NEW YORK — Kamall Richards is heading to the Atlantic 10.

The 6-foot-6 small forward from South Kent (Conn.) verbally pledged to Xavier at the SNY studios on Tuesday, selecting the Musketeers over St. Joe’s, Seton Hall, Providence and Penn State.

“I’ll be going to Cincinnati to play for Xavier,” Richards said. “I decided on Xavier because it’s the best fit for me. I’ll be able to come in right away, be an impact player and that’s what I need as a freshman to be able to make mistakes and not be penalized and play through my mistakes and get better. So the sophomore year I can really be a main guy for the team.”

Richards visited Xavier two weeks ago and enjoyed it.

“The coaching staff was really cool, the players, the guys are real cool,” he said. “It’s a nice campus, nice city, I liked everything about it really.”

A native of Henryville, Pa., Richards blew up on the summer circuit, playing well at the Reebok Breakout Challenge and the “Live in AC” event. He transferred to South Kent after playing at St. Benedict’s Prep and now has a year to refine his game at the Connecticut prep school.

“Kamall’s work ethic and desire to get better have put him in the position to attend one of the most successful programs in the country,” South Kent coach Kelvin Jefferson said. “Kamall has all the tools needed to play at the highest level. His combination of strength and toughness, combined with his ability to score and his hatred of losing gives him everything he needs to help Xavier continue to be a dominant force in the Atlantic 10.”

Richards is also working on bringing another teammate to Xavier.

Uncommitted point guard Shane Rector, formerly of St. Raymond’s of The Bronx, could be next. Xavier recently offered Rector, who also has interest from Providence, South Carolina, Arkansas and Arizona State.

“I’m trying to get my point guard, Shane Rector, to come out,” Richards said. “He’s a real good point guard. We could definitely use him.”

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The 6-foot-6 Richards, who spent last year at St. Benedict’s Prep in Newark, visited Xavier this past weekend.

“He did like it,” South Kent coach Kelvin Jefferson told SNY.tv. “He came back and enjoyed the visit and enjoyed the coaches. It was a real positive experience for him.”

Seton Hall and South Carolina are two new schools to show interest. Associate head coaches Shaheen Holloway and Brad Underwood were both in recently to see Richards. Seton Hall has offered, but South Carolina has not yet, Jefferson said.

“Seton Hall is continuing to show interest,” Jefferson said, “I’m sure Seton Hall’s seen him this summer. And South Carolina came up recently to see him and really liked him. It’s early in the process for those two.

“The next step is the head coaches will be up to see him.”

No visits to those two are currently set.

“He has a lot of interest in them,” Jefferson said. “As it progresses I think he would be interested in visiting those schools.”

Duquesne has also been involved for a while.

Meantime, Jefferson is unsure if Richards will sign in the fall or wait until the spring.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I think he’s doing his visits. If he’s comfortable with a school right now he will sign. He wants to complete his visits and discuss with his family what he’s gonna do.”

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“Tom Konchalski wrote his report and called him a 5-minus,” Jefferson told SNY.tv. “He rated him high. [But] he’s very under-recruited. The recruitment is slow.”

When the 6-foot-1 Rector left St. Raymond’s in The Bronx, he reportedly held offers from Providence, Hofstra, UMass and Dayton, but Jefferson said only one high-major school is involved.

“Arizona State was the only high-major to come in to recruit him but they haven’t offered yet,” he said.

Providence, Xavier and St. Bonaventure have also show interest, yet Jefferson thinks his upside is high.

“He’s definitely a high-major kid,” Jefferson said. “He could be really good. There’s not too many guys that handle the ball as well as he does. With his dribble he can get anywhere on the court that he wants to get.

“He really shares the ball, can really, really pass it and puts the ball anywhere guys need it to score. He has one of the better mid-range jumpers I’ve seen and he can get to the foul line area and knock down jump shots consistently.

“He’s been here five weeks now and he’s stronger. He’s very athletic and he’s become a vocal leader.”

Asked why he’s so under-the-rader, Jefferson said, “I don’t know. People just don’t know.”

South Kent also has 6-5 former St. Benedict’s Prep shooting guard Kamall Richards, who now holds offers from Penn State, St Joe’s, Xavier and Duquesne, with interest from Providence and Illinois State.

