BURN THE HORSE
It’s been a quiet recruiting summer for the UALR men after advancing to the NCAA Tournament. Things look like they’re starting to pick up and the Trojans appear to have their first commitment for the 2012 class.
Austin (Texas) Bowie shooting guard Mareik Isom visited last week and has committed to sign with UALR in November. Isom is a 6-6 guard who was being recruited by Air Force and Louisiana-Monroe in the end. He also had interest from Manhattan, NJIT, Rutgers, Sam Houston State, Texas-Pan American and others.
Isom’s recruitment appears to have the fingerprints of new assistant coach Robert Lee and the Texas connections of head coach Steve Shields all over it. Isom is the type of big guard Lee was able to recruit when he was the head coach at Louisiana-Lafayette.
Isom’s statistics won’t blow you away. He averaged 10.9 points per game last season in the 20 games (out of33) reported to the Austin American Statesman. And Texas Hoops rated him the 133rd best player in Texas.
He played on a very good team last year (finished 26-7) that had a very good scorer in small forward Connor Robinson, who averaged more than 20 points and 10 rebounds per game. Robinson was one of those players who can dominate in high school at 6-5, but was unlikely to get much of a look by D1 schools due to his size. He ended up signing with Division II McMurry.
But Isom appears to have potential. He’s grown from 5-10 as a freshman to 6-6 this year. He also appears to be receiving really good coaching. Bowie’s coach is Celester Collier, who is the former head coach at Southwest Texas State (now Texas State). His dad is Kendall Isom, who played at Southwestern Louisiana (now Louisiana-Lafayette) and is now an assistant coach with the Austin Ice summer league team. And he played for Austin Ice head coach Johnny Moore, who is a former San Antonio Spurs point guard.
It should also be noted that Isom is on the honor roll at Bowie.
See his Austin Ice bio here:
The fall recruiting period runs into November and should really start to heat up. UALR has another visit scheduled next weekend and more could be scheduled soon.
