Blue Chip Recruit Noah Vonleh Reclassifies from 2014 to 2013

Noah Vonleh is a premiere do it all power forward out of New Hampshire. As a 2014 recruit he was ranked in the top 5 of his class. As a reclassified recruit the lowest I have seen so far is 247Sports projecting him at #7 in the class. So he is still very much a sought after commodity. The real question is does this help or hurt IU's chances?

According to several sources including Evan Daniels of Scout and Adam Zagoria, Indiana is definitely in the hunt for Vonleh. Crean's first day on the new session of recruiting was spent in New Hampshire to watch Vonleh in his open gym session. Vonleh is most definitely target #1 for Indiana at this moment. The worry for most reclassification is grades. As we've seen with players like Nerlens Noel, summer school classes may be necessary and academically qualifying for jumping forward a grade is not ever a given. However, New Hampton prep coach Pete Hutchins told IU blog, Inside The Hall that Vonleh is a good student. "There were minimal changes that needed to be made to his course load." So there should not be any foreseeable worries in academia.

The true worry comes in whether Indiana can actually get Vonleh onto campus. He will be reportedly taking his standardized testing on October 6 and will likely not get his scores back until November. Unfortunately that is what is necessary to be able to take an official visit. This rules out IU paying his way to Hoosier Hysteria along with the rest of IU's 2013 targets and commits. Of course he could always pay his own way for that, but coming from New Hampshire it wouldn't be the cheapest. He'd also miss out a small portion of the experience that official visits get that unofficials legally cannot.

Would it be best for Vonleh to wait until the Big Ten season starts to catch a real Indiana basketball atmosphere? I'm not so sure. For one, it will be hard to keep him from committing elsewhere into January. He's a widely sought after recruit and is being recruited by a lot of the big dogs on the east coast. So he's going to get more exposure to them than to IU. Getting him in for Hoosier Hysteria isn't make or break, but having him see the atmosphere put on by the event is probably the most useful tool from a fan support prospective.

In the end this is going to have the biggest impact on the 2014 class. Tom Crean and Indiana are recruiting like they way a 5th and 6th player to add to Indiana's class. I imagine that will depend a lot on how the Vonleh recruitment pans out. If Vonleh is the first to pull the trigger I wouldn't be surprised to see the other three being recruited (BeeJay Anya, Troy Williams and Kennedy Meeks) to say thanks but no thanks. I could also see it the other way around. In fact, my guess is that if Troy Williams doesn't commit to IU then the Hoosiers will only take 5. If he does the Hoosiers likely take 6.

In the end, IU's season in 2013 doesn't truly hinge all that much on what the outcome of those 4 processes are. Crean has set Indiana up to be uber competitive in the future and even though the Hoosiers in 2013 will be young, the talent will be there. It would be nice for Crean and Indiana to land Vonleh, but in no way is it crippling to IU's chances going forward. With that said, it'd sure be nice for Noah to want to be a Hoosier.