God’s Gift Achiuwa to St. John’s

It is official, God’s Gift Achiuwa has declared his intentions to play for St. John’s and stay close to his home that he has had for the last few years in New York.

It seemed the likely favorite the whole time, they were the hometown team, they had started recruiting him first (out of the 3), he was raised catholic, and St. John’s even cleared another forward they had recruited to make sure he knew there was room.

UW came late into the recruiting process and was able to make it as one of the final two choices. However, UW did seem to realize that it would take a bad visit to St. John’s and things not to work out for God’s Gift Achiuwa to not play for the Johnnies.

A lot of hype was made of this player, and while he was an underrated player, he wasn’t a blue chip player. He wasn’t going to be an amazing post presence. In fact, I had a feeling that if he did arrive to Montlake it was only a matter of time before people started getting frustrated with his inability to make a consistent shot, even around the basket.

Here is what I said about him over twitter after watching his game tape:
(Remember it is twitter, you only have 140 characters, so that is why it is a little choppy)

"God’s Gift is physically ready to compete at D1. He is big and fit and really knows how to use his strength in the paint. He works hard with a constant motor. With that comes a downside, most of his baskets came on 2nd-4th chances. In JC he was able to just keep trying. That won’t happen at the next level. He has a nice shot, he was able to put down a 3 and was really fluid at the line. For a big man, that is impressive. Finally, he played the whole game, even OT, nice stamina. Had a few good defensive blocks. At the next level will need to increase his FG pct."

Brad Winton from JucoRecruiting.com also told me he was never very high on God’s Gift, that many people were just following the hype. Winton also had this to say about him:

"He’s a good player. I think he would be solid coming off the bench for a few minutes each half. Plays extremely hard. Just not sure if he’s ready to contribute as much as people think he can. Bigs are hard to come by though."

All that to say, that while we missed out on a good recruit, that would have helped the program, he really wasn’t going to be ‘God’s Gift’ to UW, he was going to be a role player that most likely would come in off of the bench.

The other recruits in Richard Peters and Vashil Fernandez would come in with 4 years play and both have a ton of potential. Richard Peters is being recruited by almost every major University in the country. He is coming on strong and may find himself becoming a 4 star recruit.

While Fernandez is raw and still learning the game of basketball but shows the natural ability to be an amazing presence in the paint.