It's not just Stefon Diggs, you know; as it turns out, Maryland will also be hosting elite 2013 point guard Rysheed Jordan this weekend for the North Carolina game. Jordan, a big point guard who's generally considered one of the class' elite lead guards, has been sitting on a Terps offer since his surprise showing at John Wall's Breakout Camp.

The news of his visit comes from the Philadelphia Inquirer, which actually seems to claim he's down to six schools.

Vaux basketball player Rysheed Jordan will attend Saturday's North Carolina vs. Maryland game in College Park, Md.

The 6-4 junior guard has narrowed his list of scholarship offers to Maryland, Temple, Rutgers, Villanova, Drexel, and La Salle. He'll pick this summer.

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When freshman point guard Jamal Branch announced his intentions to transfer from Texas A&M last week, chatter immediately started up about him maybe rejoining the man who recruited him to College Station, Mark Turgeon. I had dismissed it at the time, but last night news crept out that Branch is considering Maryland, along with St. John's, Arizona, and Marquette.

So that's interesting. You know what else is interesting? Branch will visit College Park next weekend. Assuming he times it right, that means he should be in town for the Georgia Tech game, which is good news insofar as the Yellow Jackets are one of the very few ACC teams Maryland should be expected to defeat.

He's an interesting case, as the visit would indicate that there's some measure of mutual interest. Given that Turgeon originally recruited him, I'm assuming he likes Branch's game a fair amount, and I'm sure Branch also likes Turgeon well enough. Unless he decides right away and somehow enrolls before the spring semester starts (any current students know any deadlines on that?), he'd have to sit out a year and wouldn't be eligible until the 2013-14 season.

Of course, that's the same year the Harrison twins would arrive on campus, wherever they decide to go. I would assume that neither party would have any interest in creating a point guard backlog by taking two elite, starter-worthy guys in the same class, so taking Branch could be akin to waving the white flag on the Harrison twins - something that, frankly, I wouldn't be prepared to do. Then again, I'm not Mark Turgeon, and he surely knows more than me.

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The headline is misleading, for what it's worth. Maryland's not close to being in "all eggs in one basket" mode just yet, not least because we're something like 16 months away from the end of the 2013 recruiting season. But it was catchy.

Anyway, highly-regard 2013 D.C. point guard Nate Britt, in a surprise to absolutely no one, verballed to UNC earlier tonight. (In fact, he did it at half time of the Maryland-Illinois game, which elicited a few rather-tasteless "Nate Britt sucks" chants from some at Comcast Center.) Some, like Dave Telep, had considered Nate Britt a litmus test recruit for Mark Turgeon and his new staff, what with the fact that he's local and the connections Dalonte Hill has with Britt and the entire D.C. Assault program. Surely, those people will be nonplussed with the announcement.

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Oh boy. This just got serious.

The good news: he was recently at Maryland for their home opener, which is some conspicuous timing. It happened like only a week ago, after all.

The bad news: people keep saying he's in love with UNC and, given that they've offered, there's a bit of 2 + 2 = 4 thought in projecting him to the Heels.

But hey, given that we only have, oh, four days to wait, I'm not going to freak out about projecting it too much. We don't have long to wait.

As a just in case, remember that the Harrison Twins and the considerably less-discussed Rysheed Jordan are still out there as elite 2013 lead guards considering Maryland. So he's not a must get in the most literal sense of the word, even if it'd be nice to see Dalonte earn that paycheck.

Yesterday was signing day, which marked a full-fledged return to basketball recruiting season. In fact, I speculated yesterday that Torian Graham is still the big fish out there for Maryland's staff. So here is a perfect example of why you shouldn't take what I say as gold:

In other words: save us, Sam Cassell, Jr. (God, do I miss Lance Stephenson.)

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We all need something to cheer for at this point in our lives, so the news that all three of Maryland's commitments faxed in their Letters of Intent earlier this morning was fantastic news. (A last-minute Terrence Ross situation might've literally killed a few people.)

But Mark Turgeon says they actually thought one more was on the way.

"I expected to have one more signed. I thought we had one more in our back pocket, and it didn't get done," coach Mark Turgeon said.

Of course, Turgeon isn't allowed to comment on any unsigned recruits, so we're left to guess. My first thought was Torian Graham, a player for whom Maryland's made a big push and had some rumors on the table of a visit last weekend. InsideMDSports goes old-school and brings up Christian Sanders, who was rumored to be a heavy Maryland lean before committing to Stanford back in September. He notably leaves out any mention of a timeframe here - that is, he doesn't say if this miss happened awhile ago or relatively recently - so we're still guessing. (For that matter ... Jerami Grant, perhaps?). Ah well, what's done is done.

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Doesn't look like Maryland should be expecting any surprises this Signing Day, which is the first opportunity for basketball (and every sport other than football) recruits to put pen to paper and make their college choice official. Via Chris Eckard:

And don't worry about Cleare, either. He's been all Maryland for quite some time now.

It's not as though we should expect anything different at his point; there haven't been any major changes, and there haven't been any rumors regarding anyone looking around. Lock 'em in.

UPDATE: Gotta love Twitter: all three commitments are in.

Boo-ya.

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It's Maryland Madness day, everybody! Bit crazy to think back on the fact that forty years ago tonight, Lefty Driesell organized a 1.5 mile midnight jog around the Byrd Stadium track, an event for which 3000 fans showed up for and birthed the modern-day extravaganza known as Midnight Madness.

And while it doesn't look like Wale will be completing my dream Madness, the admittedly pretty cool alumni game and the newness of the Mark Turgeon era should keep this one relatively fresh (hopefully at least fresher than that last few of the Gary Williams era). 

But over the past decade, the variety of Madnesses at every school have really been about the recruits. It's a prime opportunity for a school to get a high-profile recruit on campus, show off facilities, and give him a taste of the fan support waiting for him down the road. It's like getting them to visit a game a month before the games actually start.

Maryland has had a few big visitors in past years, notably Justin Anderson. This year's haul seems more ... tepid. And future-focused.

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