Nic Wise is home in Houston while 54 rookie point guards show their skills in front of NBA and international scouts in Las Vegas (US Presswire photo/Steve Mitchell)

LAS VEGAS — Approximately 70 point guards comprise the 22 NBA teams that are fielding a roster in the 2010 Summer League at Thomas & Mack over the next week.

Of that lot, 54 are rookies. Breaking it down further, nine of the 70 or so point guards are listed under 6-feet tall (meaning a diminutive size is not a deterrent). Seven of those nine are rookies.

Not one of them is Nic Wise.

The former 5-10, 180 playmaker for Arizona is at home in Houston. Jeremy Wise (no relation), a 6-1 rookie point guard from Southern Mississippi, is here with the Golden State Warriors. But not Nic Wise.

NBA scouts like it that a player performed at the highest level, such as Wise did at Arizona in the Pac-10 and in the NCAA tournament before his senior season. However, looking at the NBA Summer League rosters indicates that high-level experience is equal in worth to a LeBron James Cavaliers jersey right now.

Undrafted rookie point guards are here from programs such as Portland (Pooh Jeter, 5-11, Cavaliers), Illinois-Chicago (Josh Mayo, 6-0, Mavericks), College of Charleston (Dontaye Draper, 5-11, Nuggets), Wright State (Dashaun Wood, 5-11, Clippers) and Utah State (Jaycee Carroll, 6-1, Knicks).

In the initial NBA Summer League game between Denver and Dallas, Mayo and Draper were on the court along with Harvard rookie point guard Jeremy Lin with the Mavericks. Draper (who had three steals in the first half) and Lin (four points on 2-of-4 shooting) are credible, but Mayo looks out of his element.

The Suns, who interviewed and treated Wise to dinner the week of the NBA draft last month, have four rookie point guards on their summer-league roster. San Diego’s Brandon Johnson, 6-0, and Northeastern’s Matt Janning, 6-4, are among them.

Wise has been through a lot more pressure-filled games on national television and filled arenas than this sample of mid-major guards who are in Las Vegas. None of these guys can claim they averaged 21.3 points a game in a three-game NCAA Tournament run, like Wise did in 2009. But Wise is not here.

Why?

Some rumblings among NBA scouts and front-office personnel include Wise lacking in size, decision-making skills, finishing ability and health in his knees. The 54 rookie point guards here apparently do not have similar concerns.

Wise’s career is not over. He will likely sign with a professional team overseas. He is about to embark on a similar path as the two regular starting point guards who played before him at Arizona — Jason Gardner and Mustafa Shakur.

The last regular starting point guard for Arizona — which is dubbed “Point Guard U” — to sustain an NBA career is Jason Terry, who was drafted in 1999 and will be in his 12th NBA season in 2010-11. Jerryd Bayless is transitioning into playing point guard now in the NBA after playing mostly at the off-guard position at Arizona and in his rookie season with Portland in 2008-09.

Gardner and Shakur are still ticking. With the way Shakur has played in Orlando’s summer league, he is in position to be a backup guard in Oklahoma City or elsewhere next season. Gardner, a standout in the German professional league, is reportedly competing in the Indy Pro-Am league that runs into August.

Expect Wise to follow the lead of Gardner and Shakur and keep his NBA dream alive for as long as he works toward that goal.

UA recruit Daniel Bejarano, in the middle of celerating North fans, yells toward the roof at Wells Fargo Arena (Photo by Michael Chow, Arizona Repulic)

Phoenix North guard Daniel Bejarano played his last high school basketball game Wednesday night and can now prepare for his Arizona career.

The workouts might have to wait a day or two while Bejarano celebrates a repeat state title with the Mustangs. North defeated Laveen Cesar Chavez 71-66 for the Class 5A Division I boys basketball title at ASU’s Wells Fargo Arena, a place where he hopes to win more games as a Wildcat.

The Arizona Republic reports that Bejarano looked up into the rafters and pointed his finger as gesture to his father, who was shot and killed last year.

“I look up at the sky every chance I have because I know my dad is there for me,” Bejarano told the Republic. He finished with 19 points, 10 in the fourth quarter. He did not score in the game until 18 seconds were left before halftime. At that point, he hit a three-pointer to give North a 34-33 lead.

With four starters returning — Bejarano has told me that he grew up in the same neighborhood with his teammates — North wanted to prove it could repeat as state champion. This time, however it was a Class 5A Division I title. Last year it was a Division II championship.

“It feels great to come back and repeat,” Bejarano told the Republic. “It’s history.”

Bejarano, a 6-5 shooting guard, is rated a Four-Star recruit and the No. 57 prospect overall by Rivals.com. He averaged 21.5 points, 6.7 rebounds, 4.7 assists and 2.1 steals per game this season.

He is the fifth high-profile Phoenix-area recruit to sign with Arizona since Lute Olson coached the Wildcats. Here’s how the others fared in their senior seasons:

• Mike Bibby — Averaged 34.3 points, 8 assists and four steals for in 1996 for Shadow Mountain, which won the Class 5A state championship that season.
• Richard Jefferson — Led Moon Valley to a Class 4A state title as a senior in 1998, averaging 24 points, 9.8 rebounds and 4.4 blocked shots a game.
• Channing Frye — Led St. Mary’s to a Class 5A state title in 2001, its first state title in 22 years. He averaged 22 points and 15 rebounds as an overlooked senior by other programs.
• Jerryd Bayless — Lost in the 2007 Class 5A state championship game with St. Mary’s, which was beaten by Mesa Mountain View and current UA sophomore guard Brendon Lavender. He averaged 37.9 points, 8 rebounds, 7.4 assists and 3.2 steals per game.

Bibby, Jefferson, Frye and Bayless became NBA lottery picks after their UA careers.

