It’s unfair to say that a single player simply committing can transform an entire program all on its own.
But for Penn State basketball, the announcement that Tony Carr is headed to Happy Valley was the kind of nudge that can at least change the trajectory of a program for the better.
Carr, ranked No. 53 in the nation by Rivals and No. 39 by Scout and the top ranked player in PA is unequivocally the crowning achievement for head coach Pat Chambers and his staff who have fought for every step forward during his soon-to-be five year tenure at Penn State. Carr joins forward Joe Hampton and guard Nazeer Bostick as members of Penn State’s 2016 freshman class.
Specifically, the Philadelphia product Carr comes in at 6-foot-4 and 180 pounds with offers from the likes of Indiana, Iowa, Maryland and Temple. Scout rates Carr as the top point guard on the east coast and the seventh best in the nation.
While those kinds of accolades can be hard to quantify, it does speak to a unified belief across all recruiting services that Carr is the type of player that any program would be happy to have.
Perhaps more importantly for Penn State basketball’s long term goals, Carr is simply the latest in a growing list of recruiting successes.
Between the 2015 and 2016 recruiting hauls, four of the six committed players are rated within the Rivals Top 150. All things being equal by the time the 2016-17 season arrives, Penn State will have a roster made up of at least five players from Philadelphia and two more from the highly regarded Oak Hill Academy in Virginia. While Carr can’t change the program on his own, a guard trio of Shep Garner, Tony Carr and Josh Reaves is the kind of thing that helps make waves in the nation’s best basketball conference.
As always, Carr will have to still be committed by the time National Signing Day rolls around, but if he is, Penn State will have officially sealed the deal on maybe the program’s best two recruiting classes ever.
From here Penn State will look to nail down Carr’s friend in Top 100 prospect Lamar Stevens with options elsewhere if that does not pan out.
Either way, for a program and fan base that thrives on whispering “next year will be better” to itself, for the first time in a long time they might not be wrong.
