Charles: MD, UVA, Others Offer Noah

Now comes the hard part for Joakim Noah, who has had a monster week both at the ABCD camp and at the Three Stripes tournament. It's time for him to handle all the phone calls and offers he will receive. With the Three Stripes tournament over, Noah is now eligible to be called by college coaches. Noah will next compete at the Las Vegas tournament.

"I am only focusing on the summer," Noah said. "After my July is over I will go to France to see my father. I haven't seen him in four and a half months. Then I will come back for school and start thinking about the schools."

The offers are piling in for Noah. "Virginia and Maryland offered," said Gary Charles, head coach of the Long Island Panthers (Noah's AAU team). "Indiana also is interested. There are a lot of schools now interested in him."

Other schools mentioned by Noah include Georgia Tech, Florida, Richmond, and St. Joe's. Many of these schools took a long, hard look at the thin forward from Poly Prep in Brooklyn, N.Y. over the past week.

Noah, 6-foot-10 and 200-pounds, certainly now is considered a top 50 perhaps even higher recruit by most schools. He consistently gets his hands on almost every rebound. And despite his frail looking frame, he is as good a rebounder in traffic as he is when cleaning the boards without any pressure. Noah usually lands every loose ball within five or six feet of the basket.

"I probably won't know what kind of a list I will have until after July," Noah said. "I have to see then. But I want to see my father first before I start thinking about this."