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Yesterday the big news in in-state recruiting is that 2014 prospect James Blackmon Jr. opened up his commitment after being a solid IU commit for the past three years. Blackmon is going through a lot of changes of late. He will play his final high school season for Marion (the archrival of my beloved Kokomo Wildkats) after playing the last three at Ft. Wayne Luers. The moves comes because his dad, a star at Marion, took the head coaching position there.
According to Eric Gardner Purdue has already jumped at the opening offered by officially offering a 2014 scholarship:
Purdue has indeed offered James Blackmon Jr. I have updated his profile with the new offers but the Kentucky offer kind of trumps all the others. With Kentucky being his father's alma mater, I would doubt he really considers going anywhere else.
True, Purdue can't compete with Kentucky, who gets pretty much any recruit it wants now. Other major programs in the running now include Connecticut, Florida, Michigan State, and UCLA. Don't count out Indiana, either:
It isn't necessarily a complete disaster, and the title of this article is over the top and ridiculous. However, that's just how fans react a lot of times in these situations. The chances that Blackmon returns to Indiana isn't all that high if we look at history. I believe back at the Trey Lyles commit I tried to look back and found about 20-30% of de-commits find their way back to their original team.
I think it seems very unlikely that Blackmon ends up in Old Gold and Black, but if he does it would be a seismic shift in in-state recruiting. Blackmon and Lyles were once considered to be unstoppable momentum of Indiana that started with Cody Zeller, continued through the Movement, and added Noah Vonleh and both Lyles and Blackmon in 2014. Now Indiana has no current commitments, Lyles and Blackmon are on the open market, and Purdue is jumping at Blackmon.
I'd love to see him end up at Purdue just to see the reaction from the fans in red, but some men just want to watch the world burn.