After this upcoming basketball season, if Trey Burke wants to play with his buddies Jared Sullinger and J.D. Weatherspoon he’ll have to do it in a pickup game or when Penn State comes westward to play Ohio State.
A 6-foot, 171-pound junior point guard at Columbus (Ohio) Northland, Burke eventually will join his high school teammates in the Big Ten but not at OSU; he’s committed to the Nittany Lions.
Burke gave PSU head coach Ed DeChellis the good news Wednesday night during what DeChellis thought was a standard, once-a-week phone conversation with the rising recruit.
“At first it was a normal phone call,” Burke told Nittany Network. “He asked me about our conditioning and then he asked how my parents were doing. I said they were real happy and he said, ‘Why are they so happy?’ and I said, ‘Because I’m coming to Penn State.’ He said, ‘You just made my night.’ He wasn’t expecting that.”
Burke said he was ready to pull the trigger at the beginning of the week and talked over the situation with Sullinger and Weatherspoon, a pair of well-rated forwards and seniors at Northland who are part of Ohio State’s top-rated 2010 class.
“I knew I was going to commit,” he said. “My dad told me to take it slow. And I talked to Jared and J.D. about it. They both said to take it slow and do what’s best for me. They told me congratulations, too. I love those guys.
“It would have been cool to play with them in college but sometimes your friends become your rivals. It’s going to be very fun when we do play. We’ll still be on the court together but we’ll be competing against each other like we sometimes do in practice.
“When we’re in those situations there’s trash talk and all that but at the end of the day we’re still like brothers. It’s not going to change our relationship at all.”
Northland became a prep super power last season, winning the state Division I title and ranking among the elite teams in the country according to USA Today’s Super 25 poll.
The 6-9 Sullinger, who is the top recruit in the 2010 class according to some services, headlined the Vikings’ efforts and the 6-6 Weatherspoon, an eye-popping leaper/dunker, also found stardom during the team’s postseason run.
But Burke made perhaps the most strides of anyone on the team and followed up his sophomore breakout with a fantastic summer on the AAU circuit playing for his father, Benji Burke, on the All-Ohio Red 16-and-under team.
Benji said his son’s top five schools were Ohio State, Penn State, Cincinnati, Butler and Ohio University. Other schools that were getting involved included West Virginia, Purdue, Baylor, Miami (Ohio) and Cleveland State.
In the end, though, the Lions won out.
“He feels he can go right in and contribute and loves the style of play that DeChellis runs,” Benji said. “Penn State also has his course of study and is only five hours away. Playing on national TV will allow family and friends to see him play.”
However, the Burkes made it clear that they were hoping for an offer from Ohio State. Trey visited his hometown school on Oct. 10 as the Buckeyes hosted Wisconsin on the gridiron but Thad Matta and his staff, who are chasing several elite 2011 point guard prospects, only continued to show interest and did not dangle a scholarship.
Trey said there was some final communication between his camp and the Ohio State staff – Northland assistant Vic Dandridge talked to OSU assistant Jeff Boals, for example, and made it clear Burke was about to commit to Penn State – but the Buckeyes continued to court other highly regarded prospects such as Marquis Teague of Indianapolis Pike, Quinn Cook of Hyattsville (Md.) DeMatha, Chasson Randle of Rock Island (Ill.) HS and Marquis Rankin of Charlotte (N.C.) Vance.
“That’s just part of the game,” Benji Burke said recently. “They just feel better with those other kids. And that’s just part of the game, that’s all. That’s just how it is.”
Clearly, though, the Penn State situation looked more and more attractive on its own. Burke visited the PSU campus for the football team’s season opener with Akron and was pleasantly surprised by how much he enjoyed the experience.
“Everything was great when I went down there,” he said. “I didn’t know what to expect. The game atmosphere was nice. The fan base was nice. The coaches were real cool and easy to talk to.”
Burke is the first commitment for Penn State’s 2011 class. He is a willing distributor and a solid ball handler out high but also excels on the drive and in looking for his own shot, which fit the profile of the type of recruit DeChellis wanted.
“They see me as a combo guard, a 1-2 who can play on or off the ball,” Burke said. “They think I fit in perfectly. I know they use Talor (Battle) in a lot of ways so maybe they see me doing some of those things. We’re different players but we do have a lot of similarities in our game.”
While Sullinger and Weatherspoon were the star attractions at Northland last season, Burke steadily and efficiently became a go-to player in his own right. He was named honorable mention All-Central District after the season and carried his fine play right into the spring and summer.
Burke exploded at times in the offseason, popping for 30-plus points in several games including an even 40 in one contest at the Boo Williams Invitational.
“There are other guys out there who might be a little bigger or catch the eyes of the analysts for some reason, but you can’t ignore the fact that Trey knows how to win,” his father said.
And make no mistake, Trey wants to keep racking up W’s.
"Now that I have this out of the way I need to concentrate more on school and just trying to win the state again,” he said. “Win, win, win – and make my team better.”
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