A college coach watched Nick Leon play and liked what he saw.
“We would probably be almost ready to give him a scholarship right now,” said the coach, newly hired at a lower-level Div. I college and still trying to flesh out his roster. “But we’re not sure if he’s qualified [with the NCAA]. Some people say he is, some say he’s not.”
According to his high school and AAU coach, Tiny Morton, Leon is qualified and should be going to college in the fall, but Leon, a 5-9 point guard who led Lincoln to the PSAL title in March, isn’t so sure he’s ready.
“Even if I am qualified, I think I’m better off going to prep school,” Leon said at the Adidas Playaz Ball, an AAU tournament at Basketball City this weekend. “I want to go to college, but I’m not sure I’m ready.”
Morton, who has seen many of his players over the years go to prep school to try to get into college, thinks he knows why Leon is hesitant to make a decision.
“He sees all of his peers going to prep and figures he should do the same thing,” Morton said. “If they’re doing it, he thinks he should, too. It’s a second chance. Who wouldn’t want a second chance?”
But what if Leon doesn’t need a second chance?
“That’s why he should go to college now,” said Morton, who also coaches Leon’s AAU team, the Juice All-Stars. All of it left the college coach confused.
“You want the kid to make the right decision, but you don’t want to be left hanging if he chooses something else,” the coach said. “We’ll be OK either way, but you would like to know.”
Leon seemed confident that prep school was the right destination for him, despite the newfound interest the NCAA is taking in cracking down on schools that have become diploma mills that get athletes into college without doing the proper work.
“I’m not going to go to one of those places,” said Leon, who is being courted by several schools in the MAAC and the NEC. “We know which ones are good.”
But the list compiled by the NCAA of the ones that are not good is growing, prompting some coaches to shy away from recruiting players from them.
“It changes the way you approach them,” one coach said. “It has to. My school isn’t going to play schools that have players from preps that we don’t think are legitimate because it’s not fair.”
Which is another reason Morton wants Leon to skip the whole process.