He has already visited Penn State and is setting visits to St. Joe’s, Xavier and Duquesne.

Richards blew up this summer on the AAU circuit with strong play at the Reebok Breakout Challenge.

“Kamall has a chance to be really good,” Jefferson said. “He shoots it better than I intiaily thought. He’s as tough as anybody I’ve coached. He’s just a competitor. He rebounds from the guard postion better than anybody I’ve ever had.

“With Kamall he needs to bring it every day and work hard. If he does that he’s got a chance to be really good.”

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Just ask Kelvin Jefferson.

For Jefferson, the coach at South Kent (Conn.) prep school, even Smith’s recruitment by Louisville was highly unorthodox.

“Russ had committed before they offered,” Jefferson told SNY.tv before letting out a hearty laugh.

“I want to go to Louisville,’” Jefferson recalled Smith saying during his final season at South Kent in 2009-10.

“Russ, well, you can’t commit,” Jefferson recalled saying. “They haven’t offered you a scholarship yet.”

“Well, eventually they did and the rest is kind of history,” Jefferson recalled.

The 6-foot Smith, a Briarwood, N.Y., native, is now a key player for Louisville entering Saturday’s national semifinal here against Kentucky.

He is averaging 13.3 points per game in the NCAA Tournament and scored 30 points in the Cardinals’ 69-62 loss to the Wildcats on Dec. 31. That’s the most points anybody has scored against Kentucky this season.

“He shot the ball well,” said Kentucky forward Anthony Davis, the presumptive No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft. “He got to the lane a lot. He made some plays. He went to the free throw line and made his free throws.

“Like Coach Cal [John Calipari] says, ‘If one guy gets 30, make sure the other guys are not scoring.’ That’s what we have to do.’”

Smith’s breakout game against Kentucky was followed by a 17-point outing against St. John’s. But in his next two games, Smith scored just 3 and 2 points, respectively, in losses to Notre Dame and Providence.

His erratic play has confounded Louisville coach Rick Pitino, who has taken to calling him  ”Russdiculous.”

“I put him in the game and all the coaches just hold hands and pray, and we see what happens,” Pitino said earlier this week. “We never know what to expect with Russ.

“He gives us an awful lot and, sometimes toward the end of the [Florida] game he dribbles and went baseline, and kept his dribble alive. And you thought he was going to play Steve Nash and go to [a teammate], he just threw the ball up to the other team to make it interesting.”

Jefferson can relate.

“I empathize with Coach Pitino because I know that Russ can be frustrating,” Jefferson said. “The best thing about him is he has no conscience. He misses the previous 10 shots [and it] has no bearing on if he’s going to take the next shot or not. And that’s what makes him so good, I think, is that he has the ability to think that the next shot is going in.”

While playing for legendary Archbishop Molloy coach Jack Curran, Smith led the New York City Catholic league (CHSAA) in scoring two years. As a senior he averaged 29.6 points, 7.3 rebounds and 3.2 assists.

But he came to South Kent to increase his recruiting options and ostensibly to become a point guard.

Jefferson had J.J. Moore, now at Pittsburgh, as his two guard and tried to play Smith at the point.

“Everybody, including myself, thought, ‘Alright, this kid we know he can score, but we have to show everybody he can run a team, he can be a point guard and be a high assist guy,’” Jefferson said.

“That was the biggest mistake because Russ is who he is.”

Then-Louisville assistant Steve Masiello had a strong relationship with Russ Smith Jr. and his father, Russ Sr., and watched the son play several times at Molloy and again at South Kent.

“Coach Pitino didn’t love him,” Masiello said. “I thought he was a good player. Ralph Willard went and saw him with me and Ralph loved him. The reason we took him was because of Ralph Willard. I had the relationship, that was a no-brainer but Ralph was the guy who really loved Russ.”

“Ralph Willard kept hitting me,” Pitino recalled Thursday. “He said, ‘That’s they guy we should go after.’”

Jefferson also wasn’t sure what to make of the kid’s talents.

“It was easy to see the kid was talented but there were so many other things,” Jefferson said. “Is this what we need? Does he fit what we’re trying to do? He’s not really a point guard, can we make him a point guard?”

Once he arrived on campus, Pitino still tried to make Smith a point guard.

