Long Island Lightning Dingle finished the July live recruiting period with a flourish, not only winning the Big Shots DC Slam orange division 17U tournament in the nation’s capital, but many of the team’s top players saw their recruitment shoot up as well, coach Dana Dingle said.
Forward Kamari Murphy, the 6-foot-8 former Lincoln star headed for a postgraduate year at IMG Academies (Fla.), recently picked up scholarships offers from UConn, Missouri, Central Florida, Florida and Florida State to go along with Temple, Oklahoma State, Seton Hall and Miami.
Wing Daniel Dingle, one of the city’s top unsigned seniors out of St. Raymond, was offered by Miami and Maryland. The two ACC schools join Temple, UMass, Seton Hall, Auburn and Arizona in colleges he is considering. Kedar Edwards, an unknown prospect entering July who attends West Oaks Academy (Fla.), was offered on Sunday by Dayton and LaSalle, to go along with South Carolina and Manhattan. Dana Dingle expects all three to commit early in the fall.
The three all played big as the Lightning won all four of its games this weekend, including a semifinal win over Team Philly and national prospect Amile Jefferson and East Coast Elite in the championship game. Murphy, in particular, was impressive against Team Philly, getting the better of Jefferson, who is being courted by a slew of Big East schools.
“Kamari had a great game,” Dana Dingle said. “He really outplayed Amile Jefferson. He just dominated. He had an and-1 and dunked on him.”
The Big Shots title put an apt cap to an impressive summer for the group. It reached the final four at the Hall of Fame Invitational in Springfield, Mass; the quarterfinals at the AAU Super Showcase in Orlando; won the Northeast Hoops Festival in Fairfield, Conn.; and finished second in the Bob Gibbons Tournament of Champions in Raleigh, N.C., in addition to winning several local tournaments. They also sat in the FiveStarBasketball.com top 25 national rankings much of the spring and summer.
“Overall, it was a good summer,” Dana Dingle said. “Every kid on the team had a productive summer, everybody got bigger and better and more offers.”