“We got really good kids, and they helped us recruit kids that were better basketball players,’’ said Donahue. “And that’s the way we are doing it here.’’
Donahue’s BC team is coming off a 21-13 season that ended with a second-round NIT loss to Northwestern. Donahue basically coached a team assembled by former coach Al Skinner, including All-ACC guard Reggie Jackson.
Jackson is gone, having opted to skip his senior season and enter next month’s NBA draft. So is the core group of seniors and other Skinner recruits, leaving BC in a rebuilding mode with lots of scholarships to give and some major reconstruction work for Donahue and his staff.
“It’s fun and it’s challenging,’’ said Donahue, who is recruiting at the top level for the first time after nearly 20 years in the Ivy League (at Penn as an assistant and at Cornell as a head coach). “The fortunate thing is that we are at BC and we can get quality kids.’’
Donahue’s recruiting trail would challenge the most sophisticated GPS.
He has gone overseas to Germany, landing 6-foot-5-inch forward/guard Patrick Heckmann, who has the polished game that Donahue likes and in the coach’s opinion can help right away.
He went local, grabbing 7-foot Dennis Clifford from Milton Academy, who has been labeled in some recruiting circles as a “project.’’ But, as Donahue said, “In the ACC, we don’t have the luxury of time to have a project player.’’
He went west and brought back a 6-9 forward from Long Beach, Calif., named Ryan Anderson, who flirted with Pac-10 teams such as California, Washington, and Arizona. “He’s played the best competition of anybody in the group of kids we recruited,’’ said Donahue.
He also came out of Southern California with Jordan Daniels, a super-quick 5-8 prospect who is the Eagles’ point guard of the present as well as the future.
Donahue even cherry-picked from the Pac-10, picking up 6-11 center Kyle Caudill, who originally committed to Arizona State.
Also stepping into the mix is another Pac-10 product, 6-5 guard Matt Humphrey, who began his career at Oregon but transferred to BC last year and spent the winter working on his shooting and getting used to Donahue’s system.
