8/19/2002 football Edit

Pilgrim Transfers

Mike Sullivan & Russ Blake

Publisher

6-6 power forward Mike Pilgrim, who played last year as a senior at Purcell-Marian H.S. in Cincinnati, has changed his mind and will play at Brewster Academy in New Hampshire.

Previously, Pilgrim was thinking about taking his skills to to Coastal Christian Academy in Virginia Beach, Va. But according to Brewster Academy head coach Jason Smith, Pilgrim called him today to say he was going to enroll at the Wolfeboro, New Hampshire based school.

He first came to the attention of Rivalshoops in May 2001 at the Nike Memorial Day Classic, where he impressed with his work on the glass for Ozie Davis' Queen City Prophets.

This past summer, Pilgrim helped to do the same for Mike Duncan's Cleveland Basketball program, and also showed an improved offensive game. But what he does best is wiggle between bodies in the paint for boards. He's also athletic enough to play above the rim despite not possessing the strongest of frames.

All of this is not a shock when you consider Pilgrim's pedigree -- he is related (a cousin) of former Syracuse great and current Seton Hall Head Coach Louie Orr. And he reminds us a bit of one of Orr's players, current Pirate sophomore Andre Sweet.

So it's not surprising that one of the three programs that's offered Pilgrim is Seton Hall, along with Ohio State and Purdue. In addition to those three schools, he also mentioned Florida State, UConn, DePaul, Cincinnati, St. Joe's, St. Bonaventure, Kent State and Illinois State.

In fact, Seton Hall, St. Joe's, Kent State and Illinois State are already making plans to visit Pilgrim at his new digs during the September in-home/in-school visit period.

He's had the chance to take unofficial visits to four instate programs -- Bowling Green, Ohio State, Miami (OH) and Cincinnati.

Pilgrim scored a 24 on the ACT, but a low core GPA forced him to seek out a prep school for the 2002-2003 campaign. He did not get his diploma from Purcell-Marian, which turns out to be a good thing, because now he can work on boosting his core grades this year at Brewster.