Each October the college basketball season typically kicks off around the country on college campuses with Late Night Madness festivities. Typically the events are a great way for coaching staffs to bring recruits onto campus to show them the facilities, school spirit and be part of a fun environment of dunk contests and live concerts. Providence’s Late Night Madness will be no different, except that there will be an extra air of celebration over the occasion after Ed Cooley locked up Providence native David Duke to put icing on the 2018 recruiting class cake that already included Duke’s Mass Rivals teammate AJ Reeves, North Carolina shooting forward Kris Monroe and burgeoning South Carolina big man Jimmy Nichols. Providence is hosting Reeves and Monroe for official visits this weekend and Duke, home from Cushing Academy to make his commitment announcement on his birthday Friday, will also be in attendance. Cooley is sure to have a rather large smile on his face on Saturday night as the future looks quite bright in Friartown.

Madness Visitors

My annual disclaimer: many of the names you will see of players in attendance will never actually be recruited by Providence. Grassroots programs bring a van-load of kids to these events because they are entertaining and it’s a chance for kids to see a school’s facilities a little bit. From Providence’s standpoint, it can’t hurt to have players on your campus. You never know who will be the next breakout star from Mass Rivals, so having a player that is 3 or 4 years away from finishing high school on your campus for a marquee recruiting event makes sense.

As I mentioned, Duke, Reeves and Monroe are going to be in attendance. Mass Rivals will also have a large contingent. Here are the names I know about:

• David Duke 2018
• Kris Monroe 2018
• AJ Reeves 2018
• Akok Akok 2019
• Wildens Leveque
• Hassan Diarra 2020 (Mamadou’s younger brother)
• DeMarr Langford 2020 (Makai’s younger brother)
• Kareem Reid 2020
• Anthony Thomas 2020
• Gianni Thompson 2021
• Jonathan Guerrero 2022

I’ll update the visitors list as more names become known.

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Mike Hopkins

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