Ryan Harp/Abilene Reporter News

[50's PONY]

Abilene Reporter News

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URL: http://www.reporter-news.com/abil/sp_lc ... 68,00.html
Cougars Harp commits to SMU
August 16, 2006

Posted 3:57 p.m. Cooper High School's Ryan Harp has made his decision.

The senior shooting guard announced Wednesday he will continue his basketball career next season at SMU, a Division I school and Conference USA member in Dallas. The verbal commitment is non-binding though Harp expects to sign during the early signing period in November.

"I just thought it was the right fit and the right time to make the decision," Harp said. "I know Coach (Matt) Doherty will get the most out of me. it's a nice place, nice location and i just loved everything about it."

See Thursday's Abilene Reporter-News for the complete story.

Copyright 2006, Abilene Reporter News. All Rights Reserved.

[carolsmu]

Welcome Ryan!

Various articles

http://www.reporter-news.com/abil/sp_lc ... 10,00.html

"The who's who of NCAA Division I basketball coaches have been coming to town and more are on the way, making it like a three-ring circus at the Cooper High gymnasium.
The reason is 6-4 junior shooting guard Ryan Harp, who is rated as the 19th top junior basketball prospect in the state. One, however, has committed to play football at Oklahoma.

Cooper coach Marc Case says Texas A&M, Texas Tech, TCU, Baylor, Oklahoma, Northwestern North Carolina State, Valparaiso, William and Mary, Stanford (which was here Friday) and Rice have had representatives here and a Notre Dame coach is scheduled to come in Monday.

In addition, Harp has had letters from Arizona, Syracuse and Florida among others.

Two things have helped Harp gain respect nationwide. After his freshman year, the Cougar was among 126 high school basketball players invited to a Nike Hoop Jamboree camp in St. Louis. One of the players there was the son of Michael Jordan, who needs no introduction.

Then last summer, Harp played for the Texas Top Prospects, an AAU team from the Metroplex who played in several prestigious tournaments throughout the country. Taking in two of the games was Texas Tech coach Bobby Knight.

Ryan Harp's father, former Hardin-Simmons University basketball coach Dennis Harp, says Ryan probably will decide where he is going next November, taking the heat off recruiting during the Cougars' regular season.

The younger Harp ranks 10th in his class academically. That came from his mother. "

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ned= ... a=N&tab=nw

[RGV Pony]

Wow. Nice pick-up. Rivals three star. Offers from Tech, Arizona State, Stanford, Iowa State and Wake Forest. Oh, TCU offered too.

[Pony_Fan]

There has to be a negative rant here right?....blah blah blah...

[Stallion]

see Recruiting Board for much more on Harp-. Nope Rivals has him very highly rated.

[SMU Football Blog]

I love me some Doh.

[ALEX LIFESON]

Now that's exciting news! Welcome to the Hilltop!

[jtstang]

I love me some Doh.

I'm gonna start calling you basket-blogster.

[MrMustang1965]

Welcome to The Hilltop! You've made a great choice! Look forward to seeing you play at Moody!

[carolsmu]

http://www.reporter-news.com/abil/sp_lc ... 50,00.html

[DickerJames]

Now THAT is some good news, and much needed.

On a side note, I hear he almost changed his mind about comming when he found out we were building a new practice facility. He said something about SMU not being worthy of facilities upgrades until they win a national title.

[regis]

Harp says, "I know Coach (Matt) Doherty will get the most out of me."


Here's hoping MD will be around long enough to do that.

[carolsmu]

Cooper's Harp commits to SMU
By Troy Shockley / [email protected]
August 17, 2006

Ryan Harp has made his choice.

The senior shooting guard from Cooper High School announced Wednesday his intention to play next season for Division I Southern Methodist University, a member of Conference USA. The verbal commitment is non-binding, though Harp plans to sign a national letter of intent during the early signing period in November.


''I just thought it was the right fit and the right time to make the decision,'' said Harp after taking a break from open gym at Cooper. ''I know Coach (Matt) Doherty will get the most out of me. It's a nice place, nice location and I just loved everything about it.''