But Smith was limited by injuries his freshman season, including a broken foot and a concussion, and played only 17 games.

“Russ is not a point guard and I tried to play him at point,” Pitino told SNY.tv last fall.

For a period after his freshman season, there was a chance Smith would end up transferring to Manhattan to play for Masiello, now the head coach.

“I talked to his dad (Russ Sr.), who I knew when his dad was Russ’s age and I was the Knicks’ coach at the time,” Pitino said. “I said to him, ‘Look, if it doesn’t work out next year, we’ll try him once again; we will send Russ to go play with Steve Masiello, possibly, at Manhattan College. ‘Big Russ’ wanted him to have one more year.

Coming into the summer, Pitino shifted Smith to off guard and he flourished during the team’s trip to the Bahamas.

He scored 26 points in an intrasquad scrimmage Aug. 11 and then tallied a team-high 22 points during a win over the Real Deal Shockers on Aug. 12.

“He was terrific,” Pitino said of Smith.

“Since we played him at the two, Russ has been a valuable player in our program.”

Said Jefferson: ”Pitino is a great coach and a lot smarter than me, smart enough to say, ‘OK, this is what Russ does and we’re going to allow him to do it and obviously he’s having lot of success with it.’”

Pitino said Smith had never won a championship before the Cardinals captured the Big East tournament title earlier this month at Madison Square Garden.

“Russ Smith was on the foul line at the end of the Big East Tournament and he just yelled over to the bench, ‘I’m finally going to win a championship,’” Pitino recalled.

“He’s never won in his life,” Pitino added.

Pitino said Curran, Smith’s high school coach, later called Smith to say, “Russ, what are you doing. winning and playing defense? I don’t recognize you.’”

Just another example of Russ Smith confounding an old coach on the basketball court.

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Chris Thomas

The No. 1 shooting guard in the Class of 2013, Thomas now lists Xavier, Kentucky, Florida, Missouri and Iowa State as his top five, according to his grandmother, Latonia Smith.

“Those are his top five right now but that could change at any moment,” she told SNY.tv by text.

Seton Hall and Arkansas have also called, Smith said.

The 6-foot-5 Thomas, now at South Kent (Conn.), previously listed Xavier, Florida and Kentucky as his top three.

Smith previously told SNY.tv Thomas will likely make a decision sometime next spring or summer.

“He’ll probably decide after he graduates in May,” she said. “He’s going to be a fifth-year senior so he’s graduating in May and then he’ll continue in South Kent to get his D-1 credits.”

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In an extensive interview Friday with SNY.tv, Thomas’s grandmother, Latonia Smith, expanded upon those three schools.

“With Chris, he really likes Xavier because the assistant coach, Rasheen Davis,” Smith told SNY.tv. “He really likes the way Rasheen communicates with him and encourages him and is always in his corner, so he really likes that about him.”

As for Kentucky, she said: “He likes Kentucky because Kentucky is Kentucky. They have been in touch with him. He really likes their program as far as the basketball, what he sees on the floor. How the guards run the court and the basketball program as a whole.”

The third option is Florida.

“I think the reason why he’s really liking Florida right now is because he’s seen the team play, he likes the way that they run the floor,” Smith said. “He also likes the fact that they’re one of the schools that took the time to send all the recruiting information to his school instead of his house when he’s in Connecticut. So he gets to read that personally, and the other schools, they’re still sending it to the house. So we have to wait until he comes home to show him all that.”

Yet Smith added that it’s still early in Thomas’s process.

“These are just top his three,” she said. “There’s been interest from Seton Hall, Missouri, Nebraska and Iowa State. Iowa State actually just recently offered him a full scholarship.” Smith said Seton Hall has also offered.

Smith said Thomas will likely make a decision sometime next spring or summer.

“He’ll probably decide after he graduates in May,” she said. “He’s going to be a fifth-year senior so he’s graduating in May and then he’ll continue in South Kent to get his D-1 credits.”

As detailed in this extensive feature on Thomas from September, he has attended multiple high schools and sometimes gets a bad rap as a result.

But Smith said “what people don’t really understand is that the circumstances were not of his making.

“The first school when he was in Denver at Montbello High School, yeah he messed up big time that whole year,” she said.

