May be we want to try harder to land Cobb if he leads us to the kid below. Hope they are best friends.
http://usatodayhss.com/2014/azbuikeCHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Udoka Azubuike is 6-10 and 268 pounds, has a wingspan of 7-5 and in the past week, has picked up offers from Kentucky, Duke and Kansas.
He’s also only 14.
“Sunday was the first day coaches could call to make an offer, but it wasn’t that busy because it was Father’s Day,” said Steve McLaughlin, Azubuike’s coach at Potter’s House Christian Academy (Jacksonville).
“But on Monday, I got calls about him, back-to-back-to-back.”
In April, at the Jordan Brand Classic International game in Brooklyn, N.Y., Azubuike grabbed his own rebound of a dunk attempt with one hand and slammed it so hard other players on the court at the Barclays Center briefly stopped to watch. Even at the NBA Players Association Top 100 Camp this week in Charlottesville, where most of the players are two to four years older than Azubuike, his ferocity going for a dunk, a block or a rebound draws attention.
Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Azubuike has been playing organized basketball for only three years. While he still makes plenty of mistakes on the court, his upside has people wondering if he’s the next big thing, with the emphasis on big. He’s listed as the No. 2 center in the 2016 class by ESPN.com.
“I went to a couple of camps and that’s how I got here,” Azubuike said. “I played soccer when I was little, but I gave it up when I started playing basketball three years ago.”
When he was discovered at a Basketball Without Borders camp in Nigeria a couple of years ago, he was only 6-8 and 190 pounds.
“A friend of mine who was at the camp and knew Udoka’s coach in Nigeria told me he had this kid who was pretty good even though he didn’t know anything about basketball,” McLaughlin said. “I told him to put him on a plane. He was really raw when he first got here. I could only put him on the court for a couple of minutes here or there. He would foul every time on defense and on offense, he was like a chicken running around with its head cut off. This year, though, was a total transformation. We ran our offense around him.”
In 2013-14 as a sophomore, Azubuike averaged 17.2 points and 9.6 rebounds a game for the Lions, who finished second in the Sunshine Independent Athletic Association state tournament.
Azubuike said he gets plenty of competition in practice as he is one of three players 6-9 or over on the Lions’ roster, including 6-9 Kansas State commit Eric Cobb, who will be a senior next fall and 6-10 post Usman Harumna, another Nigerian national, one of four on the Lions’ roster.
