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2016 Guard Shamorie Ponds to Stay Home at St. John’s
Decision day is here for Shamorie Ponds as the 2016 guard from Brooklyn held a press conference at his high school this afternoon to announce his college commitment. As expected Ponds announced he would be staying home to attend St. John’s. Ponds becomes Chris Mullin’s first top-50 recruit. Possibly more important than that is the fact that he is the first top NYC recruit Mullin has convinced to stay home and play for the hometown Red Storm. Mullin is hoping to convince Rawle Alkins to do the same. Ponds visited Creighton, St. John’s and Providence before deciding to commit. His commitment gives the Big East their 6th 4-star recruit to go along with 1 5-star pledge in the class of 2016 and he is the second highest ranked prospect committed to a Big East program so far for 2016 behind Villanova pledge Omari Spellman, according to 247sports.com.
This commitment shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone that followed this recruitment. Ponds has been leaning towards St. John’s for months and was rumored to want to commit following his visit to the Queens campus back in late August. His father convinced him to take at least 1 more of his scheduled visits which happened to be to Providence. After returning home from that visit to Friartown news came out that Ponds wouldn’t take his final scheduled visit to Minnesota. There was a bit of a gap between that news coming out and the announcement of the press conference, leading to conjecture that Ponds might not be quite as much of a lock for St. John’s as expected. Ed Cooley and Andre LaFleur worked hard on Ponds and reportedly made great strides with Ponds’ parents but the writing was seemingly on the wall for Ponds to pop for the Red Storm.
The search for a guard to replace Kris Dunn in the class of 2016 came to a conclusion for the Friars over the weekend when Virginia native Maliek White committed to Cooley and Providence prior to leaving campus. He moved his scheduled official visit up a week as Cooley “turned up the heat on White” after Ponds failed to pledge to Providence, according to Kevin McNamara of the Providence Journal.
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4 responses to “2016 Guard Shamorie Ponds to Stay Home at St. John’s”
[…] ICYMI – 2016 Guard Shamorie Ponds to Stay Home at St. John’s […]
“he is the highest ranked prospect committed to a Big East program so far for 2016” – cough, Omari Spellman, cough.
Good catch. I even said they had a 5-star in the Big East and then made that mistake. Oops!
[…] Red Storm getting 48 of their 91 points from their starting backcourt of freshmen Marcus LoVett and Shamorie Ponds. Providence coveted Ponds in the 2016 class and the decision ultimately came down to the Friars or […]