by Morris Phillips

BERKELEY–Cal Berkeley last week became the only school in America to pull off signing two top ten prospects this year Ivan Rabb and Jaylen Brown both ranked in the top ten. They had an opportunity to go to Duke, North Carolina, Michigan, Arizona you name it they beat all those schools in terms of number one recruits.

They also beat all these schools for these two guys and the recruitment of Brown started six weeks ago he made an unofficial trip to Cal and he has the relationship with Rabb as they played against each other in USA Basketball. Once again you can minimize the acumen of head coach Cuonzo Martin and his staff in terms of recruiting.

So to put it in context this is considered to be the best recruiting hall and class that Cal has ever had and that includes football as well as basketball. When you think of all the professional athletes over the years that have come through the university you would have to put Jason Kidd right at the top of that list and the recruiting class that he came in with.

Any recruiting before that by the Bears has been surpassed by this class this off season, Cal basketball looks like it’s going to be a top 15 team this year. Your going to see a lot of NBA scouts around this year and Cal is going to see which one of them is going to imerge into the next NBA prospects. These kids that are highly rated prospects they get some much highly rated exposure in terms of playing.

Not only the relationship between Brown and Rabb, Brown from Georgia and Rabb from Oakland their high schools played each other this year in a big tournament. Anybody whose seen Rabb’s old school Bishop O’Dowd’s schedule from last season and what they did was just incredible. They slewed everyone and they did that everywhere they played.

Rabb and his school last season got on ESPN and had such tremendous exposure and that was just during the high school year. In the summer there’s a lot of tournaments and that’s how they create these lists of the top prospects. It’s because these athletes get to compete against each other in so many different forms. So when you see a list of high school players who are in the top ten or the top 15 the list is real thought out based on the competition.

Morris Phillips covers Cal basketball for http://www.sportsradioservice.com listen to the podcast below