Echenique's Itinerary

The season is over for 6-9 junior center Greg Echenique and St. Benedict's Prep, and now Echenique is attempting to visit as many schools as possible before the college season comes to a close.

There are still nearly 10 schools involved for the services of the Venezuelan big man who averaged 11.2 points, 9.2 rebounds and 3.3 blocks for the 24-1 Gray Bees. The list includes Rutgers, Villanova, Pittsburgh and Notre Dame of the Big East; Duke, Maryland and Miami of the ACC; and Penn of the Ivy League. Despite previous interest from Florida, Echenique has not heard from that team's coaches in two weeks.

Echenique was at Maryland Sunday night for Clemson's 73-70 victory over the Terps. I hope to have comments from Greg later today on the visit after he wakes up.

From Maryland he will come home Monday night and possibly check out the big Paterson Catholic-St. Anthony game in Jersey City.

On Wednesday he hopes to get to Miami for the Miami-Boston College game that will be shown on ESPNU. Then he plans to return for classes at St. Ben's on Thursday and Friday before departing for the North Carolina at Duke game on Saturday. Then he would drive or fly to Pittsburgh for the Panthers' Sunday's noon game with DePaul.

Talk about racking up the frequent flyer miles!

Echenique's parents will visit from Venezuela between March 14-24, and then the family plans to visit Penn, which the parents have not seen.

Other coaches from the schools listed above will then come in to St. Benedict's to visit with Greg and his folks, likely including Rutgers and others. Echenique is very comfortable with the RU staff and Fred Hill and his coaches have attended virtually every one of Greg's events this year.

Echenique has been invited to both the NBA Top 100 Camp and the Amare Stoudemire Nike Skills Camp this summer. Last year he attended the LeBron James Academy after Amare.

TRISTAN THOMPSON UPDATE

We also hear that St. Ben's 6-8 sophomore Tristan Thompson is very high on Texas, and that Texas is very high on him. St. Ben's head coach Danny Hurley wants to make sure Thompson knows who the school  is recruiting and that all his ducks are in a row because he doesn't like players committing  too early.