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Pastner recruited Ellis while at Arizona; UA should show interest in Compton guard

by on Dec. 14, 2009, under Sports

RELATED LINK: After watching this video on Deonte Burton, you can tell what Van Coleman is writing about, comparing him to Nate Robinson.

Another indication that Josh Pastner is one of the hardest working recruiters in the business — if not the hardest worker, period — he started recruiting Class of 2012 standout forward Perry Ellis of Wichita Heights High School while he was at Arizona.

Ellis, rated the No. 3 prospect in his class by Van Coleman of Hoopmasters.com, has already been offered a scholarship by Pastner at Memphis. Kansas and Kentucky have reportedly offered a scholarship as well. Arizona is in the mix without Pastner considering UA director of basketball of operations Jamall Walker is from Wichita and communicates with Heights coach Joe Auer.

The Tigers and Pastner have the benefit of Ellis’ sister attending Memphis and playing for the Tigers’ women’s program. However, Savannah Ellis is a junior center with Memphis and will not be at the school by the time her younger brother is eligible.

Compton guard emerging as strong Class of 2010 recruit

Keep this name in mind: Deonte Burton of Compton (Calif.) Centennial, who is a Class of 2010 combo guard recruit who is a hot commodity all of a sudden. Coleman recently offered this analysis of Burton, who stands at 6-1 and had 40 and 38 points on consecutive nights at the recent Los Angeles Westchester Invitational:

“Burton has a lot of Nate Robinson in his style, He can flat out attack the hoop with either hand and has spring to finish in traffic at the rim. He is at his best in transition, where he can create pass as well as score. He has range to NBA arc, but tends to be a little streaky from deep, but the threat of it, lets him blow by defenders.”

He currently has been hearing from Utah, Marquette, and Long Beach State, but UCLA showed it is interested after the Westchester performances. Also, a number of other Pac-10 schools saw him at Westchester, including Arizona’s coaches.

If UA coach Sean Miller is indeed looking for an explosive talent at point guard, why not give Burton a look? The UA needs to shore up its backcourt with Wise leaving, MoMo Jones likely to play mostly off-guard and Brendon Lavender and Garland Judkins still trying to find their way in Miller’s system. UCLA has a similar need and its showing action on Burton. Arizona might be doing the same. Stay tuned.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 1:40 pm and is filed under Sports. Tags for this post: , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  • oldwest2

    Hopefully this post will be taken in the right context, first i will go on record as saying Josh is a great guy and i wish him all the luck at Memphis.
    Myself i have never ever doubted that Josh is one of the most relentless, hard working recruiters to come along, he is young and can relate to the recruits. My reservations about Josh pertain to what he does with the recruits once they sign on the dotted line and actually show up.
    While at the UofA he was in charge of the big men. I cannot think of one big man Josh produced while in that position, by this i mean one that he actually found, recruited and signed then transformed into an actual solid center. Jordan Hill does not count if the stories are correct, it was coach Olson who called Josh to come take a look at Jordan during summer games. Kirk Walters never amounted to much, Channing Frye was not Josh’s recruit.
    I know the UofA definitely had that Texas connection going because of Josh and his father, but up until now i am not so sure Josh has done much with developing any of that talent.
    I wish Josh nothing but good luck at Memphis, and i am sure he is a relentless recruiter and worker. I say wait and see what happens 2 to 3 years from now at Memphis.

  • Joe

    Pastner is nothing but a self-serving traitor. The only thing he ever did at Arizona was pose for the camera whenever Olson called a time-out. He always made sure where the cameras were and would position himself in front of the time-out huddle, so that the cameras would be right on him. He often would stare right into the camera just to make sure his face was seen clearly. The guy been playing this town for years until he could kiss …. and get a better position somewhere else.  

    • blueleaf11

      Not to dignify this with a response… but @Tucson Citizen: it would be great if we could flag certain posts as disgusting or offensive and get them removed.  I could have done without seeing this today.

  • WiseHorn…Not!

    Javier, is it possible to get a regular rundown of the the top JC talent and transfer, quick-eligible players out there right now? 

    You know, say a school is about to lose a top player to transfer and that player were to become eligible from season to season, like from this fall semester to this spring semester, or from fall ’09 to fall ’10, making that player eligible right away for the ’10 season, or something like that.

    You know what I’m getting at with this, don’t you?

    HS talent isn’t exactly lining up to come here, and no matter how much we wish it to be, it ain’t, unfortunately.

    Not until the UA proves itself all over again, and 20 point thumpings at the hands of a rebuilding Oklahoma and an average San Diego State (?!?!) aren’t going to speed that process up any.

    It’s at times like this that I wish I had that Cincy Bearcat Coach Kelly quote to his QB as they both stood on the sidelines in the season-defining, life-changing ‘Nati-Pitt Panther game a couple of weeks ago. 

    That coach to senior leading player conversation I do believe went something like this…

    …Are you going to stand here on the sidelines and hope and wish a win to happen, or are you going to go out there on the field right now and make it happen?…

    Dang, a thing of beauty.

    Well as everyone now knows QB Pike got back on that field alright, and he lead his team to a comeback victory over the Panthers and into the Sugar Bowl vs. Florida and Tebow.

    It’s my hope Miller can find that kind of player amongst the top JC or transfer ranks, someone who can come in as a proven, tried and true jr or sr and lead this team to victory once again. 

    Then, blue-chip freshmen wanting to come in and develop their game, the team, the program as they rather quickly make it through will follow, no doubt.

    And somewhere in the middle will be that *** and **** recruit or two who wants to be a part of something special, but it’s all a process.

    Right now it’s a rebuilding process the likes of which only Stoops can truly appreciate.

    In time, and with the instant boost of a JC or transfer player or two, a Pete Williams or Eddie Smith or Chris Mills or Brian Williams, let’s say, the ‘Cats will be back.

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