CIS Hoops.ca

The Laurier Golden Hawks secured a late commitment as athletic 6'4" wing Dominique Brown, from traditional Ontario provincial power Henry Carr Crusaders, will attend the Waterloo, Ont.-based university. Brown, who was rated by Jim Thomas's All Ontario Scouting Service as the #7 shooting guard in Ontario in an April, 2007 ranking, brings tremendous athleticism to the Golden Hawks and should push for playing time immediately, although the young and rapidly-improving Hawks already have a solid stable of young talent. Head Coach Peter Campbell has had success throughout his career with players from the Greater Toronto Area going back to his days at Laurentian and Brown should fit in nicely with Campbell's traditional up-tempo style offensively.

With virtually their entire rotation back from last season, the Ryerson Rams did not need alot on the recruiting front this season but did bring in 6'6" Chris Blouin from Kanata Earl of March (Kanata is a suburb of Ottawa about 10 minutes from Scotiabank Place where the CIS Nationals will be held for the next 3 seasons. Ryerson could be a sleeper team next season in the OUA East led by 6'7" sophomore Boris Bakovic who had such a tremendous showing for Canada at this summer's FIBA U19 world championships. Bakovic's older brother 6'11" Igor Bakovic is back for his fifth and final season and is said to be working extremely hard on his strength and conditioning to try to finish his career with bang. Ryerson continues their attempts to fill out their recruiting class with possibly 1 or 2 more announcements prior to Labour Day. Speaking of Labour Day, the Rams will play a couple of home games against NCAA teams over that weekend including Sat. Sept. 1st against Duquesne and Sun. Sept. 2nd against Morehead State. Both games begin at 11 AM at Kerr Hall. The Duquesne trip to Canada was to be a homecoming of sorts for the Dukes 6'8" Sam Ashaolu, a former Toronto-area high school star who was the very unfortunate victim of a shooting incident about one year ago, forcing him to miss last season. Ashaolu, who nearly died after the shooting incident, won't play this coming season either as he continues to recover from gunshot wounds to the head. He has been working out informally and is expected to re-join Duquesne in time for next season. Best of luck to Sam and hopefully he will at least travel with the team back to his hometown.

6'9" Nem Stankovic from Vaughn Academy (formerly Vaughan Road Collegiate) in Toronto, a recruting target of several CIS schools including Ryerson, apparently will attend Chicago State University and play for the Cougars, an NCAA Division 1 school in the Mid-Continent Conference. Stankovic, the #6 rated center in Ontario by All-Ontario Scouting Services, has taken advantage of the latest technology to produce a 7 minute video of his playing exploits Stankovic You Tube video