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Thon Maker and his guardian Ed Smith were impressed with the NBA experience on the St. John’s coaching staff, and are strongly coming back for an unofficial visit following their unofficial this week.
The 7-foot Maker is due to take the SAT on Saturday, and will plan official visits following that.
He is also considering Arizona State, Indiana, Kansas, Notre Dame and UNLV.
“We do the SAT and then we start planning from there,” Smith said by phone on Thursday. “[St. John’s] was a real positive vibe and there’s a strong chance he visits St. John’s officially. If we can fit it into our planning and travel schedules then he’ll be able to do it and that’s with most of these teams here. St. John’s is easy because it’s a hop, skip and a jump from us [at Athlete Institute in Ontario]. That’s one thing that sold us on that.”
As first reported by SNY.tv, St. John’s jumped into the Thon Maker Sweepstakes in September when assistant Barry “Slice” Rohrssen visited Maker at Athlete Institute. Rohrssen was familiar with Maker and Smith dating to his time on John Calipari’s staff at Kentucky.
Maker was then supposed to visit St. John’s on New Year’s Eve when he was in town for the Grind Session, but his visit was thwarted by traffic.
They finally made the visit this week and were impressed with head coach Chris Mullin and his staff, which includes another former NBA player in Mitch Richmond.
“It went well, it went very well,” Smith said. “We got a chance to meet the staff and see how they do things out there. It was a lot about basketball. Their staff has a lot of NBA experience, so they were just showing the perspective of how they train, how to work guys out, how to make guys better.
“They said that the future of their program is going to be strong. I think they have a 6-5 wing coming in [Bashir Ahmed]. They have [Marcus] LoVett who was sitting and then they had a 6-9 kid [Tariq Owens] who used to be a post player at Tennessee. They were doing some good work with him there, developing him. With his length and his athleticism, he has a chance to be a combo forward.”
Mullin told Smith and Maker he sees a combination of Jermaine O’Neal and Robert Horry in Maker, projected as the No. 25 pick in the 2017 NBA Draft by Draft Express. That is an interesting set of comparisons, considering Maker has previously been compared at times to Kevin Durant and/or Kevin Garnett.
“Everybody that sees him sees the potential there and what he can do but [Mullin] says looking at him, that he sees a lot of players,” Smith said. “Most people probably wouldn’t say this analogy, but he sees a combination of Jermaine O’Neal and Robert Horry, those two players. It’s hard to envision for other people…but he made a few good points.
“A lot of people say he’s similar to this one [NBA player], but he might be similar to a combination of players. It’s hard to get players similar to just one person.”
Smith said the St. John’s staff is also working hard on Rawle Alkins, who played in New York over the holiday weekend, with Mullin and Louisville coach Rick Pitino watching him Monday at the Big Apple Basketball Invitational at Baruch College.
“They’re pursuing him hard to really get this thing going,” Smith said. “He’s a helluva player.”
