It took all of one week for Ben Howland to breathe life into
UCLA’s battered basketball program.
Compton Centennial High School’s Arron Afflalo became the
first committment of the Howland era Saturday evening, when he told
the Bruins’ new head coach that he will be attending
UCLA.
“There were a lot of schools interested, but Arron was
very excited about UCLA,” Centennial coach Rod Palmer said.
“After he met with Ben, there was no reason to look anywhere
else.”
Widely regarded as one of the top shooting guards in the class
of 2004, Afflalo became the first potential recruit to meet with
Howland during an unofficial visit to the UCLA campus last
Tuesday.
The meeting gave Afflalo the chance to familiarize himself with
the campus and gauge the level of Howland’s interest.
“Meeting with Howland definitely helped,” Afflalo
told the San Bernadino County Sun prior to his committment.
“He told me that he was real interested in me. He said I was
the type of recruit they needed to be a national-title contender
again.”
Howland’s courtship of Afflalo intensified later in the
week when the coach made an unscheduled appearance at Centennial.
After meeting with Palmer and Afflalo, he offered the guard one of
UCLA’s three scholarships that will be vacated after next
season.
On Saturday, Afflalo accepted the offer.
By choosing to remain in Los Angeles to play collegiately, the 6
foot, 5 inch Afflalo turned down a host of national powers
including Louisville, Kansas and Stanford. He is reminiscent of the
type of player Howland recruited at Pittsburgh ““ muscular
enough to post up smaller guards, yet deadly from behind the
arc.
“He’s very competitive and very strong,”
Palmer said. “He handles the ball very well, and he could get
to the basket at will in high school.”
But Afflalo’s talents are not limited to the basketball
court.
According to Palmer, Afflalo, an honor roll student with a 3.5
GPA, has already achieved an SAT score of 1030 ““ a mark that
had to be attractive to Howland considering the widely publicized
academic troubles of current Bruins Andre Patterson and T.J.
Cummings.
Howland will have at least two more scholarships to fill in the
coming months, and is expected to make a run at New York native
Sebastian Telfair, who most scouting services have rated as the
premier guard in the junior class.
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Westchester High’s Trevor Ariza, UCLA’s top recruit
in next year’s class, still has not achieved a qualifying SAT
score, a source within the athletic department confirmed on
Monday.
The 6-foot-7 senior forward took the test again Saturday, and
still has two more opportunities to improve his score if he needs
it.