Larry Hughes,
Saint Louis
Class: Freshman Position: Guard
Height: 6'5" Weight: 185
DOB: Jan. 23, 1979
Hometown: St. Louis
High School: Christian Brothers Academy
Vital Stats: 21.4 points per game, 5.1 rebounds, 2.4 assists, 2.1 steals
by David Seigerman
The first rule of recruiting is to harvest your own backyard. That's especially the case when the would-be beneficiary is a mid-major program that may be one player away from making a peep on the national scene. Memphis kept Anfernee Hardaway at home and came within one game of the Final Four. Shea Seals stayed in Tulsa and took his hometown Hurricanes to back-to-back Sweet 16 showings.
After allowing outsiders to pluck Chris Carrawell, Loren Woods and Jahidi White in recent years (from a single high school, nontheless), Saint Louis University simply had to land Larry Hughes. Truth is, it was probably the easiest recruiting effort of Charlie Spoonhour's career.
Hughes, a McDonald's All America and top 10 point guard prospect, never thought much about leaving St. Louis. He spurned overtures from Syracuse and Michigan because he refused to leave his single mother, Vanessa, alone to care for his 11-year-old brother, Justin. Born with a defective heart valve, Justin went into cardiac arrest the last week of 1996. On Jan. 2, 1997, Hughes waited at his mother's side while Justin received a heart transplant, the gift of life from a 16-year-old girl who had been killed in a car accident.
Though he suffered brain damage after the transplant, Justin has recovered enough to become a regular around the Saint Louis basketball program. He didn't miss a single home game as his older brother emerged as the leading scorer in Conference USA and the primary reason the Billikens are back in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1995—and for only the fifth time in school history. "I liked the idea of [my family] being able to see every one of my games and be at the locker room afterward," Hughes says.
Spoonhour, of course, is ecstatic about the way his cornerstone recruit has blossomed despite the family turmoil and the media scrutiny afforded hometown heroes. "He brings a maturity most people don't associate with freshmen," Spoonhour says. "He's pretty comfortable with himself."
Hughes made the transition to college basketball with such comfort that he now faces a barrage of questions regarding his NBA plans. "It's a question that's asked so many times a day by everybody you can think of—friends, classmates, professors, everybody who recognizes me," Hughes says. "I tell them I don't know, which is the only answer I can give them right now. Our focus is on this team, this season and how many games we can win."
Source: CNN SI
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