Ray McCallum (photo: Brad Allis/WildcatSportsReport.com)

As you all know by now, and as Javier Morales reported earlier, Ray McCallum will announce what school he is attending Wednesday afternoon. He is one of four players still listing the Wildcats and as each player announces, the shape of the Wildcats’ roster will take shape.

Obviously, if a player commits, he will affect the roster, but I think it goes deeper than that. My gut feeling is that as the Wildcats add players in the class, current players will leave the program.

Call it seeing the writing on the wall, call it conserving scholarships, heck, call it culling the herd.

We saw it once already with Jesse Perry and D.J. Shumpert. Whether Shumpert saw the writing on the wall with the commitment of a similar player, or whether he was shown the writing on the wall, Shumpert realized his already slim chance at playing time was made nearly impossible with the arrival of the JC forward.

I can see the same things happening if one of the remaining recruits, or a transfer, enter the program.

If one of the three remaining guards, McCallum, Doron Lamb or Josh Selby, want to commit, I can’t see a player like Brendan Lavender staying. I don’t think he’d be nudged out the door, but he’s already competing for playing time at shooting guard with Kyle Fogg, Daniel Bejarano and MoMo Jones and a player like Solomon Hill or Kevin Parrom could also try to find minutes there. Add one of the other freshmen to the mix, and it seems like minutes might be hard to come by.

While the likelihood of adding one of the three guards seems remote at this time, it is still a possibility.

The same situation exists on the front line for a player like Alex Jacobson. Jacobson had trouble finding minutes on the front line this season and the Cats return Derek Williams, Jamelle Horne and Kyryl Natyazhko and add Perry. If Kadeem Jack, or another big man wants to sign, would Jacobson want to stay?

The bigger question is not whether a player is leaving, but who wants to come. Selby is almost assuredly not coming, and most feel that Lamb is a near lock for Kentucky, although late word is that Lamb’s family has been in contact with the UA staff. McCallum seems like he will choose to play for his father at Detroit, but the Cats have made a great push for him.

That leaves Jack and some transfers. Jack likes Arizona a lot, and word is a team will have to make up a lot of ground to get his services. We’ve also been told that a number of transfers have reached out to Arizona and the Cats will likely consider some of them depending on what the four prep players decide to do.

More on the impact of McCallum’s decision and the recruiting dominoes. For all your Wildcat basketball and football needs, check out www.WildcatSportsReport.com

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 14th, 2010 at 12:57 am and is filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.