Harp said after talking with his family about the decision over the last week, he made up his mind Tuesday night and contacted SMU Wednesday morning to notify the Mustangs of his decision.

''I think it's exciting for the Harp family,'' Cooper coach Marc Case said. ''I'm certainly not looking past his senior year, but I can't help but be excited for him as he makes this decision to continue playing.

''And it's nice, too, that he will be somewhere where we can continue to watch him.''

The battle to land the 6-foot-4, 185-pound Harp was spread all across the country, involving schools such as Stanford, Wake Forest, Virginia, TCU, Northwestern, Arizona State, Valparaiso, Iowa State and William & Mary. SMU was able to come out on top of that impressive group for several reasons.

''The school is always highly rated on an academic level,'' said Harp, who plans to major in business. ''And the fact that it's part of Conference USA was a big part of it, too, because it has some of the best guards in the country.''
.....

[carolsmu]

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.

===========================================

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

[carolsmu]

August 13 Abilene paper article

http://www.reporternews.com/abil/sp_lc_ ... 72,00.html

Cooper's Harp still mulling decision on future school
By Troy Shockley / [email protected]
August 13, 2006









Ryan Harp may not have broken into the so-called ''second season'' during his junior year at Cooper High School, but he certainly made the most of what, for him, can only be called the ''third season.''

Harp was a frequent flyer on the AAU circuit this summer, playing for Texas Top Prospects Elite, a team based in the Metroplex. He made a 360-mile round trip each Wednesday to practice with his team, but that's like a trip to Wal-Mart when compared to the trips he made this summer for tournaments and visits to various universities.

''Obviously AAU took the whole summer,'' said Harp, who also maintains a 3.7 GPA. ''I couldn't do much other than that, but we got to see a lot of places, so that was cool.

''And it was fun. You got to play against the best players, and I think I might have gotten a little bit better in some areas and maybe learned more about the game this summer.''

One of the state's top-ranked juniors - 17th before AAU play began this summer according to www.TexasHoops.com - the 6-foot-4, 185-pound shooting guard played in North Carolina, Houston, Dallas, Denton, Las Vegas, New York and Los Angeles. And as far as deciding where he will play his collegiate ball ... well, he's working on that.

Harp has already made multiple unofficial visits - he can't make an ''official'' visit until the first day of school - and the list of those showing significant interest is long. That lists includes Wake Forest, Virginia, Richmond, SMU, Stanford, TCU, Northwestern, Arizona State, Valparaiso, Furman and William & Mary.

''When you're actually on the campus it's just real important to see how they do things and what kind of people they are,'' he said. ''And there are little things, too, like just seeing what kind of weather you're gonna be living in every day.

''Stanford is definitely one of my favorites, but I think I have to make a lot higher SAT score to get in there. SMU is a definite favorite, Northwestern and William & Mary are also two of my top ones. Then, also, there's Iowa State and Arizona State.''

Stanford may be the frontrunner at this point, but Northwestern, TCU, Valparaiso, Iowa State, Arizona State, Liberty, Wake Forest, Penn State and William & Mary have already made an offer to the senior-to-be - meaning he's got quite a bit to consider.

''He's pretty busy, but he comes to open gym and we visit,'' Cooper coach Marc Case said. ''He's in the enviable position that a lot of athletes want to be in. But then now then when you're at this point, it can weigh on your mind.

''Ryan's the kind of kid that doesn't like to disappoint anyone. You can only tell one school yes. And that's the hardest part for him, I think, is that there will be a lot places disappointed in his decision ... but there will be one that's ecstatic.''

Last year's Abilene Reporter-News All-Big Country Player of the Year, Harp averaged nearly 23 points per game as a junior, hitting 43 percent from 3-point range. He added nine rebounds and three assists per night for the Cougars.

He'd like to make those numbers even more impressive this year. And one thing that would help in that respect is making a final decision on where to continue his basketball career.

''I wanted to actually see if I could find out where I want to go before school starts, but I don't really have a gut feeling yet,'' he said. ''It's good that I'm kind of nailing it down, though. Hopefully within the first couple weeks of school, maybe. Then I can just relax and enjoy my senior year.''