But at Princeton (Md.) Day Academy, Smith said Thomas was living with the head coach, but the coach had a “heart attack” and “double pneumonia,” and “there was no way that Chris could just stay there by himself for four months.”

Thomas then shifted to play for Westwind (Az.) Prep, but the head of the program, Gary Trousdale, was forced to leave when his own father was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease. Trousdale has since set up a new program at La Jolla Prep, which currently has four Division 1 signees and played at the recent National Prep Showcase in New Haven, Conn.

“He had a two-year commitment [to Westwind], but at the end of the year the coaching staff up and moved to La Jolla, and they wanted Chris to go with them,” Smith said. “The coach will probably do real well with that school, but that’s not something that we could have taken a chance of.

“So we had to do something that’s established, something that we knew was legitimate that we could believe in. And so that’s why he ended up at South Kent.”

Thomas now plays alongside Providence signee Ricky Ledo, and Smith believes South Kent head coach Kelvin Jefferson “can help him get back on track.”

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South Kent star Chris Thomas says he likes three schools as of right now.

“I’m only interested in a couple of schools right now,” Thomas, the Rivals No. 1 shooting guard in the Class of 2013, told Fivestarbasketball.com this past weekend at the National Prep Showcase. “Kentucky, Xavier and really Florida a little bit. That’s it now.”

The 6-foot-5 wing is now at South Kent alongside Providence signee Ricky Ledo after spending time at Princeton Day (Md.) Academy and Westwind (Az.) Prep.

Read more on the duo in this feature.

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A year ago, the two were teammates at South Kent (Conn.) before the 6-foot-10 Jack left in the middle of the season and ultimately enrolled at Rutgers in January.

Now, with Jack out 3-4 months with a broken foot, the 6-9, 235-pound Randall will again be asked to step up in Jack’s absence.

“Yes, this is going to be the second time filling in for Kadeem again so I just gotta get more conditioned and be prepared for this Big East Conference because everybody in this Big East Conference is tough,” Randall told SNY.tv.

Under second-year coach Mike Rice, Rutgers opens the season Friday night not against a Big East opponent, but against Dartmouth of the Ivy League. The Scarlet Knights then travel to play at Miami on Tuesday.

Jack had been expected to be an athletic big for Rutgers, but he went down in October with a broken bone in his right foot.

“You have to go a long way to find somebody with his potential and his athleticism,” Rice said of Jack.

“Is it all there? No, it’s certainly a work in progress but he certainly has tremendous athletic potential, whether it’s offensive rebounding, blocking shots from the weak side, sprinting the floor, being the front man on my press, so it’ll hurt but that’s why we recruited hard and we recruited depth so some of the other freshmen will have an opportunity for the first three months to see what they can do.”

Randall is used to filling in for Jack. He did it last season, too.

“I had to adjust to playing the whole time because Kadeem left South Kent and then we didn’t have no other big man so I was playing 30 minutes,” Randall said.

The learning curve is steep for Randall, a Brooklyn native who was 5-9 until high school before growing about eight inches to 6-5 in the summer before his freshman season at Paterson Catholic.

That’s when he played organized basketball for the first time.

“I didn’t play basketball until my freshman year,” he said.

By his sophomore year, he grew to about 6-7 or 6-8, before growing another half inch before graduating.

Randall was basically a big body playing on a loaded Paterson Catholic team alongside Rutgers point guard Myles Mack and Seton Hall wing Fuquan Edwin.

“We would beat teams by like 50 or 60 points because we played like little kids,” Randall said, referring to Paterson Catholic’s league games in the Bergen-Passaic Scholastic League. “It wasn’t no competition.”

Because he was too old to play his senior year at PC, Randall headed to South Kent for a prep year. In addition to playing briefly with Jack, he teamed the whole year with current St. John’s freshman Maurice Harkless, whom Randall calls his “best friend.”

“From Paterson Catholic [the] transition to South Kent was totally different,” Randall said. “When I went to South Kent it was a lot of competition so I had to adjust to that.”

Still, his game developed under head coach Kelvin Jefferson, who believes Randall can now help Rutgers in the low post.

“Derrick will bring a lot of toughness and energy to the Scarlet Knights,” Jefferson said. “You can always count on him to make an athletic play, be it a dunk or a big-time block. He’s a player who can affect the game on both ends of the floor.”

