the recruit: London Perrantes

Name: London Perrantes
Position: PG
Hometown: Encino, CA
School: Crespi Carmelite
Height: 6’0″
Weight: 170

24/7: 88; three stars
ESPN: 82; four stars; #21 PG; US #83, CA #7, West #11
Rivals: three stars
Scout: four stars; #25 PG

Other offers: Illinois, Arizona State, Washington State, USC, St. Mary’s, assorted WCC schools

We’re UVA fans, so we’ll come up with something else, but one of our biggest gripes about our basketball team disappeared yesterday.  What was left of it after Devon Hall’s commitment, anyway.  There’s no longer a worry about the future of the point guard position; Tony Bennett has gone and stocked up on them after so many fears that he was being too picky and couldn’t close on the ones he did like.

London Perrantes’s commitment gives UVA a deep list of point guard options once Jontel Evans graduates.  He’s a “true” point guard, in the sense that’ll never be anything but.  Scoring is not his main thing; distributing is.  “High basketball IQ,” “heady,” and words to that effect pop up in every scouting report.  Dave Telep at ESPN, who makes no secret of the fact he thinks Perrantes is overlooked (and ESPN’s rating reflects that belief) calls him a “pass-first, run-your-team, low-maintenance point.”  Rivals’s ASU branch scouted him this summer and came away impressed:

(T)here was nothing yawn-inducing about the play of Perrantes, who carved up his opponents with the precision of a physican’s scalpel. Time and again, the 6-foot-1, 185 pound passing phenom made not only great decisions off ball screens delivered to his doorstep or in the open floor, but decisions that most others would have never seen seen much less had the skill to execute.

Perrantes also came in for praise for not being a showboating asshole, which is nice.

Size is one thing that’ll keep Perrantes from being a shooting guard.  Oh, I know – it didn’t stop Sammy Zeglinski from playing extended minutes at the two.  But now there’s no need to use undersized twos; Devon Hall can certainly play that position if needed, Taylor Barnette is 6’3″, and if desired, Tony Bennett can go big and put Joe Harris, Justin Anderson, or Paul Jesperson there, with even bigger threes.  Besides, Perrantes doesn’t project as a top-notch scorer, and his weaknesses as ESPN describes them sound suspiciously similar to Evans: “In terms of skill, he needs to get stronger finishing in the lane…Lastly, he needs to continue to work on becoming a knock down shooter when defenders back off.”  That’s Evans to a T when he came in (he’s done well in the former category but has mixed results in the latter.)

Two of the top questions that accompany the Perrantes commitment are: “Are we still recruiting Austin Nichols?” and “What does this mean for Taylor Barnette and Teven Jones?”  The answer to the former seems to be “yup” and as for the latter, well, I stick by what I said last month: it’s not necessarily that Tony doesn’t like what he sees out of the PGs he has, it’s that he’s bound and determined not to ever go through an experience like last season again, and PG depth is pretty darn crucial to your chances of doing anything, ever.

However, it now looks like an uphill climb for both Jones and Barnette, and this season will be crucial for them to kind of get a foot in the door for playing time the next three, four years, because between Hall and Perrantes, they basically just got recruited over.  The upside for them is that they’ll have this year to establish themselves, and next year, well, the idea of having a freshman back up a freshman at the point is a leeetle scary.  But if you don’t see much of them this year, probably don’t expect to see a lot of them next year either.

As for Perrantes himself, based just on ratings and offers and such, Hall would seem to be the better prospect.  Hall brings size, playmaking skill, and a scoring touch that Perrantes appears to lack.  But the cerebral Tony Bennett probably sees a little of himself in Perrantes, and by all means don’t assume that since they’re both point guards, their minutes are mutually exclusive.  Bennett seems to want to be a little bit of a mad scientist with his guards, and even though Perrantes doesn’t look very interchangeable, Hall does.  Plus, Perrantes’s ability to see the game should make him a quick study in the nuances of Bennett’s defenses, and that as you know is the key to playing time.  It’s nice to have a lot of options, and at a bare minimum it looks as though he is an excellent complement to the scoring punch we expect out of guys like Hall and Justin Anderson.  If there’s a PG competition in the future the way we seem to have QB competitions every year, expect a good one, and the different styles they bring make it hard to handicap.  Even if Perrantes loses out, though, he’s not likely to be the guy you bring in for 8 minutes a game and hustle the starter back out there ASAP.  What Bennett has built for the future is a mix-and-match toy, and Perrantes is a very new kind of piece.

P.S. – Nichols.  From what I read it sure sounds like Bennett has no intention of dropping his pursuit of Austin Nichols.  We’re full up on scholarships – but only for the 2013-14 season.  If Nichols commits, there’ll be some juggling – I hope not of the kind where someone is asked to give up their scholly “for the good of the team” – but there’s space available in years past that season that doesn’t require creative contortionism to fit someone else.

P.P.S. – Perrantes even has his own website.

P.P.P.S. – I wonder if I can get Vegas to take bets on whether the next UVA-related “London Calling” headline is about Mike or Perrantes?

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– Both the basketball and football depth charts are now updated; basketball because of the new commitment, and football for Penn State.  Only two changes: Conner Davis is now listed as the starter at LG over Cody Wallace (which already, in a way, obsoletifies my InsideTheACC article from yesterday but whatever read it anyway you’ll like it) and – sad to say – Tim Cwalina is no longer on it, due to a heart condition that ended his football career.  DAMMIT man.  I hate reading that stuff.  I’d honestly rather attrite players because they’re screwing off in the classroom or stole a PS3 from a dorm or something.  At least then, they deserve it.

At From Old Virginia you will find impassioned, monumentally biased coverage of ‘Hoos football in the fall, basketball in the winter, baseball and lacrosse in the spring, and everything else when the mood strikes me.