For the record, Taran Buie very much enjoyed watching his older brother, Talor Battle, and Penn State defeat Baylor in the NIT championship game in Madison Square Garden earlier this month.
But although Buie committed to the Nittany Lions just hours after the game, he wasn’t swayed by the outcome. The decision had already been made, just not verbalized.
“That wasn’t the night,” Buie said this week. “I had been thinking Penn State for a couple weeks before that. I just kept it to myself.”
The timing of the decision is irrelevant. The impact it could have on Ed DeChellis’ program is potentially enormous.
The 6-foot-2, 180-pound Buie is a junior at Bishop Maginn High School in Albany, N.Y., where he played with Battle, his half brother, for one season.
He is also Rivals.com’s 53rd-ranked player and 13th-ranked point guard in the Class of 2010 and the nation’s 16th-best shooting guard prospect according to Scout.com. ESPN’s Scouts Inc. ranks him a top 40 overall prospect.
Those numbers make him Penn State’s highest-rated recruit of the school’s Big Ten era and improve the Nittany Lions’ chances of adding more top players.
“Momentum is so important in recruiting,” said Jerry Meyer, a basketball recruiting analyst for Rivals.com. “You see with a lot of programs, a sort of a snowball effect can take place. One recruit leads to another, and that leads to a few more wins, which leads to even more recruits.” …