Straight story on Gordon

About a week or two ago, a story appeared on the Rivals network indicating that Drew Gordon is not currently talking to college coaches, under the advice of his coach which raised eyebrows and stirred up controversy. Is Gordon really not talking to coaches? Was this whole thing made up? Was he misquoted? What's really going on? We were able to speak to Gordon and here's the straight story on his recruiting situation.

Gordon, a junior at Archbishop Mitty is a top 15 national prospect in his class and the top-ranked junior in all of northern California. The list of schools actively interested in the 6-foot-8, 235-pound power forward include, but is certainly not limited to Arizona, Cal, Connecticut, Duke, Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Stanford, UCLA, and Washington.

We had the opportunity to speak with Drew's mother, Shelly Davis-Gordon, via email and she was able to set some issues straight regarding Gordon's recruiting. "Drew is talking to coaches, and we are in contact with a number of programs," said Davis-Gordon.

Though she declined to name specific schools that may be on the top of Gordon's list, she indicated that Drew was considering several schools on the west coast, midwest and east coast.

"Brian Eagleson, his high school coach who, bless his heart, spends countless hours on the phone and visitng with coaches on behalf of Drew as well as Collin, Enoch, Chris and others in the Mitty program is handling much of the interface along with me and Ed so that Drew can concentrate on school and the upcoming season," said Davis-Gordon. "By no means is his recruitment on 'hold' nor have we cut off communication."

According to Shelly, there is not much more that can be done now before Drew visits some of the schools on his list. "At this point, there is very little more we can do with the coaches. We need to get around to see some of these schools, so that Drew has a concrete point of reference," she said. " Right now, he has no basis other than the school's reputation and his growing relationship with their coaching staffs, to judge."

Davis-Gordon describes her son's recruiting as "a zoo, with people calling all the time and letters coming in by the dozens." In fact, Drew receives countless phone calls a week, and about 120 pieces of mail.

When should we expect to see Gordon commit to a program? His mother also gives us some insight into that question. "The plan is to have him visit schools this spring through the end of the summer, as we can fit them in between academics, basketball, track and field, and the need for some bits of downtime in between," said Davis-Gordon. "In the fall, he can take official visits, and we hope to have settled on a program for him prior to the start of his senior season of basketball."

Eagleson is probably one of the busiest coaches in the region right now as he has four potential Division I candidates under his tutelage, all juniors.

It looks like there will be plenty of college coaches in attendance at Archbishop Mitty games this year and while NCAA guidelines prevents them from talking to him, it won't be because Gordon doesn't want to.