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There is nothing official here yet and of course having announced his Final Five, Mike Sharavjamts might decide to go somewhere other than Pitt, where of course he would play for former Duke star Jeff Capel. But it’s pretty interesting anyway if only for one reason: Sharavjamts is the first Mongolian to play NCAA basketball. That’s interesting and it also says something about the international growth of the game.
He played this season for the Dayton Flyers, but Sharavjamts has announced his final five: aside from Pitt, he’s considering Indiana, Memphis, Nebraska and San Francisco.
Who knows what is motivating him but Memphis is NCAA for erratic and we can’t imagine anyone committing there if he has a more stable alternative. Nebraska and San Francisco might be good options if playing time if your biggest factor and San Francisco is about as close as you can get to Mongolia on the mainland, but to us, it should come down to Pitt and Indiana.
If it’s Pitt, Capel is building a mini UN: he’s already got Federiko Federiko, who was born in Egypt but raised in Finland, the Diaz Graham twins Guillermo and Jorge, and recent commitment Papa Dante, who is from Senegal.
Sharavjamts, who is quite slim at 6-8 and 180, showed some potential with the Flyers last season. Like the twins, he’ll need to bulk up, but that’ll be easier at a Power Conference school, with more resources, than it would be at Dayton. Pitt can put a lot more into both conditioning and nutrition than smaller schools like Dayton. We have no idea what all anyone does, but just as a general thing, Pitt has a genomics facility. Our guess is a lot of schools are using DNA to optimize nutrition and probably training, but not everyone can do it on campus, much less drop by if things need to be tweaked.
Anyway, obviously he hasn’t committed yet but it’s an intriguing situation so we thought we’d pass it on.
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