Randall won’t have to go it alone. Fellow frosh Greg Lewis and sophomore Austin Johnson must also step up with Jack.

“They both [Randall and Lewis] have their strengths and weaknesses and they have to adjust to the Division 1 level, but I think they try incredibly hard every day,” Rice said.

“They’re going to go in and play and hopefully get an offensive rebound, get a defensive stop, take a charge, score a bucket for us. Those are the things we’re going to ask them to do.”

Said Randall: “It’s going to be a hard thing but I feel like we’re going to adapt to it.

“Maybe the first game we might have a little scuffle and stuff but when the season progresess we should be doing well.”

(Photos courtesy Daily News, NJ.com, Scarlet Knights)

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Mike Taylor

The 6-foot-4 shooting guard led Brooklyn Boys & Girls to its first New York PSAL championship ever in the spring of 2010, and then signed a National Letter of Intent to Rutgers that September, joining a blockbuster recruiting class for head coach Mike Rice.

Then the bottom began to fall out.

“I just stopped working,” he told SNY.tv by phone Tuesday. “I thought I didn’t have to to do school work and stuff like that.”

BALANCE OF POWER HAS SHIFTED TO JUCOS

Like many of his peers, Taylor thought a year of prep school could solve his problems.

He considered Newark NIA Prep and Humble (Texas) Christian Life Center, where former NBA player Rafer Alston is the coach.

But neither of those options would’ve helped him become college eligible, so after earning his GED, Taylor now finds himself on the campus of Midland (Texas) College.

“It was a last-minute thing [where] I had to go to junior college,” Taylor said. “The person who was handling my stuff, [AAU coach] Paul Ruddock, he told me. I was going to go to prep school but they told me I couldn’t because you can only take one class [in prep school].”

Midland features one of the premier junior college basketball programs in the nation, but it’s a long way from Brooklyn.

“Right now I’m just looking at a lot of dirt,” Taylor said by phone from his dorm room. “A lot of campus, a lot of dorms. Nothing’s really open at night. When we’re hungry late-night, there’s only one place [to eat], ‘Whataburger.’ We’ll go there and always just order pizza, chilling in the lobby.”

Taylor is part of an increasing number of former high school and prep players who must attend junior college instead of prep school because of the NCAA’s 2007 rules on what exactly can be accomplished at prep school.

Fifth-year seniors are only permitted to attend prep school for one year, to make up one core class. The NCAA also has blacklisted 64 non-eligible prep schools, schools listed on the NCAA Website whose credits are not accepted by NCAA institutions, according to a story in Odessa America Online.

As a result, the Midland team now also features former Lincoln High standout Darwin “Buddha” Ellis, a onetime St. Francis (N.Y.) commit.

Drimir Ferugson of Wings Academy and Tauron Bailey of Satellite Academy — both in New York — are at Monroe College in The Bronx. Former Manhattan signee Edson Avila of Brooklyn Thomas Jefferson is on the roster at Seward (KS) Community College. Former Duquesne player Joel “Air Jamaica” Wright, also of Thomas Jefferson, is now at Blinn (Texas) College, as is his former Jefferson teammate Shamel Williams. Christian Gayot, who played at Cardozo High in Queens, is at Missouri State University-West Plains. Dwayne Brunson, also from Cardozo, is at Barton County (KS). Jordan Aaron and Deonte Houston of The Bronx are both at Southeastern Iowa. Trivante Bloodman of New York’s Wadleigh is at Olney (IL) Central. And Dashawn Wiggins, formerly of Wings and Bridgton Academy (Maine) is at Eastern Utah, which also produced current Iona star Mike Glover. 

“The prep schools are not as strong as they were because you can’t get as much done in a one-year setting,” Whit Lesure, the longtime coach at Bridgton Academy, a prestigious prep school, told SNY.tv. “Regardless of the school, whether it’s a legitimate prep school or not, you can’t do as much.

“Anyone looking at the landscape would say that in basketball terms, the balance of power has shifted back to the JUCOs, whereas 10 years ago the balance of power had shifted to the preps and the JUCOs were hurting a bit.”

PREP SCHOOL NO LONGER AN OPTION FOR MANY

For many years, prep school seemed like the hip, cool option for many high school players who needed to pick up their grade point average, or gain greater exposure on a bigger stage.

