Donahue starts off in the right direction

Last week new Boston College Head Coach Steve Donahue signed his first recruit in Dennis Clifford, a 7-footer from Milton Academy. He transferred to Milton two years ago from Bridgewater-Raynham High School after three seasons, and then repeated his junior year at Milton Academy, where he played under former Harvard University Assistant Men’s Basketball Coach Lamar Reddicks. Clifford will enroll at Boston College in 2011-2012.

It remains to be seen how good Clifford will be at Boston College, but Donahue is in the right direction starting off by signing a local kid. In recent years, many of the area’s top high school seniors have chosen to leave the region for college, so now Donahue will likely be getting to know all of the local high school and AAU coaches in the area.
According to last Sunday’s Boston Globe, in order to repair the bad image that former BC Coach Al Skinner left, Donahue has contacted some local coaches and basketball former BC star and NBA Player Jay Murphy whose son oldest son Erik slipped away from BC and plays at the University of Florida. Murphy also has a younger son Alex who is sophomore at the St. Marks School in Southborough, and has received offers from UCONN, Kansas, Florida, as well as BC.

Another person who Donahue has reached out to Dave Lubick, the Head Coach at St. Marks whose son Nate is headed to Georgetown, another local recruit who slipped away. The St. Marks program is one of the best prep-school programs in the country, and they feature another sophomore in 7-footer in Kaleb Tarczwski who already has offers from Indiana, West Virginia, and the University of Southern California.

The next person Donahue contacted was Leo Papile the Assistant Executive Director of Basketball Operations for the Boston Celtics, who also runs the renowned Boston Amateur Athletic Club, which has helped numerous local kids get Division I scholarships, and even sent some to the NBA. One would have thought that with Papile in his own backyard, former BC Head Coach Al Skinner would have used this to bring talent over to the Heights, but in his tenure, Skinner only landed two kids from the BABC in Steve Hailey, who ended up leaving BC, and Jermaine Watson. It is disgraceful that Skinner let so much talent in his backyard slip away, so now not only does Donahue have to rekindle relationships, he also has to sign recruits for next year.

Donahue also contacted T.J. Glasson who runs the other top AAU program in New England--the New England Playaz. The Playaz is the program that has developed the Murphy brothers, Lubick, former BC player Rakim Sanders, and Jordan Williams who just completed his freshman season under former BC Coach Gary Williams at Maryland, and is a Connecticut native.

The final person that Donahue has contacted is former Celtics Head Coach John Carroll who has recently spent some time coaching the Playaz and whose son Austin played with them while attending high school at Worcester Academy, and then spending a post-graduate year at Brewster Academy, and will be playing next year at Rutgers.
Although BC is not a state school, they sure need to do a better job recruiting the New England area, and also have players with higher character than some of the ones Al Skinner and his staff brought in, such as Akida McLean, Jermaine Watson, Ryan Sidney, and Sean Williams. Coach Donahue seems he is willing to do whatever it takes to fix the poor image of Boston College that Al Skinner had left.