Mitch Lightfoot, a 6-foot-7, 200-pound 2016 forward from Gilbert (Ariz.) Christian High, enjoyed his official visit to St. John’s over the weekend and expects to make a college decision sometime following his trip to Arizona next weekend.
“It went really well,” he said by phone Sunday evening. “I like those guys a lot. Coach [Chris] Mullin is an amazing basketball mind, a good dude. I really like the assistant coaches, they’re all great personalities. I really like Slice [Barry Rohrssen] and coach [Greg] St. Jean and all them, they’re good guys. They showed me a really good time.”
Of Slice, he added, “He knows so much about basketball. He has all the connections in the world, it’s pretty cool.”
Lightfoot visited Madison Square Garden for the WWE Network live special and got a kick out of that, too.
“We went out to Madison Square Garden Saturday and visited that,” he said. “They were getting ready for a WWE event, it was pretty cool. We saw the ring, we saw behind the scenes. We got to see the locker room, it was really interesting.”
Lightfoot likes the idea that Mullin and his staff could potentially help him get to the NBA.
“The good thing I like about them is right now I can play because I get after it and I have the tenacity and the intangibles that allow me to play,” he said. “But what they can do for me is they obviously have the NBA experience. They have guys that know how to get to the NBA and have been been in the NBA. So they offer knowledge and stuff that’s really hard to find.”
Asked if he could envision himself at St. John’s, Lightfoot said, “A lot of people don’t like the big-city thing but I really enjoy the city and I had a great time. I’m a fan of the colder weather, which is pretty cool, I like that.”
A onetime New Mexico commit, Lightfoot has now visited Kansas, Utah and Stanford and St. John’s with Arizona (Oct. 10) up next.
“Then I’m done and I’m going to take a couple of weeks to ponder over my schools and then I’ll decide,” he said.
St. John’s recently added Brooklyn Thomas Jefferson guard Shamorie Ponds as its first 2016 commit and Rohrssen may see JUCO wing Bashir Ahmed and/or Raleigh (N.C.) Word of God guard Rawle Alkins again this week. Alkins visited N.C. State over the weekend.
