LAS VEGAS – It holds the promise to be the kind of noteworthy July week unlike any in memory for the UCLA men’s basketball program – and, quite possibly, for its USC counterpart as well.
Barring any last-second change of heart, multiple sources say, Kevin Love, the Tower of Post Power from Lake Oswego, Ore., will confirm sometime Tuesday what many have suspected for a while: He intends to enroll at UCLA in the fall of 2007.
Love, the consensus No. 1-A or 1-B prospect in the national high school senior class, is expected to hold a press conference late Tuesday morning or early Tuesday afternoon in a lecture hall on the Foothill High Campus (the headquarters for the Reebok Big Time Tournament) in which it is believed he will announce he has decided upon UCLA over North Carolina as the school he will sign a national letter off intent with in November.
And tournament officials expect that another “major� press conference will be held in the same facility on Wednesday.
And it was strongly inferred Sunday that the next athlete to announce a 2007-08 college destination will be the other No. 1-A or 1-B player, guard O.J. Mayo of Cincinnati’s North College Hill High.
The speculation for a better part of the month has been that Mayo – who some think could consider “other options�, including playing for pay overseas, instead of spending a season in college before becoming eligible for the 2008 NBA Draft – will eventually announce that he wants to enroll at USC.
If Love ends up in Westwood a little more than a year from now, he’ll be considered the most gifted freshman basketball player on campus since Bill Walton arrived from La Mesa’s Helix High in the fall of 1970.
And if the 6-foot-4 Mayo is wearing a Trojans’ uniform for Coach Tim Floyd in November of 2007, he’ll be considered the most talented USC basketball player since . . . well, forever.
Turn your Hype Meter detector off.
They’re both that good, as they demonstrated three times apiece over the weekend during the Big Time Tournament for, respectively, the Southern California All-Stars (Love) and the D-I Greyhounds (Mayo).
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