Bruins Expect No Early Activity in Signing Period

Still waiting for its top two potential recruits to qualify academically--and to commit to UCLA--the Bruin basketball team will announce no signings today, the first day of the late-signing period.

“We’re not going to have anything until maybe May or June,” Coach Jim Harrick said Tuesday. “It’s a crazy year.”

Neither of UCLA’s top two prospective recruits--Fontana wingman Corey Benjamin and forward Nate James from St. John’s Prospect Hall in Maryland--have verbally committed to any school, and neither is yet Proposition 48 qualified.

UCLA does not offer scholarships to nonqualifiers.

James, who recently won the three-point shooting contest at the McDonald’s All-Star Game, was due in this weekend for an official campus visit, his last visit after trips to Duke and Maryland.

One of the Bruins’ more interesting possibilities, if either Benjamin--who has taken recent official visits to Syracuse and Oregon State--or James or both don’t make it to Westwood, is Israeli point guard Oded Katash, who plays for a club team in Tel Aviv.

Meanwhile, the status of Bruin sophomore center omm’A Givens remains in limbo. Givens, discouraged by his inability to break into UCLA’s regular rotation, is considering a transfer to join former Bruin assistant Lorenzo Romar at Pepperdine.