UMass basketball recruiting: Breein Tyree picks Ole Miss; ESPN says Miami is … – MassLive.com

It’s come down to the 11th hour for the University of Massachusetts basketball team in its pursuit of several highly-touted class of 2016 recruits.

Already, we’ve seen one player decide not to pick UMass.

As you know, top-100 recruit DeJon Jarreau and his 3-star high school teammate Brison Gresham are scheduled to choose between UMass and Miami (FL) Monday afternoon at 3 p.m.

Be sure to check out the announcement live stream on MassLive.com sister site NOLA.com.

Another target coach Derek Kellogg and his staff have been pursuing for some time, 3-star guard Breein Tyree, was also set to make his college choice Monday, picking from UMass, Ole Miss and Kansas State.

Tyree, taking to Twitter just moments ago, announced that he will be joining Mississippi for 2016:

I would like to officially announce that I have Verbally Committed to the University of Mississippi!! #GoRebs https://t.co/mbBcFk2QOO

— Breezy (@Breety5) September 28, 2015

Still, it’s a pretty big day for the future fortunes for the Minutemen.

With those Monday announcements in mind, ESPN.com recruiting insider Jeff Borzello put together a quick breakdown on the status of Jarreau/Gresham, Tyree and others. Here’s what he had to say about UMass’ prospects for landing the duo:

DeJon Jarreau (No. 62) andBrison Gresham (three-star): These high school and AAU teammates will be going to the same school, and they announced last week that Miami and Massachusetts were the two schools still in the running. They visited Miami last weekend and UMass this past weekend, and it’s tight between the two. The Hurricanes are the slight leaders down the stretch, though.

Ok, so maybe that update on the NOLA guys isn’t much of an update at all. Borzello, who is one of the industry’s best, is, by his own admission, making an “educated gut call” on this one:

@UMassRecruiting @Daniel_Malone I don’t like making “He’s 100 percent going to…” claims when it’s close. This one is an educated gut call.

— Jeff Borzello (@jeffborzello) September 28, 2015

And it makes some sense. One might expect Miami to be “slight leaders down the stretch” because well, it’s South Beach and not snowy, chilly Amherst. So we’ll see in a few hours.

I won’t profess to have any mind-blowing insight into the thought process of Jarreau and Gresham – can we please call them “Jarresham” to make things easier? – but in listening to the duo last week, they’ve been impressed by UMass’ recruiting tenacity and the familial atmosphere Kellogg has fostered within the program.

Personally, I’ve been in a state of “I’ll believe it when I see it” with a lot of these guys for a while now. By the end of the day, it looks like I could be believing an awful lot.

Follow MassLive.com UMass beat writer @Daniel_Malone on Twitter or reach him via email.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.