I know what you’re thinking, because I’ve thought it, too: Maryland doesn’t stand a chance. It doesn’t matter that the twins’ father, Aaron Harrison Sr., who doubles as their AAU coach, is from Baltimore or that he has plenty of extended family a short drive from Maryland’s College Park campus. It doesn’t matter that Harrison Sr. has a great relationship with Maryland assistant Bino Ranson, or that he’s developed a measure of reverence for Mark Turgeon for the way that Turgeon handled the death of recruit Tobi Oyedeji. Oyedeji, who hails from the same area in Texas as the Harrisons, was committed to Turgeon at Texas A&M when he was killed in a car accident the night of his junior prom. The way Harrison Sr. tells it, that inspired him to contact Turgeon about recruiting his sons, who were high school freshmen at the time.Should I also mention that the Harrison’s AAU team, the Houston Defenders, is sponsored by Under Armour, the same company that sponsors the Terps? What about the fact that Under Armour’s founder is a former Maryland football player? Or that a former Defender teammate and close friend of the Harrison twins, Shaquille Cleare, is currently a freshman forward for the Terps?
In a normal recruitment, that’s a lock.
But chasing down the Harrisons is anything but a “normal recruitment”.
It never is when Kentucky and coach John Calipari are involved.
Most UK fans probably assume that statement is meant as a shot at Calipari, and it’s not. I always use the “Lance Armstrong theory” when it comes to coaches “cheating” on the recruiting trail. Whether or not Armstrong was doping doesn’t change the fact that he was the greatest cyclist of all-time, because he beat a bunch of other cyclists that were doping as well.
What that means is that, all things being equal, there is something else about Calipari’s recruiting pitch for the Wildcats that is making them such a desirable landing spot for the nation’s elite prospects, something beyond the stereotype of the dollars tossed around by boosters that every armchair recruiting pundit believes is the key to bringing in a loaded recruiting class.
And this past weekend, Calipari provided us with a perfect example.
Last Friday night, the Barclays Center — the new home of the Brooklyn Nets — opened up with a concert from Nets part-owner Jay-Z. Jay-Z and Calipari happen to be friends. If you remember, the rapper was fined $50,000 by the NBA for visiting the Kentucky locker room after the Wildcats advanced to the 2011 Final Four, an inconvenience he immortalized in the first four bars of the song “In Paris” off of the Watch The Throne album. Calipari didn’t hesitate when it came letting his 1.2 million Twitter followers know about his backstage pass to the concert, tweeting out this picture of himself in front of the stage while name-dropping hip-hop producer Irv Gotti, NBA coach Avery Johnson and Magic Johnson during the night.
Calipari also tweeted that he “told Jay-Z that I might get fined 50K for being in HIS locker room tonight. He said “I got you”. #Lafamilia”. Not only is Calipari letting every recruit, every fan and every rival head coach know that he’s friends with Jay-Z, the hashtag at the end of the tweet is a not-so-subtle reference to Roc La Familia, the name of an album that Jay-Z released in 2000 and a record label he started a few years later. Apparently, Calipari knows his hip-hop as well.