Top-75 Guard to Visit Providence in September

2016 Shamorie Ponds announcing his final 4 schools via his Twitter account on Sunday. On Wednesday night it was reported by Adam Zagoria that Ponds has scheduled a visit to Providence on September 11th. The road from Sunday to Wednesday was an interesting one though. Ponds included the Friars in his final 4 list even though he had yet to speak with Ed Cooley. Apparently Cooley and Ponds have communicated because a visit date was added to the calendar to go along with visits to St. John’s on August 28th and Minnesota on September 18th. Ponds visited Creighton — the other school in his final 4 — last weekend.

Ponds has been listed as a combo guard on a lot of scouting websites and ESPN says he “impacts the game with his scoring and passing…The biggest strength of his game is his shooting prowess.” Comparisons have been made to former Cincinnati and NBA player Nick Van Exel. With the Friars looking to bring someone in to try to replace Kris Dunn after he likely goes to the NBA following the 2015-16 season, Ponds is a dynamic player that could be paired with a player like Kyron Cartwright in Providence’s backcourt to add scoring punch that will be needed once Dunn goes pro.

I have to admit I was taken by surprise that Ponds included the Friars in his final 4 as I hadn’t heard Providence linked to Ponds at all until he made that announcement on Sunday night. It made me a little wary that the Friars were being used as list filler like it appeared was the case with Tony Carr who included Providence in his final list of 5 only to never visit Friartown before committing to Penn State. With Ponds actually scheduling a visit to see Providence’s campus it makes me think he is more serious about the Friars than Carr was and that’s a good sign. If he makes it to Providence’s campus I think the Friars will have a puncher’s chance even though the insider speculation from sources has been that this recruitment will come down to local St. John’s and local connection to Kimani Young at Minnesota.

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Mike Hopkins

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