Arop and Dower appear in Rivals 150

While recruit rankings really have no impact on how good a recruit will turn out, it is always fun to see what people think of GU recruits. Today, rivals.com released their post-summer top 150, and both Mangisto Arop and Sam Dower made appearances.

After fantastic performances in the FIBA U-18 championships and Nike Global Games, Mangisto Arop shot up the recruit rankings. The native of Sudan was the first verbal to GU in the class of 09'. His incredible length and athleticism has Manny ranked the 8oth best player in the class of 09. Manny was also listed as the 15th best SF in the class of 09'. This is a significant jump, as Arop was unranked in the last top 150. While many eyebrows were raised when his verbal was announced, it seems that the staff has once again found a diamond in the rough. The scariest part about Arop, is that at this point he is still a very raw prospect, and will only continue to improve over the next couple of years.

The other key recruit to make an appearance in the top 150 is Sam Dower. The 6'9 PF, from Osseo, Minnesota, is the 119th ranked player in the nation, and the 30th ranked PF. After a terrific performance this summer, Dower moved up over 10 spots in the most recent rankings. The main reason for this is that Dower has started to realize some of his enormous potential. Dower recently cut his list to a final 5 schools, which include Gonzaga, Minnesota, George Mason, Cal, and Marquette. Dower recently made an unofficial visit to Minnesota, and may do the same to Marquette before the end of the month. Dower will be making his official visit to Gonzaga on September 6-8, and hopefully we will be hearing good news from the highly skilled big man. However, The Daily Gopher, seemed to disagree with TKR's assertion that Gonzaga is the favorite for Sam.