A May 2006 article from a Stanford site
http://stanford.scout.com/2/530407.html
Meet Ryan Harp
Shooting guard Ryan Harp By: Mike Eubanks
Publisher
Date: May 12, 2006
For the second straight year, the Cardinal find themselves intensely recruiting in the Lone Star State, albeit focused on a player not from the hoops hotbeds of Dallas or Houston. Last year Stanford mined Will Paul from Corpus Christi in south Texas. This year Trent Johnson is traveling to Abilene in west Texas, where we find 6'4" shooting guard Ryan Harp. Neither his town nor his high school scream high-major, but this kid can gun.
Losing is no fun. Being the recognized star (and sole) talent on your losing high school team is less fun. Being the only shooter on a team unable to find the basket - now Friday evenings start to feel like an audio tape tour led by Virgil through warm concentric circles. Such, unfortunately, was the 2005-06 basketball season for Ryan Harp at Abilene (Tex.) Cooper High School. The talented junior endured a downward spiral for the Cougars, surviving on an island.
"We started off really well before district started. We were 12-4," Harp begins. "We kind of went downhill from there. All of a sudden, we were 0-4 to start the district. After that, we couldn't get it together."
"We couldn't put the ball in the basket. Nobody could score. People didn't try to get to the basket any more, and they relied too much on jump shots," he analyzes. "I was able to score, but it was hard. I can't remember any games where I didn't see some kind of crazy defense. A 'box and one' or a 'triangle and two.' In a typical game, I would get five good looks and hit maybe four of them. I would get to the free throw line a lot and get out and run whenever I could."
The Cooper Cougars finished dead last in their district. Yet Harp incredibly was voted as the Offensive Most Valuable Player in the district. The 6'4" scorer averaged 22.5 points, nine rebounds, three assists and two steals per game. Harp shot 48% from the field, 74% from the free throw line, and a sizzling 43% from three-point range.
"It was really good for me because there wasn't one time where I didn't have to work for it," he says of his scoring.
Harp played predominately at the point for his high school team, though he would also move off the ball at times to play one of the two wing positions. Unless you are one of the college coaches who made the trek to Abilene this winter, you are more likely to see Harp with his AAU team, the Texas Top Prospects. There he plays at the shooting guard position where most believe he will play at the next level.
"We have a pretty good point guard. He sets people up," Harp says of AAU teammate Brent Stanton.
The Texas Top Prospects played three events in April during the evaluation period. One trip brought them to Georgetown (Tex.) for the Tops in Texas tournament, where Harp helped his team defeat the well-known Houston Swoosh squad before losing in the championship game. They also attended an event in Pearland. But the king of all spring events remains the Kingwood Classic, where Harp played before a national audience of college coaches and put on a show.
His team went 2-0 in their pool on Saturday and by a scheduling quirk had to play a third game that same day, which they lost to the hallowed Dallas Mustangs - down to the wire with a three-point loss. But the second game of that day for Harp saw his squad upend the Illinois Fire. The Prospects' point guard was out of commission, forcing Harp to take primary ballhandling responsibilities. While that arguably curtailed his opportunities to score, the Abilene man made the best of the situation.
He scored 18 points, grabbed eight rebounds and dished four assists in the upset win. The gym was buzzing. Coaches afterward laid a bevy of flattering comparisons upon Harp, ranging from "a better Matt Carroll" to "a carbon copy of Rex Walters" to "a poor man's Jason Kidd." Take your pick, but those are each ringing endorsements for the relative unknown from Abilene.
"Virginia - I had never gotten any mail from them before, and all of a sudden they started calling after Kingwood," the recruit relates.
"Kansas State, Iowa State, Wake Forest, SMU and Virginia all indicated after Kingwood that they 'loved his game' and wanted to know if it was too late to get involved," adds father and former Hardin-Simmons University men's basketball head coach Dennis Harp. "They seem to indicate they would all offer him a scholarship."
Harp's firm offers have come from TCU, Northwestern, Valparaiso and William & Mary. It is debatable, depending on how you follow semantics from the coaches, whether a number of Big XII schools like Texas Tech and Texas A&M have offered. At the very least, Bobby Knight has made three-hour drives from Lubbock to watch Harp's high school games in person.
In the ACC, Florida State and North Carolina State have both been involved with Harp, though the departure of Herb Sendek from Raleigh has carried those recruiting efforts now to Tempe, adding Arizona State to Stanford in the list of Pac-10 suitors.
"It's kind of hard to choose," says Harp of his favorites. "But one that kind of stands out is Stanford. They are an elite school, and the location is great. One of my AAU teammates, Chris McClain, his sister plays lacrosse at Stanford and says it's incredible."
The Cardinal have been recruiting Harp since before his junior season, and they have made a handful of trips to Abilene in the fall, winter and spring. With a GPA in the 3.6-3.7 range and a pair of AP classes on his junior transcript, Harp has promising academics to go with his shooting ability, court savvy and perimeter defense. Last weekend he took an important step for Stanford by sitting down for the SAT for the first time.
"It was real, real long," he exhales. "But it wasn't that bad. If I can get a 1200 on the old scale, that would be great. We'll have to see."
Harp has his eye on a college commitment by the end of the summer, which would mean a strict diet of unofficial visits now that the NCAA no longer allows official visits before a prospective student-athlete starts his senior year. No trip is yet on the books to take him to The Farm, but Harp says he plans on seeing Stanford "sometime this summer."
