So, after all was said and done yesterday, Iowa State had brought three new basketball players into the fold, according to various sources. These included high schooler LA Pomlee, Marquette transfer Scott Cristopherson and JUCO Jamie (Notorious VDB) Vanderbeken.
In bringing in Pomlee and Vanderbeken, Greg McDermott and staff addressed the most pressing need for 2008 - the total lack of depth at the four and the five. Pomlee, regarded as a medium-risk/high reward sort of project, could give ISU some rebounding punch that ISU will lose in regards to Rahshon Clark. Pomlee averaged 15 and 10 during his senior year at Davenport Central High, while leading the conference in field goal percentage and rebounding.
VDB was a bit of an upset for McDermott, pulling him in over schools like UConn. The 6-10 center prospect is currently at Tyler JC in Texas and originally had committed to Iowa out of high school in Canada. He'll immediately compete with Alex Thompson for the starting center position.
Cristopherson, like Pomlee and VDB, was a three-star recruit coming out of high school. A sharpshooter, he struggled to find minutes during Crean's final year at Marquette. He'll sit out the coming season.
Overall, we had about as productive of a spring recruiting period as could be hoped. Pomlee may have been a backup plan for Jimmy Butler, VDB's Tyler teammate, but VDB will be more likely to address our big man needs. Cristopherson will be another shooter (can't have too many of those) when he is eligible to play in 09-10.
It's never good when a team has to resort to the spring signing period, but, again, it seems like we did relatively well with addressing our biggest needs. 2008 recruiting should be wrapped up (with a class of 6 + 1 transfer + Lucca becoming eligible). And we'll see tons of new faces this fall. Time to focus on 09 recruiting for the one or two scholarships that we'll have available for that class.