A LITTLE SOMETHING
Mario Little probably already knows where he is going to play next season.
His coach at Chipola (Fla.) College, Greg Heiar, said this morning that Little, who is down to a final three of K-State, Kansas and Illinois, will probably make a formal announcement Sunday night.
“He’s done his homework,” Heiar said.
Heiar couldn’t be goaded into divulging any information. For that matter, he wasn’t even willing to speculate.
“Whatever he does, he does,” Heiar said. “I just want him to get it over with.”
Told that the stance of some KSU fans is that the junior college coach might “owe” the Wildcats a favor after botched pursuits of a few of his former players, Heiar laughed.
“They had (Victor) Dubovitsky and (Stefhon) Hannah,” he said.
NO ‘NIQUE
Dominique Keller, the 6-foot-7 forward from Lee (Texas) College, is not coming to Manhattan this weekend, and if he does in the future, it might be as a Oklahoma State Cowboy or a Nebraska Cornhusker.
Keller said this morning that he was told K-State had landed another commitment. Hmmm….
His coach, Roy Champagne, confirmed that the Wildcats had a change of plans.
“They moved in another direction,” Champagne said. “They didn’t mention where they were looking. … But they did a great job of recruiting Dominique. They were very upfront the whole time, the entire staff.”
Champagne added that Charlotte, Oklahoma State and Nebraska are all now involved with Keller.
WHERE’S GARRETT?
Garrett Stutz, the 7-footer from Missouri, is taking an unofficial visit to K-State this weekend, his father said Monday.
Bill Stutz revealed that his son has nine schools on his short list, and they are broken down into three tiers. The first are the “bigs,” in terms of exposure and tradition — Connecticut, Kentucky and Marquette. The next group, where K-State fits in, are the “middles,” which are schools with a little less prestige than the first group — lump Nebraska and Wichita State in there. And the last group are the “smalls,” basically private schools that have caught his son’s fancy. They are Southern Methodist, St. Louis and Northwestern.
“He should have a good picture by the end of the month,” Bill Stutz said.
The plan is K-State tomorrow, a trip to Kentucky for “Midnight Madness,” followed by a visit at SMU the next weekend. He’ll go to Marquette the last week of October. Basically, he’ll have wiped out nearly all of the schools on his list but UConn, but Mom and Dad don’t sound too keen on that.
“He’d like to take an official there, but (we’re) saying that’s too far away,” Bill Stutz said.
K-State, particularly the most recent addition to the coaching staff, Matt Figgers, has made an impression on the 7-footer. There is no threat from KU, which has backed off after showing some initial interest.
The plan is slash the list to four or five schools in the near future, and then make a final choice.
“I told him he’ll probably make a life-changing decision in the next 30 days,” Bill Stutz said.