HAMPTON, Va. -- Brandon Cotton admires Marcus Taylor's game. Good thing. He might have Michigan State's point guard position before too long.

The 6-foot-1 junior combo guard from Detroit's St. Martin DePorres High School appears ready to commit to coach Tom Izzo's MSU program at some point in the very near future.

"Next week," he said this weekend at the Boo Williams Invitational, an annual AAU tournament in Virginia. "I'm up there all the time -- I play pickup with the team -- and I love coach Izzo."

Cotton's early pledge -- he'll be the Spartans' first out of the prep Class of 2003 -- underscores a trend that's becoming more and more prevalent each and every year. Kids are committing earlier and earlier.

Not only are some of them not waiting for their senior seasons. Not only are they committing during the summer before their senior years. But now some juniors are ready to cast their lots in the spring -- to end their recruitments, in essence, before they ever really begin.

Valparaiso already has three commitments from members of the 2003 crop -- center Kenneth Harris, a 6-10 big-timer from nearby Hammond, Ind.; Centereach, N.Y., swingman Oumar Sylla; and Homewood, Ill., guard Jimmy Miles. Georgetown has two more in metro D.C. prospects Darian Townes and Robert McKiver as well as Lilburn, Ga., guard Matt Causey.

Iowa State has local wing guard Mike Henderson in the hopper. Rick Majerus' Utes have Orem, Utah, center Stefan Zimmerman. Virginia has Roanoke shooter J.R. Reynolds.

Now it looks like Cotton will join that group. Perhaps Luol Deng as well: Word has it that the long, skilled, 6-9 swingman from New Jersey's Blair Academy could go with Duke.

Anybody else? Count on it if recent history is any indicator.

"It's amazing how much the early commitment trend has gained prominence in the last six or seven years," PrepStars.com recruiting analyst Rob Harrington said this weekend at Boo.

"It allows the coaches to get recruiting out of the way so they can concentrate on coaching their teams during the winter. It also allows them to see more kids: Now many players are scouted in the spring of their junior years or even in the prior fall."

And the kids know it. They trade pressure late for pressure early. But is that good or bad?

"Both," Harrington said. "It's good for the kids to get it out of the way. They get to play their senior years without worrying about all that stuff. And it's good for the coaches because maybe they only have to sign one or two guys in the spring.

"But so much can change in that amount of time. What if he gets injured? What if he turns out to be not as good as he looked as a junior? And it can hurt players who hold out who might have to drop down a level."

But none of that matters right now for Cotton.

"All the players have great respect for coach Izzo," he said after his Family club team fell in the tourney quarterfinals Saturday at Hampton University's Convocation Center. "He's producing great players. Everyone works hard and tries to get better."

Will Cotton be able to contribute right away?

"He'll need to get stronger," said Prep Spotlight's Vince Baldwin, a scout who focuses on the Midwest. "He'll need to work on his defense -- like most kids his age -- and he needs to become more of a leader."

Right now, Cotton's known more for his exceptional quickness and almost unstoppable scoring ability.

He averaged 28.6 points a game this season for DePorres in Detroit's Catholic league. At Boo, he scored 23 against Louisiana Select, 21 against the Tennessee Travelers and 20 against the Illinois Warriors -- all pool play wins -- and 15 in the quarterfinal loss to the eventual champs from Alabama.

Which raises the question: Is he a point guard? Can he be?

"He's a point guard," Family coach Durand "Speedy" Walker said, "but he's also a prolific scorer.

"I'm trying to get him to understand the importance of not taking bad shots. But he's starting to really trust his teammates and to get them involved."

That'll be the key for Cotton this spring and summer with The Family. And he'll have plenty of time to work on it. Because now he won't have to spend any time worrying about where he'll be in the fall of 2003.

"He's not that constant Mr. Rah Rah type of point guard," Walker said, "but he's so coachable. We're just trying to get rid of that can't-play-the-point label."

Sharp as a tack

Taurean Minor's tattoos aren't flashy or showy. But they sure are informative.

A crude "T" is branded onto his left calf. A corresponding "M" is on the left. Together, of course, they seem to announce to defenders the initials of the player who just blew through.

Minor. Taurean Minor. Better known simply as Tack.

The 5-11 point guard from Houston is one of the quickest players in America. He's also considered one of the best. Long-time talent evaluator Brick Oettinger ranks him fifth overall in his class in the Prep Stars Recruiter's Handbook.

"He's tremendous," Houston Hoops boss Hal Pastner said. "He's as explosive and as quick as anybody in the country. I think he has the possibility of going to the highest level."

Minor's level of play on Sunday at Boo wasn't great -- at least not relative to his usual standards -- as he sputtered at times in the Hoops' 17-and-under semifinal loss to the upstart Alabama Lasers.

But the strong, stocky Texan generally put forth a fine effort this weekend in kicking off a spring and summer that'll determine the difference between really, really good and flat-out awesome.

