Rice pulls off upset with 4-star Keanu Dawes

Rice can rarely compete with the larger NCAA basketball programs in the recruitment process, but they found a way to acquire four-star forward Keanu Dawes.

A few years ago, the Rice Owls acquired Drew Peterson, one of the top recruits out of high school. He was owl friendly and eventually made it to the transport portal. USC Trojan as a senior leader.

As with many regular Mid-major programs, Rice must acquire and win a couple of star contenders, and eventually grow and establish itself, achieving success in both league and conference tournaments. . However, the top 100 ranked recruit sometimes power decides he doesn’t want to play in the conference program.

This proved to be the case with Keanu Dawes (originally from Utah), a consensus four-star prospect from Texas. According to 247sportsComposite, the power forward ranked outside the top 100 and had attracted a lot of interest from several big names. and texas rice were included. On paper, Owl was supposed to be an afterthought in the process. But that’s what makes the process run.

It’s a heavy burden for Rice, who will move to the American Athletic Conference after this season. This is a roster with several juniors based on guard Travis Evey and forward Max Fiedler. Doze Give them a chance to compete in the first year of the new league.

For other programs, it’s not a big loss for other Texas and Oklahoma programs because there are other options. But with the BYU program going into the Big 12 a year from now, and the Utah roster rebuilding with the Pac-12, both could use Dawes, and there aren’t many options for the 2023 class.

Rice beats Keanu Dawes’ five Power Conference programs to become the highest-ranked high school graduate committer in program history. He will soon become one of his key players to oversee his AAC in the future and will be a key figure for the Owls in the long run.