Basketball Recruits Ahead of the Game
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April 15, 2010
2:18 p.m.
CHARLOTTESVILLE — Billy Baron’s strengths as a basketball player include his strength.
“I think one of the chief attributes than Billy has always brought to the table is he’s had a Division I-ready body for three years now,” said Ed Reilly, who coached Baron in the postgraduate program at Worcester Academy in Massachusetts this season.
A 6-1 point guard who signed with UVa this weekend, Baron is a solid 190 pounds. He knows his way around a weight room already, and the same is true for Tony Bennett’s other five recruits for 2010-11 — 6-9 James Johnson, 6-8 Will Regan, 6-7 Akil Mitchell, 6-6 Joe Harris and 6-4 K.T. Harrell.
“All of them, to a certain extent, have had some type of exposure to organized training,” said Mike Curtis, UVa’s strength-and-conditioning coach for men’s basketball.
Baron and the other incoming freshmen are scheduled to arrive at Virginia in mid-June. Curtis can’t wait.
“I have faith in this group, just because they’ve already reached out to me, they’ve already made calls, they’ve already asked me questions about their current physical health and where they are,” Curtis said.
“They’re a vested group that is interested in coming here and developing this program and doing whatever it takes to help: to help Coach Bennett, to help their teammates, to help everybody get better. I think it’s going to be a wonderful experience to have this group come in, because they’re going to be bought in to everything that we need to do.”