"He's got a lot of pit bull in him," said Jerome Tang, the coach at Texas prep power Heritage Christian. "It's just a matter of harnessing that. Sometimes his intensity is mistaken as a bad attitude. Some people don't understand that."

What everyone understands, though, is Minor's natural ability and athleticism. He averaged 31 points and six assists a game this past year for Houston's Booker T. Washington High School.

And on the circuit with the Hoops?

"I want to play my game, run the team and make it to McDonald's," he said, referring to next year's All-American game set for Cleveland. "I think I need to work on my defense. It's all right, but I don't get as hype playing defense as I do on offense."

And he doesn't always run the offense so much as he creates it for himself. That mentality is something he'll work on next year after transferring to Tang's Heritage program for his senior season.

But Minor is no indiscriminate school-hopping dunce. Not at all. He's a 4.0 student who apparently already has a 1280 on the SAT.

All of which makes him an extremely important target for a number of elite programs around the country. According to Minor, Cincinnati leads a current school list that also includes Texas, UConn, Arizona and LSU.

News and notes

• A leftover thought from last week's McDonald's game in New York: All-star games are often rough around the edges -- witness Thursday night's ragged all-around showing -- and they seldom serve as accurate gauges for players' abilities and tendencies. But what Bracey Wright did at Madison Square Garden, he does just about everywhere: He rebounded the heck out of both ends of the floor (five offensive boards and six defensive) and he shot a boatload of free throws (15). No senior shooting guard does those two things better. Wright, out of The Colony, Texas, is ready to offer those unique qualities next year as one of Mike Davis' Indiana Hoosiers.
• And one more Mickey-D's note: Eric Williams isn't considered one of the 24 absolute best players in America. He was probably the biggest roster surprise in this year's game at MSG. But the Wake Forest-bound center does what he does so very well. He scored nine points in 14 minutes, and that was nice to see, but he got almost all of them because he's one of the more effective rebounders in this season's talent crop. Big E grabbed eight offensive rebounds and 13 in all. Don't think he won't do some of that -- or even a lot of that -- starting right away next year for Skip Prosser's Demon Deacons.
• Current Cal Bear Joe Shipp isn't known for his leaping ability. Imagine folks' surprise, then, when kid brother Josh Shipp jammed all over poor Kentucky Hoop star Michael Brock during Boo action Friday at Hampton University's Holland Hall. He added a tap dunk on Saturday that was equally impressive. The younger Shipp is a 6-4 sophomore shooting guard from Los Angeles Fairfax. He runs the circuit with coach Thaddeus McGrew's California Team Select.
• Shannon Brown followed a standout junior season in Maywood, Ill., by opening the summer season with the Illinois Warriors -- on the bench. The 6-3 shooting guard from Proviso East High suffered a deep thigh bruise Saturday morning and sat out the Warriors' game later in the afternoon. Coach Larry Butler's team failed to make it out of pool play. Brown's considered one of the top 10 Class of 2003 prospects in America.
• Houston superstar Ndi Ebi said Friday night that he wasn't leaving Westbury Christian at the end of the academic year. The lanky 6-10 combo forward -- a top target for Duke, Arizona and Texas -- was thinking about transferring to Mouth of Wilson, Va., prep power Oak Hill Academy. No longer. Ebi will finish his high school career with coach Greg Glenn's Wildcats.
• Aaron Spears spent his senior season showing marked improvement. Now the 6-9 Chicago center is heading to Illinois. He committed to coach Bill Self's Illini after a visit to Champaign this weekend. He's set to join premier guard tandem Dee Brown and Deron Williams and big guys James Augustine and Kyle Wilson in Illinois' stellar five-man haul.
• Word out of Texas throughout the regular season was that Daniel Gibson was pretty darn good. Now the eyewitness consensus from Boo is in: He's really darn good. The 6-3 sophomores from Houston's Jones high school should be considered one of the elite guards in the Class of 2004. He can dribble, he can drive, he can pass, and he can shoot -- he might even be more refined than Minor. Seriously. He was that impressive this weekend.
• Heralded sophomore D.J. White sat out Boo and watched his Alabama Lasers win the 17-and-under title without him. White, a 6-8 sophomore forward from Tuscaloosa, needs his left knee scoped and could be out for the next five weeks, according to Lasers coach William "Wig" Pearson. He's considered by some to be one of the top five prospects in the nation's Class of 2004 crop.
• Derrick Character is an eighth grader from New Jersey. That in itself isn't remarkable. What is, though, is that he's 6-8 and 240 pounds ... and that he started for Riverside Church's 16-and-under team at Boo this weekend ... and that he matched up favorably with premier sophomore big man Al Jefferson during the Church's loss to the Jackson Tigers in Sunday afternoon's Boo championship. "I didn't have a 2006 list," national recruiting expert Dave Telep said, "but I do now. It'll begin with Derrick Character, and I'll file accordingly."

Michael Kruse writes for Basketball America. His daily spring and summer grassroots coverage appears at BasketballAmerica.com.