"By the middle or end of the summer, I will have a decision probably," he forecasts. "After I make some unofficial visits and talk to my parents, I should have a pretty good idea."
We have a pretty good idea that Ryan Harp is a recruit worth watching closely in the next few months.
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And a June 2006 article
http://stanford.scout.com/2/541599.html
Harp Has a Bag Always Packed
Shooting guard Ryan Harp By: Mike Eubanks
Publisher
Date: Jun 22, 2006
We brought you all you could ask to know about Ryan Harp in mid-May, so how much could have changed in a month? The three-star shooting guard has played tournaments in North Carolina, New York and Austin. Harp has unofficially visited two ACC schools. He has an SAT score and already retaken the test. He and his father may be about to fly out to Stanford. More still will come in July and August...
Ryan Harp logs more than his share of miles driving from his Abilene home in west Texas to weekly AAU practices with his team in Dallas (DeSoto, to be specific). 360 miles round trip each Wednesday, just for practices, ought to be travel enough for the Cooper High School shooting guard. But that is only the tip of the iceberg when examining Harp's travels this spring and summer. After attending three in-state tournaments during the closely watched evaluation period of April, Harp and the Texas Top Prospects squad are criss-crossing the nation.
They made their way to North Carolina at the end of May for the Bob Gibbons Tournament of Champions. Thus far in June the Dallas-based AAU squad has also played in New York at the Rumble in the Bronx and last weekend in Austin at the Great American Shootout. At the Rumble, Harp's team finished second in their pool before losing in the opener of bracket play, and he individually picked up all-tournament honors. The Texas Top Prospects did more damage at the GASO, going 5-1 and losing only in the semifinals as they ran out of gas against the San Antonio Spurs squad. Harp scored well in several of his games, including 18 points in the opener, 19 points against the Houston Lynx and 15 points in the finale.
Maybe the most notable travel for Harp, however, came immediately following the Bob Gibbons. He took the opportunity while on the East Coast to hit Wake Forest, Virginia and Richmond for unofficial visits.
"They had already been recruiting me, so I might as well visit these schools," Harp comments. "It gave them a chance where they could speak to me in person and clarify where I am with recruiting. They also could tell me first-hand how they do things and how they operate at their school."
In-person encounters are also good for candor and clarity with respect to the schools' recruitment of a prospect on campus. Harp walked away with a better understanding of where his pair of ACC suitors stand with him.
"They both told me about the same thing," he reports. "They want to watch me more in the summer at these tournaments, but I am a type of player they want to get."
Another school where Harp will be visiting, sooner or later, is Stanford. The Cardinal have been recruiting the 6'4" Abilene shooter in earnest for a good year, and all along there has been an eye toward an unofficial visit to The Farm this summer. While that trip was thought to perhaps come in August, it may instead come just around the corner.
"We were talking with Coach [Donny] Guerinoni about it, and they would really love for me to come up to their camp next week," Harp says. "We're going to try to go up there if possible. I don't know exactly how, but we're going to try."
"It would give me a first-hand chance to work with the coaches. I could look all around and hang out with the players," he adds. "If it's not possible, then I'll go up there in August definitely."
Fitting in a Stanford sojourn is no easy trick with Harp's busy schedule upcoming. In addition to his Wednesday practices in Dallas, he will camp at TCU this Saturday, play at the heavily attended Denton Great American Shootout at the start of July, then zip out to Las Vegas for the Main Event, and finish the evaluation period with either a tournament in Los Angeles or Kansas.
With so much travel in July, Harp is hoping he can finish his Stanford admissions application in the coming days.
"I'm about to mail it out," he forecasts. "I have the basic information section done and I'm working on the essays. I have a couple of the recommendations, and I've called a few people and just need to meet with them to take care of the others.
"I got all A's except an 89 in precalc," Harp reports of his recently concluded spring semester grades. "I know know why. I thought I was going to get an A. I had a 3.6 [cumulative] GPA at the end of the first semester, and now I have almost exactly a 3.7."
Harp also received his May SAT score since we last spoke with him, notching a 1020 on the combined math and reading sections. He quickly retook the standardized test earlier this month and should in the next few days have that score.
"Hopefully I did a lot better," Harp offers. "If I didn't, then I'll just take it again. My GPA is fine. I just need to get my SAT score up. It's the reading section where I really need to improve. That's what is most important to Stanford."
And Stanford remains important to Ryan Harp, as measured by both his words and his actions. When asked for his current favorites, it is no surprise that the Cardinal are again the first off his lips.
"Definitely Stanford," the recruit responds. "Northwestern, Arizona State and probably Virginia and William & Mary."
Harp adds that he hopes to make unofficial trips to Evanston and Tempe later this summer. With visits to all of his favorites soon to be in the books, it is not hard to see what this recruit is gearing to accomplish.
"I think I want to make my commitment by the beginning of school," Harp opines. "I'd like to go play and finish out the summer, and then make a decision before school starts."
That commitment horizon is not far away, and a bustle of activity between now and then will greatly shape the Cooper High School standout's recruiting outlook. Harp is a recruit to watch closely for all these upcoming events and news, and we will keep abreast
Posted: Wed Aug 16, 2006 9:27 pm