Papa

[50's PONY]

Visits Set; Three in the Mix
by Mike Hughes of InsideTheVille.com, October 10, 2006 at 10:05am ET

Papa Dia Profile

Papa Dia, an athletic 6'9, 240 pound power forward from South Kent (CT) Prep, is currently making an official visit to Oklahoma and will make an official visit to SMU this weekend.
Dia will take a third official visit to Louisville October 20, and likely will make a college decision after that trip.

"Those are pretty much the three schools he's down to," South Kent coach Raphael Chillious said. "He's not planning on taking any other visits."

[Pony_Fan]

Sounds like a good size fella. And OU and Louisville isn't bad company.

[Stallion]

Same prep school that the Walker kid comes from.

[friarwolf]

Now we know why the Walker kid got an offer.................

[mrydel]

XTC had mentioned he thought we were after a differennt person than Walker at South Kent. Guess this is the guy.

[MustangIcon]

Same prep school that the Walker kid comes from.

Good observation. Great recruiting tactic used by lots of coaches. I think Memphis has 4 players off the same highschool roster last season. Maybe 3, not sure if anyone can confirm that for me.

Especially considering the number of scholarships we have to give out, if we can get a nice role player in addittion to a guy that we get over OU and Louisville it would have to be considerd a major recruiting success.

[goponies1]

Walker is of less importance in this one. Papa Dia is from Senegal and is very close with Bamba Fall (Bamba is from St. Louis, Senegal). He has been on campus at SMU many times and knows the school and the city well. He has played in the last two Global Games in Dallas. He is also friends with DeSegana Diop of the Mavs. He was a top target of the last SMU staff. Doherty is friends with the people that are handling his recruitment. I believe SMU has an excellent chance of signing Papa Dia despite the high level competition from Louisville and Oklahoma. Papa is a very good player. Left handed and skilled. He is also at a very high powered prep school where he gets good coaching and plays against great competition. The only negative is that he doesn't always play hard. He is more of a power forward but is talented enough to be a wing player. He played with Team Texas AAU the summer before last. He would be a significant addition to Doherty's first recruiting class.