RECRUITING : Shooting May Not Tarnish the Trojans

It has been nearly three weeks since a stray bullet pierced the left arm of freshman linebacker Jon McGee on the USC practice field. It could be a lot longer before the incident is forgotten.

Although high school football players cannot sign college letters of intent until Feb. 3 (community college players can sign beginning Dec. 16), most prospective recruits and their parents are well into the evaluation process.

To an impressionable 17- or 18-year-old, images such as the shooting at USC can turn into a lasting memory. Even if the story begins to fade into obscurity, you can bet that USC’s rivals will do their best to keep the images alive.

But two highly regarded Southern California recruits said the incident would not be a significant factor in their choice of a college.

“It was an unfortunate accident, but it doesn’t take anything away from the quality of the school,” Mission Viejo Trabuco Hills quarterback Pat Barnes said. “USC still offers a great education and a great opportunity to play football.”

Said Los Alamitos quarterback Tim Carey: “(The shooting incident) hasn’t changed my perception at all of USC. My initial reaction was that I really didn’t understand exactly what had happened, then I heard the details. It was a freak accident. I’m still thinking about USC.”

Most college coaches and talent evaluators consider Barnes, Carey and Tom Krug of Los Gatos, which is located near San Jose, as the best quarterback prospects in California this year.

However, one of the nation’s premier linebacker prospects, 6-foot-4, 220-pound linebacker Bert Berry of Humble, Tex., a Houston suburb, acknowledged that the shooting will affect his thinking.

“It’s normal that something like that would shock a person,” said Berry, a superb athlete and good student who is being recruited by the Trojans. “You know that there is a slight danger of going there. It would have to go into a person’s mind when thinking about USC or UCLA.”

Berry said the shooting hadn’t been mentioned in his conversations with USC assistant Wayne Nunnely. He also said that he is “wide open” about his college choice and is considering visits to USC and UCLA. Other schools high on his list include Texas A&M;, Oklahoma, Notre Dame and Michigan.

Allen Wallace, the publisher of SuperPrep, a football recruiting magazine based in Costa Mesa, says USC’s inner-city location might occasionally work in its favor.

“I’ve talked to players over the years who’ve told me that they decided to go to USC because it’s in a tough place, an urban area,” said Wallace, a 1974 USC graduate. “These kinds of things have happened before. I remember in 1974 when two students were shot in the back of the head near Fraternity Row.”

That incident, which resulted in the deaths of a 22-year-old male student and his 19-year-old girlfriend, prompted demands from the Los Angeles City Council for beefed-up security near the campus.

“The bottom line is that USC will always get good players,” Wallace said. “Where it (the shooting) might have an effect, though, is on fathers who decide not to send their daughters to the school.”

Said Carey: “I would feel safe if I went there.”

Notes

UCLA lost out on two of its top high school basketball recruits this week. After an official campus visit to Westwood with his parents over the weekend, 6-foot-3 guard Bobby Crawford of Eisenhower High in Aldine, Tex., a suburb of Houston, made an unwritten commitment Monday night to Michigan, choosing the Wolverines over UCLA and Vanderbilt. Crawford, an excellent student, lived in Cerritos before moving to Texas in junior high school. According to his coach, Rufus Miller, Crawford was impressed with Michigan’s engineering department. More bad news came when 6-10 center Jay Knollmiller of Marcos de Niza High in Tempe, Ariz., announced that he would stay home and attend Arizona State. Knollmiller had been strongly considering UCLA and Arizona. Another 6-10 player, Scot Pollard of Kamiakin High in Kennewick, Wash., has also apparently eliminated the Bruins. His list has been narrowed to Kansas, Arizona and Brigham Young. . . . Lakewood Artesia’s talented 6-10 center Avondre Jones also visited UCLA last weekend. Jones has trips scheduled to USC (this weekend), Michigan (Oct. 23-24), Nevada Las Vegas (Oct. 30-31) and Arizona (Nov. 6-7). . . . USC is gearing up for a big weekend. Besides Jones and his Artesia teammate, 6-6 Charles O’Bannon, Inglewood Morningside’s 6-3 Stais Boseman and San Francisco Riordan’s 6-6 swingman Jaha Wilson will also visit the campus. Wilson has given USC an unwritten commitment, and Boseman and Jones are thought to be favoring the school. The Trojans are also in the running for 6-2 basketball/football standout Ed Gray of Riverside North and 6-5 Monte Marcaccini of Notre Dame Sherman Oaks. Marcaccini made an official visit to USC last weekend. He’s also being recruited by Indiana, Virginia, UC Santa Barbara and San Diego State.

Pasadena Muir point guard Jacque Vaughn announced Tuesday night that he will attend Kansas. Vaughn, who visited the school last weekend, chose the Jayhawks over Michigan, among others. . . . Besides Boseman, two other Morningside players, 6-7 Corey Saffold and 5-11 Dominic Ellison, are also receiving plenty of attention from recruiters. Saffold is considering USC, UC Santa Barbara, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Nevada. Ellison likes Wyoming, where he visited last weekend, Washington State, Oregon and Long Beach State. . . . Recent unwritten commitments: Chris Boyd, a 6-5 forward from Paramount High, to Southern Methodist; Adam Jacobsen, a 6-3 guard from Crescenta Valley, to Pacific, and 6-7 Daniel Lyton of Riverside City College to UC Irvine. Lyton, who gave an unwritten commitment to USC when he was a Detroit high school standout, has also attended Missouri and Detroit. He’ll have only one season of eligibility remaining. . . . Nationally, 6-6 forward Jerry Stackhouse of Oak Hill Academy in Mouth of Wilson, Va., considered among the top five prospects in the country, is trying to decide between Florida State, North Carolina State, North Carolina, Virginia and Michigan. Stackhouse is the stepbrother of former Florida State basketball standout Tony Dawson. One of the country’s elite point guards, 6-4 Jeff McInniss, a teammate of Stackhouse’s at Oak Hill, is also undecided. McInniss was telling people last summer that it was almost certain he and Stackhouse would attend the same college. However, that was before North Carolina lost 6-4 guard Randy Livingston of New Orleans, the consensus choice as the No. 1 high school prospect in the country, to Louisiana State, where his brother is on scholarship as a basketball manager. Now the Tar Heels are battling hard with North Carolina State and Florida for McInniss. . . . Word out of Chicago is that 7-1 Rashard Griffith of Martin Luther King High, considered one of the two best center prospects in the talented class of ‘93, will sign with either Ohio State or Wisconsin from a list that also includes Purdue, Michigan and Oklahoma. . . . Dontonio Wingfield, a bruising 6-8, 235-pound forward from Albany, Ga., raised a few eyebrows recently when he committed to Cincinnati over a short list of Georgia, Louisville and Tennessee. However, low grades may keep Wingfield ineligible as a freshman next year.