Rob Harrington, Editor of the Recruiter’s Handbook and PrepStars.com, provides a final perspective on Virginia Tech’s 2007 men’s basketball recruiting class. Despite the loss of Gus Gilchrist, PrepStars will still rate Tech’s haul as “one of the four or five best classes” in the ACC, Harrington says, with three signees ranked in the final top 100 list.

Let’s begin with the recent news with 6-9 center/power forward Gus Gilchrist. For those who don’t know, Gilchrist recently decided not to enroll at Virginia Tech for the upcoming academic year, citing concerns stemming from the April tragedy (though, as Will Stewart wrote, there is more to this story. Gilchrist has not publicly ruled out re-signing with the Hokies in 2008, but it is expected that he will head elsewhere.

Speaking strictly in terms of the impact on the basketball court, this is a loss for Virginia Tech. But, as Harrington says, the class is still a good one.

“Well it definitely has a negative impact. It would for anyone,” Harrington said of losing Gilchrist. “I think he is probably a borderline top 50 player in the class (PrepStars has him ranked at #43) and no one ever likes to lose those, especially when you have signed him and recruited him so much in the past. They held onto him for a long time, which prevented them from recruiting someone else. Still, I’d say they have at least two and maybe even three top 100 signees in addition to Gilchrist and still a very good class for them. I think that the fit of the class is also good. You can watch Malcolm Delaney and Dorenzo Hudson play and know right away what Virginia Tech is going to do with those two guys. They are very similar to players they’ve had a lot of success with these past couple of years.”

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