Rakim Sanders

04/30/06: Committed to BC.

03/24/06: Mick Cronin is the new head coach at Cincinnati.

01/25/06: "Rakim Sanders, a 6-foot-5 junior shooting guard at St. Andrew's (R.I.), has trimmed his list to a pair: Providence and Boston College. "I think proximity was a big factor," St. Andrew's coach Mike Hart said. "He's very family-oriented. I also think he feels like he has the opportunity to play at both schools right away."

"I want to stay close to home," Sanders said. - ScoutHoops.com

01/25/06: "Sanders said he's hearing from Providence, Boston College, Syracuse, Connecticut, Ohio State, Miami and others are involved. (Coach) Hart said Sanders has been offered by Boston College, Providence, Ohio State and St. John's." - RivalsHoops.com

08/17/05: Listed as the 66th player in his class. - www.RivalsHoops.com

05/18/05: "Sanders, the St. Andrew's sophomore who's being recruited by the likes of PC, URI, BC, Syracuse and Florida, already has heard overtures from the Playaz, where he'd join an assembly line featuring some of the top players in the East. But Vitale said the 6-4 guard is staying put for now. "Rakim has been with us since he was 11 or 12, and we've helped him a lot," said Vitale. "He's playing with a great point guard in Joey (Mazzulla) and doing very well. We're keeping more kids now and having better success wherever we play." - Providence Journal

05/15/05: "It was almost understood not too long ago that Rakim Sanders was a near-lock for Providence. The Friars are still strong with the St. Andrew's (R.I.) rising junior, but Sanders is more open-minded these days. "I like them a lot and they're the leader," Sanders said. "But I'm not ready to commit."

The Friars have clearly done the most work with the Pawtucket, R.I., native, but Hart said that theres a lengthy list of suitors that includes Ohio State, Boston College, Louisville, Texas, Florida, Xavier, Syracuse, Villanova, St. John's, UMass, Boston College and Cincinnati. Providence, BC, Rhode Island, UMass and Syracuse, according to Hart, have all offered." - www.ScoutHoops.com


05/08/05: The letters come every day. They come from PC and they come from URI, from UConn and BC, and from Florida, Texas, Cincinnati and Illinois. Other schools, too. Every day. From here and there. From everywhere.

For this is how the dream starts. With letters that come in the mail. With coaches who come to visit.

This is how the dream starts when you are 15 years old, your mother is dead, your father is not really around, and you live in a Pawtucket housing project called Crook Manor where your 23-year-old sister is the guardian for you and your four siblings. This is how the dream starts when you are Rakim Sanders, you're finishing your sophomore year, and already you might be the most highly recruited Rhode Island high school basketball player since Tony Robertson in the late 1990s. This is how it starts.

There's no question it's started for Sanders, already 6-foot-4 with the kind of athleticism that makes him a commodity, the kind of potential that promises to one day take him far from Crook Manor. "I know basketball can take me places," he says. This is said quietly. No bravado. No boasting. Simply a statement of fact.

He knows this because he's seen his teammates at St. Andrew's go places. Last year, he saw Ray Cross go to PC, and Lamar Barrett go to a Division I school in North Carolina. This year, it's Michael Gore going to St. Peter's, Zerimar Ramirez going to a Division II school in New York, and John Kale going to PC.

He knows this because he's at a school that sends students to college. One where there is structure and study halls. One where he even sings in the school chorus. One where the possibilities of a better life are around him every day, not like at the project where the drugs and dysfunction are everywhere, the minefield that destroys too many dreams.

He knows this because the letters come every day. And what does it all tell him? "I know I can be something," he says.

This is no small thing when just two years ago he was sitting in a Pawtucket middle school, just another inner-city kid who seemed to be in some all-too-familiar holding pattern. Not a lot of direction. Not a lot of focus. No sense of any future. Just another kid heading to who knows where.

Why not?

His mother died when he was 11. He can't remember when he didn't know what drugs were, or see the guys hanging out, doing nothing, in the same place at night as they were in the morning. It was just the way things were, a microcosm of his world. Like the way he and all his friends would talk about one day going off to college and playing basketball with no clue to what it takes to get there.

So in the fall of 2003 when he got a chance to go to St. Andrew's, it was like entering a different world. In the beginning there was the inevitable adjustment, but he soon figured out that if he were going to stay at St. Andrew's he had to prove he could fit in. Not on the basketball court, for that was always the easy part. But in a world so different from the one he goes home to at Crook Manor, where trouble too often seems to come as quick as a turnover.

He came off the bench as a freshman, just a gangly kid, but you already could see the potential. But it was last summer, on the AAU circuit and at the junior ABDC camp in New Jersey, Sanders started crawling across the radar screen. When he returned last fall, he was appreciably stronger as though he had found a new body over the summer, right there with his jump shot. You didn't have to have some doctorate in hoopology to realize he was going to a big-time prospect. "His potential is umlimited," says St. Andrew's coach Mike Hart, who has sent more players to Division I basketball than any other high school coach in Rhode Island. "He could be our best college-level player."

This summer he will go to showcase camps in New Jersey, places where the best kids in the country are on display, like runway models at a fashion show. He will play in two national tournaments. The kind of exposure that will only increase his options. "I know this is my ticket out," he says.

He's seen his sister, Nyisha Conry, become the head of his family when she was no more than a kid herself. Seen her cook, and buy clothes, and take everyone else out to eat. Seen her keep everyone together. And he knows that if she didn't do all this he probably would have ended up in a group home, or a foster home, everything different. "If I keep working hard, maybe I can one day get my family out of there," he says.

He also knows St. Andrew's has given him the kind of exposure he never would have gotten in a public high school. The kind of exposure that can change a life.

It's already happening, as though Sanders life is changing all around him, as though one minute he was sitting in a Pawtucket middle school just going through the motions, and the next he's becoming one of the biggest basketball recruits in Rhode Island history. All this, and he's still a couple of months away from his 16th birthday. Which, of course, is part of the story, too.

Even though Sanders has two years of high school left, he already is a commodity in today's college basketball world. No matter that he's still just a kid, and that lots of things can change in two years. No matter that Mike Hart worries every time Sanders goes back to Crook Manor, knowing all too well the siren song of the street. Sanders' life has irreparably changed.

That's what happens when BC coach Al Skinner comes down to visit you. What happens when your coach says your potential is unlimited. What happens when you play for the R.I. Breakers at an AAU tournament in Washington, D.C., a few weeks ago and there are more scouts there than shots taken, and most are there to see you. What happens when the big-time college basketball world already has you in its sights, ready or not. "My dream is getting bigger," says Rakim Sanders. Yes, it is. The letters tell you that." - Providence Journal

04/22/05: "Junior-to-be Rakim Sanders headlines the returning players. Sanders has become one of the most hotly recruited players in the East over the last few weeks. Originally thought to be a lock for Providence College, Sanders opened up his recruitment and quickly received notice from the UConn, Cincinnati, Florida, Louisville, Ohio State, Villanova, Virginia among many others. The Friars, however, remain a serious contender. "It's going to be Tony Robertson-like recruiting with Rakim," Hart said in reference to Robertson, who starred at UConn after a glorious career with the Saints." - East Bay Newspapers (Bristol, RI)

04/06/05: "Sanders possesses a soft touch from the perimeter and is likely to be highly ranked in the 2007 class. Providence College has been mentioned as one of the schools to beat in his recruiting process. "I am open," Sanders said. "I don't have a favorite school." - www.ScoutHoops.com