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If you've been around Gonzaga's basketball for all of 15 minutes, you know that international recruiting is a pillar of the program. Whether its Canada, Poland, Germany, or France, Gonzaga has staked its claim as one of the best foreign recruiting programs around. Over the past few months, Domantas Sabonis has become the new international prospect to watch. The son of former NBA center Arvydas Sabonis has made a huge splash among international basektball experts and is widely ranked as one of the top prospects regardless of age.
Over the past few weeks, a couple reports came out saying that Gonzaga was a front runner to land the skilled power forward but news has been hit and miss since then. Today, a report was released outlining a few key points in the Sabonis decision. Per enCancha.com (and using Google Translate):
The club has begun to convince Domas Sabonis continue on the green team, even if his decision is that the calendar is approaching slowly for the future of the player . The March 15 date as the key, where Domas should decide if you make your enrollment in one of the universities in the United States since obviously want to have him.
"The club" as indicated in the article is his current Spanish league team, Malaga. Obviously Sabonis has a number of options here but the main two are to either attend college in the United Sates (hopefully at Gonzaga) or either continue playing in the Spanish league, forego college, and enter the NBA Draft at some point. The rumor has always been that Sabonis was leaning more towards attending school in the United States as he was actually born in Portland, Oregon but he lure of an immediate professional career is surely tempting.
March 15th is about three weeks away. By all accounts, the staff has been very invested in landing Sabonis and he would be a huge addition since the current 2014 class is made up of all guards. For more on Sabonis, you can view his Eurohopes profile. The site has him ranked as the #1 European prospect in his age group. If you haven't seen him yet, here is a good highlight tape: