly Reilly as well — project to being starters and Ivy League-level standouts down the road.
