Eric Dailey

I know you see tweets posted about a specific hoops recruit that has been offered, but for most of you that doesn't mean much to understand the bigger picture and what each info. nugget means. I'm here to change that...hopefully.I'll do something similar for the Class of 2021, although I've talked about the 2021 class quite a bit over the past months. But why 2022, and why now? Well, yesterday was the first day college coaches could start directly contacting the 2022 class (signing in November 2021) and start the recruiting process in earnest. You can tell by who the staff calls on that first day and who has an offer can give us a pretty good idea of the current targets and priorities. This contact period sets the table for how the class will come together. So it's a good time to see who Buzz Williams and the staff contacted, and then provide you a little context to yesterday's activity.First of all, the state of Texas appears to be loaded in 2022. As many as 12 Texas natives are listed on at least one of the major Top 100 lists. The Aggies have offered all 12. What is also intriguing is that 9 of those 12 come from the DFW metro area, and those prospects all know each other and play together on a couple of high school teams and travel teams. I'll get into that a little later. The staff has also contacted at least three out of state prospects yesterday as well. They probably called more, but these are ones we know about.Here is the full list and a link to their TexAgs profile page...sorted by TexAgs grade (99-100 5-star; 90-98 4-star; Keyonte George 99Dariq Whitehead 99 Lee Dort 98Gradey Dick 98Vincent Iwuchukwu 97Eric Dailey 97Arterio Morris 96Bryce Griggs Rylan Griffen 95Tre White 94Colin Smith 93Brendan Hausen 93Austin Nunez 92Trae Clayton 91Noah Shelby 91Cason Wallace 91Jordan Walsh 90Here is the list organized by position:Point GuardKeyonte George Arterio Morris Bryce Griggs Austin Nunez Noah Shelby Combo GuardBrendan Hausen Shooting GuardGradey Dick Rylan Griffen Cason Wallace Small ForwardDariq Whitehead Tre White Colin Smith Trae Clayton Power ForwardEric Dailey CenterLee Dort Vincent Iwuchukwu Here is this list with just the prospects from Texas. It should be noted that Bryce Griggs is originally from Houston and just moved to San Diego this summer. Tre White is originally from Little Elm, but has moved to Los Angeles. He also played one season of high school ball with Nunez at Cornerstone Academy. I have included both on the Texas list.Keyonte George (DFW)Lee Dort (DFW)Vincent Iwuchukwu (San Antonio)Arterio Morris (DFW)Bryce Griggs (Houston)Rylan Griffen (DFW)Tre White (DFW/SA)Colin Smith (DFW)Brendan Hausen (Amarillo)Austin Nunez (San Antonio)Trae Clayton (DFW)Noah Shelby (DFW)Cason Wallace (DFW)Jordan Walsh (DFW)Based on Twitter sources and info. from our F5 partner, Jake Weingarten of Stock Risers, it appears the entire A&M staff called San Antonio point guard Austin Nunez right at midnight. He's a nice, quick ambidextrous point guard. He's not rated up there with the elite point guards mainly because he's still a little under-developed physically...remember, he's only a sophomore (about to be a junior). So that should happen naturally, Austin's father is the coach and mentor for the elite travel team in the San Antonio area, Texas Hardwork. 6-11 power forward/center Vincent Iwuchukwu also plays for Texas Hardwork. Nunez goes to high school at SA Wagner and Iwuchukwu at San Antonio Cole. If the staff were to land these two, that would be huge. Nunez is a consensus Top 75 national prospect. Iwuchukwu is a Top 30 national prospect. Here's an interesting note. St. Mark's Colin Smith (teammate of A&M target 2021 Harrison Ingram) actually played on Team Hardwork with Nunez as an 8th grader, but has played in high school with Drive Nation.The mother lode of 2022 DFW talent either currently plays for (or has played for at one time) travel team Drive Nation including elite 5-star prospects Keyonte George and the best big man in the state Lee Dort. Others who have played together on Drive Nation since 2019 include Trae Clayton, Noah Shelby, Jordan Walsh, Cason Wallace, Rylan Griffen, Arterio Morris, and Colin Smith. The outlier in the state is Amarillo's Brendan Hausen. This kid can shoot and has incredible range behind the 3-point line. He plays travel ball with the Dallas Mustangs. Of course, you have to worry about Chris Beard and Tech being in that part of the state, and he's visited there a couple of times.So it's really interesting that most of these guys are interrelated and in some cases that relationship has a third dimension. Of the guys listed, I think A&M has a good, early position with Nunez, Iwuchukwu, Clayton, Smith, and Shelby. Nunez has already been on-campus and is a top priority. But remember, these guys are only sophomores. Some of these guys will fall down the priority list and some will move up the list, and there will certainly be new names that emerge on the scene. This is just a snapshot in time...a VERY early snapshot. But this should give you some context to the news we'll be hearing in the coming months as these prospects start to narrow their lists and identify their top 4-5 schools.It should also be noted that there's a pretty decent chance A&M lands 2021 high four-star center Franck Kepnang in the coming weeks/months. There is also a real chance that he reclassifies to 2020, but nothing is official on that. Get him in the 2020 class, and the roster will be very inviting to the two elite 2022 post prospects Dort and Iwuchukwu. I've mentioned this before, but Kepnang played travel team with A&M signee Hassan Diarra. The staff and Kepnang have conducted at least three virtual visits in the past couple of months.I hope this Class of 2022 Hoops Recruiting 101 summary helps put everything in context. If you have any questions, feel free to post them here.