The NCAA’s wish for elite athletes disinterested in college to head elsewhere may be coming true, regardless of whether or not the NBA allows them to join the league directly out of high school.
A five-star wing who has attracted Arizona’s recruiting interest, Seattle’s MarJon Beauchamp, announced Thursday he will enroll in San Francisco-based training program Chameleon BX after graduating from Glendale’s Dream City Christian. The goal: to prepare for the 2021 NBA Draft.
Beauchamp’s move follows the decision of three top 2019 prospects, including UA signee Terry Armstrong, not to play collegiately.
“Although I’m humbled by the many offers I received from elite D1 colleges, the personalized Chameleon BX program is the best option to get my game NBA-ready,” Beauchamp posted on Twitter.
Beauchamp’s decision — or at least the timing of it — could be a benefit of sorts for the Wildcats. UA coach Sean Miller and his staff won’t have to spend ultimately futile time and resources on Beauchamp’s recruitment, as they did in recent years with Armstrong and Terrance Ferguson. Both signed professionally in Australia, Ferguson in 2016 after committing to the Wildcats and Armstrong in June after signing with the Wildcats.
Armstrong joined Australia’s professional “Next Stars” program along with fellow 2019 prospects R.J. Hampton and LaMelo Ball. Hampton was initially in the class of 2020 but reclassified to 2019 and then announced he would turn pro. Beauchamp is the first current 2020 prospect to declare he won’t play in college, although fellow five-star prospects Jalen Green and Kyree Walker are also reportedly considering the possibility.
Zagsblog.com reported that Walker is considering playing in China. While Green told 247Sports.com that he would go pro if the “one-and-done” rule changes for NBA entrance, he told the Star last month at Peach Jam that “right now, I’m going to college.”
The reasons why players turn down college are rarely clear. Some don’t qualify academically, though Hampton’s father told 247Sports.com that his son had a 1280 SAT score and a 3.7 GPA — credentials good enough for an elite athlete to get into the vast majority of Division I schools.
The G League also announced last year that it would offer “select contracts” to elite high school players that pay $125,000 for a year of service in the NBA’s developmental league. Nobody has enrolled yet, possibly because teams have resisted the idea of spending resources developing a player they could lose to another organization.
These sort of options are what NCAA president Mark Emmert has been pushing for in the wake of the federal investigation into college basketball in which many top prospects were alleged to have attracted improprieties.
“There needs to be the ability for a young person and his family to say, ‘You know, what I really want to do is just become a professional ballplayer,’” Emmert said at the 2018 Final Four. “They ought to be provided that opportunity if they don’t want to go to college.”
For Miller and other high-major college coaches, these options are making recruiting a little trickier. Armstrong’s late move to turn pro not only cost the Wildcats time and resources in recruiting him, but added to their roster uncertainty last spring.
Until Thursday, Beauchamp had given no public indication he would not attend college. At the Adidas Summer Championships last month in Alabama, Beauchamp told the Star he planned to take a recruiting visit to Arizona this month after moving to the state.
Beauchamp said he was considering Arizona, Alabama, ASU and Oregon State while also keeping in touch with Washington. The Huskies recruited Beauchamp when Lorenzo Romar was their coach, and Beauchamp said he became interested in Arizona when Romar was the Wildcats’ associate head coach in the 2017-18 season. Romar left after that season to become head coach at Pepperdine.
Noting that “coach Sean Miller is still there and I have a good relationship with him, too,” Beauchamp then said he planned to visit UA.
But UA coaches may have been aware that Beauchamp was really headed in a different direction. During the afternoon of July 13 at the Adidas event, Beauchamp and fellow recruit Dalen Terry were playing on adjacent courts at the Hoover, Alabama Met Complex. Miller and two assistants watched Terry’s game while no UA staffer watched Beauchamp.
Last week, Terry committed to Arizona. Nine days after that, Beauchamp committed to pro basketball.
Rim shots
- Former UA guard Alex Barcello confirmed he is transferring to BYU, where he’ll be eligible to play in 2020-21. “I’m thankful and excited for this opportunity to be a part of such a great University and basketball program!” he tweeted. “Can’t wait to get to work!”
- Arizona will start selling tickets for its Sept. 27 Red-Blue Game scrimmage on its website starting Saturday at 10 a.m.
