We got home a little while ago after attending the news conference in which DeLaSalle's Reid Travis announced he will attend and play basketball for Stanford next season. Travis is the first of the Big Three -- Tyus Jones and Rashad Vaughn are the other two -- to make his college decision. He is the No. 40-ranked recruit in the country per Rivals.com, and he was the one of the three people thought the Gophers had the best shot of landing. But it didn't happen.
Here are five takeaways from that presser and his decision:
1) This one will hurt as far as the Gophers go. Sure, Richard Pitino can still land a good recruiting class, the base of which is already established. And yes, he was playing catch-up from the start when it came to recruiting Travis. That said, there was a legitimate belief he could wind up here, and he didn't. The odds of landing any member of the Big Three are now very slim, and that's tough.
2) So much for the theory that Travis holding a press conference the day of the Gophers' opener indicated he was going to Minnesota. A popular sentiment in recent days -- one we bought into -- involved the notion of "why would he hold a news conference and invite the public if he was going to pick a school other than Minnesota?"
3) You really can't fault his decision. He has a brother, Jonah, at Harvard. And now Reid is going to the Harvard of the West, as some call it. While much of it was certainly basketball-based, it's hard to turn down Stanford (or even Duke, another of the schools in the mix).
4) Those who bash Travis on Twitter ... come on, really?
5) Circling back to No. 1, it will be interesting to see what rabbits Pitino can pull out of his hat to round out his 2014 class and start building 2015. That next class might offer more reasonable "gets" for the Gophers when it comes to locals. Henry Ellenson (No. 42 nationally, brother of Wally, of Rice Lake, Wis.), Jarvis Johnson (No. 68, also from DeLaSalle so don't burn that bridge) and Alex Illikainen (No. 83, of Grand Rapids) are all in play. None are ranked as high as the Big Three, but any of them would be good -- and perhaps more realistic -- gets for Pitino and his staff.
