Brandon Spearman likes the University of Dayton — a lot — but he’s not ready to squeeze the trigger.
Although the 6-foot-3, 185-pound guard from Chicago Simeon High School knows the Flyers have verbal commitments from two backcourt players and have room for just one more in the 2010 class (seniors), he plans to wait until the AAU season ends in late July to make a decision.
“They’re looking at me really hard and want me really hard,” he said Thursday, July 2. “I told them, ‘I just want to take my time.’ Dayton is my first choice. It’s the top school on my list. But I just want to be patient and make sure what I’m doing. I just don’t want to rush it.”
The Flyers have already landed Oak Hill Academy’s Juwan Staten and Lafayette (Ind.) Jefferson’s Jesse Berry. And while they’re recruiting several others to fill their last guard spot, Spearman is the highest-rated player from that bunch.
He’s ranked as a four-star prospect (out of five) by Rivals.com — like Staten — and cracked the list of top-100 recruits nationally at No. 71. He has offers from DePaul, Baylor and Iowa State and also is being recruited by Marquette.
“I love him,” said Dave Telep, the national recruiting director for Scout.com. “I think Brandon Spearman is one of the more competitive kids I saw during the April and May period. He’s another guy (along with Berry) who is playing his best basketball right now and is a high-character kid.
“Brandon Spearman would be a coup to add him to this backcourt. You put Brandon Spearman in the mix with Staten and Berry, and you’re talking about, to me, a group that looks an awful lot like the Marquette backcourt that kind of grew up together where you have a Wesley Matthews, a Dominic James and a Jerel McNeal. A backcourt like that could have the same impact the Marquette backcourt had on the Big East.”
