McKenzie Visiting SHU

Seton Hall is set to get a visit from Xaverian HS (NYC) shooting guard Brian McKenzie this month. McKenzie is an interesting recruit. he combines very good athletic ability with a pure shot from beyond the arc. He seemed to struggle a bit last year, mostly because of confidence from my observations, and really began to pick it up from the outside when Xaverian went on their impressive late season run to the state federation title game. He also has decent size (6'3 180 lbs) for a shooting guard and would fill a void on the SHU roster, as they seem to lack outside shooting skills as a whole, and most of their guards are on the small side. However, Seton Hall seems to be the extent of his Big East interest and is getting most of his attention from teams in lower-level conferences. Here is the Yahoo! Sports article, via Scout.Com, on McKenzie's recruiting: McKenzie to Visit SHU.

With just one scholarship left, I was pretty much under the assumption that Seton Hall would target an athletic wing player as the position of priority on the recruiting trail. As mentioned in previous reports, players like Kimmani Barrett, Antonio DiMaria and Damian Hollis have been getting a lot of attention from the Pirate staff. Barrett, in my opinion, would be a solid addition to the class. DiMaria is a player from the Pittsburgh area that had a very good ABCD camp this summer and has received offers from the likes of James Madison, Duquense and Bowling Green. It also looks like Seton hall has offered a scholarship and Syracuse has been in contact with DMaria as well. Hollis might be visiting Seton Hall in the near future as well, but he also seems willing to take his time to see if he can gain some additional attention over the course of his senior season. If they can land a player like Lazer Hayward, that would be a great addition, but the competition for him looks to be very tough to beat, and he still considerd Marquette his leader and schools like Connecticut and Syracuse seem to be turning up the heat on Hayward. Another target, Edwin Ubiles has recently committed to Siena.

However, Louie Orr and his SHU staff seem to be headed in another direction with their last scholarship right now. We are not quite privy to the information on how much SHU wants Mckenzie and where he is in their priority listing, but he does seem to be visiting before other targets, it will be interesting to see how it shakes out. I see SHU as a team that could use his shooting touch and McKenzie is an excellent student and is improving as an overall player, definitely is still a lower-level Big East calibre recruit, but is somewhat under-recruited as well.