Tobias Harris played twice last night. First he played on a “made for tv” game (meaning that it wasn’t a part of the normal tournament schedule but was produced by the tournament directors for television purposes). That game featured Harris’ Albany City Rocks team against Michael Gilchrist and Rakeem Christmas of Team Final. Harris played extremely well in front of an ESPNU television audience, about a hundred college coaches, and tons of fans. Not getting sucked in by all the bells and whistles, I split time between that game and Cameron Clark’s Team Texas Elite game. Harris later told me that he ended up scoring about 20 points and, from what I did see, he really played with a little extra “umph.” On one particular play, he had Gilchrist guarding him on the perimeter, who he used a crossover to get around, he drove baseline and met a waiting Rakeem Christmas. Anyone that knows Christmas knows that his strength is defense and normally, a waiting Christmas would shake a player into making a mistake. Not Harris, who charged straight for Christmas and rose to the occassion, getting the hard foul and nearly getting the bucket. Although it didn’t finish in highlight fashion, it showed a lot about Harris’ attitude and abilities and the confidence he has in his game. In his next game, Harris again reach double figures, and I had a chance to talk to him afterwards about his recruitment. As far as changes, he didn’t really have much to add. Harris remains open to adding new schools into his recruitment. I noticed that Bruce Pearl and other UT coaches were following Harris from court to court, so I asked him specifically about their interest, to which he answered, “I like them as a school and they’re coming at me hard.” On Kentucky’s peaking interest, Harris said, “They’re recruitment me hard too, as far as top targets and they’re one of my top schools.” He noted that Calipari is a hard recruiter and that he had offered him a scholarship and added that he will visit Kentucky, “probably in August.” Oklahoma, Syracuse, Notre Dame, Georgia Tech, West Viriginia, Rutgers and Maryland were the other schools that Harris felt were really putting in a lot of work and coming on pretty strong.
