The Curious Case of Shabazz Muhammad

The prize of the 2012 recruiting class, Shabazz Muhammad, who ranks as the #1 player in nearly every recruiting service, remains uncommitted. It now appears that he is favoring three specific schools, those being UK, UCLA, and the suddenly emerging UNLV Running Rebels. For the past few months, it looked as though it had come down to a two-horse race between UK and UCLA to secure Shabazz’s commitment. Now, it appears the Rebels have caught up and are in fact a major player in his recruitment.

Demetrius Morant, who is a teammate of UK recruit Shabazz Muhammad and a UNLV commit, said today in an interview with Five Star Basketball that he believes UNLV is in the top 3 for Shabazz. After it originally appeared that it would come down to UCLA and UK for Shabazz’s commitment, UNLV has taken college basketball by storm this year, going from a rebuilding team breaking in a new head coach in Dave Rice, to beating previously ranked #1 North Carolina and ascending into the #14 spot in the AP Top 25. Muhammad, who is a native of Las Vegas, Nevada, now appears to have taken notice and may actually be favoring his hometown school. This will be an interesting recruiting battle to watch in the coming months, and the commitment of Muhammad could be the difference between a Top 15 team and a Top 5 team next year for all three schools. Both UCLA and UK already have loaded recruiting classes for next year, and UNLV will return 4 of their top 6 scorers from this year’s team, as well as adding talented USC transfer Bryce Jones, and former McDonald’s All-American and Pittsburgh player, Khem Birch, so the Rebels will be loaded as well.

The wild card in Shabazz’s recruitment is UCLA coach Ben Howland. In the last three years, Howland has posted a 63-40 record, taking the Bruins to the NCAA Tournament twice, and both times only advancing to the Round of 32. That is simply unacceptable to Bruins fans. Howland is also in his ninth season at UCLA, and no coach in the post-John Wooden era has lasted longer than eight seasons. His Bruins currently are 10-7, with losses to Middle Tennessee and Loyola Marymount. If Howland doesn’t turn the Bruins around quickly, he may find himself fired at the end of the year.

A crazy scenario that could happen is for UCLA to fire Howland at the end of the year, and then hire UNLV Head Coach Dave Rice, which would surely swing whatever momentum UNLV has gained with Shabazz in favor of the Bruins. With the 9^th ranked recruting class already secured, the addition of Muhammad could propel the Bruins to the #1 overall class, and put the Bruins back in the class of college basketball’s elite.

Clearly UCLA has the most to gain with the commitment of Shabazz, UK will be good with or without him, and UNLV should be fine as well. Expect to see UCLA really turn up the heat in the coming months, but as always, John Calipari will fight back tooth and nail to the very end.