Reputable New England prep schools like Bridgton, Brewster (N.H.) Academy, South Kent (Conn.) and St. Thomas More (Conn.) excelled as more and more top high school players went the prep route.

Four-year basketball powerhouses like Oak Hill Academy (Va.) and Findlay Prep (Nev.) — – which don’t accept fifth-year players – also regularly sit atop the national rankings.

“If you’re a good high school player anywhere in New England, it seems to me by looking at the newspaper there’s a chance you’re considering private school,” Lesure said.

“It’s happened in Maine. It’s all over Connecticut and it’s all over Massachusetts and I’m sure it makes public school coaches uncomfortable.”

Louisville coach Rick Pitino says responsibility falls on the kids themselves — like Taylor and the others — for failing to take high school seriously.

“Kids should stop looking for easy way outs,” Pitino told SNY.tv. “By choosing prep schools as a way to defer what they should be doing as freshmen and sophomores in high school, and paying attention as freshmen and sophomore in high schools and getting their grades.

“They’re all running to prep schools figuring, ‘Oh, they gotta get away from all the distractions.’ They should take care of that as freshmen and sophomores and they wouldn’t all be running away from home.”

Still, South Kent (Conn.) coach Kelvin Jefferson, a former college coach, said many people are still unaware of the 2007 NCAA changes and are laboring under false impressions about what exactly prep schools can accomplish.

“These kids need to get the correct information,” said Jefferson, who coaches Providence commit Ricky Ledo, among others.

“I think a lot of kids and even some adults still believe that kids can come to prep school and take five classes and get five cores and change their transcripts, and that’s not the case anymore.

“After you graduate from high school, unless you have a documented learning disorder, you can only get one core course. If you do have a documented learning disorder, you can add three.

“That’s why there’s so many kids even nowadays that are saying, ‘I’m reclassifying to this class and that class.’ You have to graduate in four years. I think it’s ignorance that a lot of people just don’t understand the rules and they put themselves in bad situations.

“For us I would never take a kid that I don’t believe has a chance to qualify.”

FIVE-YEAR PREP SOLUTION WOULD BE BEST

Even though the NCAA has cracked down on certain questionable prep schools, Lesure believes their approach is uneven and fails to address the real problems.

“They either don’t have the manpower or they don’t have the interest,” said Lesure, whose current roster includes St. John’s commits Amir Garrett and Darrick Wood and former Hofstra pledge Malik Nichols. “They don’t have [what it takes] to consistently enforce something that makes sense.”

His solution?

“Every kid should get a full five years,” he said. “All kids go to private school for five years. Kids get hurt during school. Kids have one bad year in high school.

“The NCAA should say you have a year window to complete your stuff and gain your eligibility. And if you want to put some distributions in there — like you have to take so many math classes — fine but by this whole four years and eight semesters and one more as a postgrad and three more if you’re ‘LD,’ they [messed] it up big time.”

He added: “They really could’ve done something better that really reflects what goes on in education, and would be easier to monitor.

“And then you go look at the places and say is this place a school or not? Make it clear, make it reasonable and make it enforceable.”

Lesure said his other solution would be to let colleges take whomever they want and let the leagues deal with any academic index issues, like the Ivy league.

“Thus, the NCAA empowers member institutions to be the responsible ones,” Lesure said.

JUCOS BENEFITTING FOR NOW

Some student-athletes, like former St. John’s signee JaKarr Sampson, have opted to return for a postgraduate, or second, year at prep school.

After the NCAA ruled him and two other St. John’s frosh ineligible, the 6-8 Sampson is back at Brewster Academy for a second season, as is his teammate Mitch McGary, one of the most highly recruited big men in the Class of 2012.

“[Brewster coach] Jason [Smith] has gone to a few more two-year kids,” Lesure said. “That’s what happened in the prep school world. Since you can’t get as much done in one year then you’ll do it in more than one year.”

Yet others, like Taylor, were forced to go the JUCO route.

Brock Erickson, assistant coach at nationally ranked Monroe College, understands there can be a stigma associated with junior colleges, especially in the New York/New Jersey area.

But he believes two years at a junior college can prepare players like Taylor for the Division 1 ranks.

