Pitt Offers Aidan Igiehon, One of Mike Rice’s AAU Stars

While on his tour of some of the top basketball programs in New York yesterday, Jeff Capel extended an offer to one of the top juniors in the country.

Aidan Igiehon, a 6-foot-10, 215-pound forward, attends Lawrence Woodmere Academy in Woodmere, New York. Igiehon is a rated by 247 Sports as the No. 2 junior in New York and the 39th-best player in the country.

While Igiehon is just starting to develop a relationship with Capel, he knows Pitt assistant Tim O’Toole very well who was previously recruiting him hard at California for the last year and a half.

Along with his high school team, Igiehon also plays for the Team Rio National AAU Team coached by Mike Rice.

In order to find out more about this talented player, PSN talked with Rice, who believes the sky’s the limit for Igiehon.

“Aidan is a big man with a big upside because of the physical talent that he possesses,” Rice said. “He’s still working on his instincts and his skill level but as far as the physical tools, the willingness to improve and put the work in, you can tell he’s going to be an unbelievable player in the near future.

“Right now his biggest strength is his power and motor. He wants to be a student of the game, he wants to learn, he wants to be able to step away from the basket and that’s something he’s working on everyday. He’s a sponge and someone that’s always looking to improve his game and to get better. He’s really just scratching the surface of how good he’s going to be in the future.”

Rice is very familiar and connected with the basketball talent in New York and New Jersey and to him, it was no surprise that Capel hit that area in his first recruiting road trip at Pitt.

”I think a lot of people are making this area a priority,” he said. “I’ve seen Jay Wright, Cal, Coach K, there’s such a wealth of Top 50 talent here now. There’s always Division I talent in New York and New Jersey, but the number of Top 40 right now is something I haven’t seen in a long, long time, so landing one of two of these guys can turn a program around very quickly.”