Brian: According to the Columbus Dispatch, Evan Ravenel has accepted a scholarship offer to play for Thad Matta and the Ohio State Buckeyes. Ravenel wasn't originally recruited by Ohio State, but he was heavily courted by Tulane and then head coach Dave Dickerson. Dickerson joined Matta's staff as an assistant coach this spring.
"I wanted to play for somebody who recruited me (originally) and I felt comfortable with," Ravenel said. "I was pretty close to signing with coach Dickerson at Tulane, but it wasn’t the right time to play for them."
Ravenel will sit out a year and return in 2011-2012 as a fourth year junior for the Buckeyes. Meanwhile, while Brady Heslip has a standing offer to join the Utah State Aggies program, he also has visited both Georgetown and Baylor. With Ravenel joining a power conference team, and with Heslip visiting power conference teams like Georgetown and Baylor, does that make these transfer that much tougher to swallow? Your thoughts?
Jeff: I'll never be too upset about Heslip transferring whether he ends up at Utah State or Georgetown or wherever, even if he ultimately becomes a great player at another school. I think the new coaching staff had the chance to keep Heslip and they chose to push him out. He had never played a single game as an Eagle so it would be wrong of me to second guess the coaches decision on that one. Had he not transferred, it sounded like he really would've had to fight for playing time where, if Skinner had still be coaching, he might have played quite a bit.
Ravenel is a different story though. We have seen Ravenel improve significantly and he would have had two seasons left at Boston College. I got the impression that the new coaches wanted Ravenel to stay, but he simply chose to leave. With all of the departures, our bench is getting thinner and thinner and the outlook for the next season or two is getting worse and worse. You not only need to have depth on the court on gameday but also Division 1 bodies in practice to help the team improve and compete. It will be interesting to see how things continue to play out, but I am more bummed about Ravenel now transferring than some of the others we've known about for a while.