Class of 2003 recruit Ndudi Ebi decided to chase his NBA dreams rather than honor his commitment to Arizona. Minnesota drafted him in the first round (26th pick overall) but his NBA career never fluorished (Fan photo taken in Italy)

The end of the decade is almost two weeks from now, and when it comes to UA hoops recruiting, many fans are looking forward to changing the page to the next decade with UA coach Sean Miller establishing his program with his own players.

Former UA coach Lute Olson had his triumphs in the decade, including discovering before the 1999-2000 season diamond-in-the-rough player Gilbert Arenas, who later became an NBA All-Star. However, the decade ended on a particularly sour note as top-flight recruits abandoned the program in the wake of Olson’s leave of absence and sudden retirement.

Arenas arguably is the best least-sought recruit to attend Arizona, topping Steve Kerr, who was only recruited by Gonzaga (not a similar power at the time) other than Arizona, and Jordan Hill, who chose the Cats over Clemson, Georgia State, South Florida and Vanderbilt.

Two of Olson’s five Pac-10 Freshman of the Year winners were signed during the decade — Salim Stoudamire in 2001 and Chase Budinger in 2006. However, that number should have at least been three. Somehow Arenas and backcourt mate Jason Gardner were not selected the Pac-10 Freshman of the Year following the 1999-2000 season. Gardner, meanwhile, was chosen a national freshman of the year by three media outlets, including the U.S. Basketball Writers Association.

Casey Jacobsen of Stanford and Jason Kapono of UCLA were the Pac-10′s co-freshmen of the year that season. They were on the Pac-10′s all-freshman team along with Arenas, Gardner and Oregon State’s Brian Jackson.

Olson had other recruiting victories in the decade, such as Phoenix’s Channing Frye (who in 2001 continued the trend of the state’s best talent attending Arizona) and Andre Iguodala (who attended the UA after gaining a release from his 2002 letter of intent at Arkansas following the Nolan Richardson buyout).

As Olson’s career came to a turbulent end, the UA’s recruiting identity faltered as well. Talented players like Brandon Jennings and Abdul Gaddy (Washington) opted to play somewhere else. In Jennings’ case, his travels took him to Italy, where he would play professionally instead honoring his signed letter of intent.

Jerryd Bayless, a Rivals.com 5-star recruit in 2007, played one season at UA under interim coach Kevin O’Neill and then bolted to the NBA. Olson returned from his leave of absence saying he would no longer go after one-and-done players like Bayless. As it turned out, Olson would not recruit anybody because his Hall of Fame career came to an end.

Arizona’s five-star recruits in the decade never really materialized to their recruiting hype. The best of the bunch turned out to be Budinger (2006). However, after capturing the Pac-10 freshman of the year honors, Budinger’s UA career became stagnant (in conjunction with Olson’s leave of absence and retirement) until he declared for the NBA draft after his junior season. He failed to become the lottery pick he envisioned, lasting until the 44th pick overall in the second round by Detroit (which traded his rights to Houston).

The following is a list of the top UA recruiting developments of the decade (1999-2000 season to the recruitment of the Class of 2009). Which one do you think is the most significant development? (The picks are listed in relation to the description provided):

1. Gilbert Arenas signs with Arizona, which beats only Kansas State and DePaul for his services, and he averages 15.4 points a game as a freshman in 1999-2000. He also is the second UA freshman to score at least 500 points (Coniel Norman was the first in ’72-73).

2. Jason Gardner, a heralded point guard recruited out of Indianapolis, captures the 1999-2000 national freshman of the year honors from Basketball Times, ESPN.com and the U.S. Basketball Writers Association.

3. UA coach Lute Olson inks Salim Stoudamire, who follows in his cousin Damon’s footsteps by attending Arizona, and is selected the Pac-10 Freshman of the Year following the 2001-02 season.

4. Ndudi Ebi, a Class of 2003 forward-center recruit who was rated No. 4 overall by Rivals.com, opts for the NBA draft and is selected by Minnesota late in the first round. His NBA career never pans out. He currently averages 14.6 points and 13.8 rebounds for Riviera Solare Crabs Rimini of the Italian professional league.

5. The only five-star recruits to sign with UA in the decade — Ebi (2003), Mustafa Shakur (2003), Jawann McClellan (2004), J.P. Prince (2005), Chase Budinger (2006), Jerryd Bayless (2007), Jamelle Horne (2007) and Brandon Jennings (2008) — generally had unfulfilled careers at Arizona. Horne is a junior, so he might buck this trend, but not in this decade.

6. Chase Budinger is praised by Olson as the best recruit he’s signed and the standout from San Diego promptly wins Pac-10 Freshman of the Year honors after averaging 15.6 points and 5.8 rebounds per game. Olson did not coach him again and Budinger struggled accordingly his sophomore and junior seasons.

7. Olson’s leave of absence in 2007-08 and abrupt retirement before the 2008-09 sets recruiting back for Arizona. High profile recruits Jennings (Italy), Jeff Withey (transfer to Kansas), Emmanuel Negedu (Tennessee), Abdul Gaddy (Washington), Mike Moser (UCLA) and Solomon Hill (USC) changed their minds about attending Arizona. Hill switched back to UA following Sean Miller’s hiring.

8. Jennings, the No. 4 prospect in the country out of the prestigious Oak Hill Academy, commits to Arizona in June 2007 and eventually signs a national letter of intent. However, Jennings causes a national story after his senior season when he decides to play professionally in Italy instead of await his SAT score.

9. Miller, who is hired in April 2009 as Olson’s permanent replacement, is lauded by recruiting experts for his first class, which comprises of five players: Lamont “MoMo” Jones, Derrick Williams, Kyryl Natyazhko, Solomon Hill and Kevin Parrom.