“I think junior college helps student-athletes because it prepared them to step in right away at the four-year level after two years, whereas many incoming [college] freshman go to NCAA schools unprepared, which has resulted in 40 percent of all college basketball players transferring by the end of their sophomore season,” Erickson wrote in an email. “Combine that with the number of coaching changes, especially in the NY/NJ area, and it is challenging to find players that have been at one institution and played for one coach for their four-year career.

“In today’s game, kids want instant gratification.  They want to play right away.  Competing for playing time against juniors and seniors that have been in a four-year school system is difficult.  In junior college, players can have an impact their first year while practicing and competing against Division 1 talent every day. Junior college teaches kids the responsibilities of what will be demanded of them when they go to a four-year institution.”

Taylor agrees.

“I think it’s better because you’re playing against better competition and against D-1 players,” he said.

Beginning this year, any player competing in the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) must have a high school diploma or GED; grades and test scores are never an issue until the athlete comes to campus, according to the Odessa America Online. Once on campus, JUCO athletes only need to maintain a 2.0 GPA while carrying 12 credit hours per term.

In the old days, some athletes played junior college basketball without a high school degree. Most JUCO players graduated from high school and did not qualify because of low standardized test scores or not enough core classes.

Still, Alif Muhammad of NIA Prep cited former Seton Hall guard and NIA graduate Keon Lawrence, who failed to graduate from his regular high school before getting a degree from NIA, as an example of someone who benefitted by not going to junior college.

“Keon Lawrence…would never be able to matriculate at a JUCO,” Muhammad said in his press release. “But because of the support and resources of a Division I Seton Hall University and University of Missouri, he was able to obtain his College Degree.”

Midland coach Chris Craig, formerly Mike Glover’s coach at Eastern Utah, believes Taylor  can graduate from the school in two years and said, “He’s off to a good start.”

From where he sits, far away from Brooklyn and the bright lights of the Big East, Taylor understands the path he’s taken and says he’s accepted it and ready to do what it takes.

“I just gotta deal with it,” he said. “I’m not crazy about it. I got a new slate. I should be good.”

(Taylor photo courtesy Daily News)

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SOUTH KENT, Conn

Two of those players were placed at the prep school by the Kansas State staff, and may end up with the Wildcats.

Zedric Sadler is a 6-foot-2 postgraduate combo guard from Detroit (pictured at left), and Laimonas Chatkevicius is a 7-foot junior from Klaipeda, Lithuania. Both are 2012.

“I really didn’t know about this school [South Kent] until the end of the year,” Sadler told SNY.tv Wednesday after an open gym. “Then Kansas State said they didn’t have a scholarship so just come here. And then they’ll have a scholarship in the spring.”

Sadler is also drawing interest from Cleveland State — head coach Gary Waters and assistant Larry DeSimpelare were there Wednesday — and Duquesne, but said Kansas State “is in the lead right now.”

“Zedric has a great body,” said New York recruiting expert Tom Konchalski, who watched the workout. “He can handle the ball but is more of a two. He really wasn’t in the flow of the game early, didn’t do very much in the scrimmage early.

“And then he made his first three perimeter shots and started feeling some confidence. And he made a lot of shots. But he has a great body, he’s strong. He showed more of a predilection for shooting from the perimeter now.”

Sadler said he is going through the NCAA Clearinghouse now and will then likely visit Kansas State.

“That’s probably where I’m going to visit first,” he said. “Like next month.”

Chatkevicius has a similar story.

“Kansas State put him here but he’s not committed,” South Kent coach Kelvin Jefferson said. “If things work out for Kansas State, he is going to Kansas State. They’re the top of the list.”

Still, he added, “It’s not written in stone. I don’t want to close the door.”

Konchalski had these thoughts on the 7-footer who averaged just 1 point and 1.7 rebounds for Lithuania in the 2010 FIBA World Championship for Men.

“He has a big frame,” he said. “He’s gotta get in better shape. He’s gotta be able to change ends of the floor on a more consistent basis. He has good hands. He’s a good passer out of the post. When he catches the ball in the post, he looks really to pass out rather than to score. He steps out and shoots the 3 away from the basket. And he doesn’t have a quick reaction to the ball, and he doesn’t have great rebounding radius. Because of that and doesn’t get on the boards as much as someone with that size and that strength should be able to.

“But he looks like he could be a good player depending on how hard he’s willing to work.”

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