ROCK HILL, S.C. — Purdue needs a point guard as part of its 2024 recruiting class, and though he has significant multi-positional value, Gicarri Harris is squarely at the forefront of that search.
The 6-foot-4, 190-plus-pound guard from Grayson High School outside Atlanta hears from Purdue, mainly assistant coach Brandon Brantley, regularly.
"They've been calling me a lot, checking in on me all the time," Harris said at this weekend's adidas 3-Stripe Select Basketball event outside Charlotte. "They're just telling me they really like me and they really want me to go there."
Harris, who head coach Matt Painter watched to open this first July evaluation period, said he'll make an official visit to West Lafayette in the fall.
He holds a bunch of early SEC offers — Georgia (who he's planning to unofficially visit soon), Florida, LSU, Ole Miss, etc. — but Purdue's gained real traction outside its normal recruiting footprint, after getting in on Harris early in part due to the fact that Harris is one of former Boilermaker star Glenn Robinson's sons.
It's another of those sons who's taken up the cause for Purdue: Former Boilermaker football player Gelen Robinson.
Harris said the two have had a strong relationship, and Gelen Robinson visited him in the spring when Harris' Atlanta Celtics team was in the Indianapolis area for the adidas 3SSB event in Noblesville.
"He wants me to go there too. He loves talking about how good the school is," Harris said.
Harris is a tall, long and extremely tough and physical guard who's a very good three-point shooter — he made four threes and was fouled on another during a high-level game Friday against Indiana Elite, scoring 21 points in a narrow loss — and a particularly willing, shall we say, defender.
"I love playing defense," Harris said. "I love getting stops. I don't want anybody scoring on me."
That jibes with Harris' overall identity as a player, or at least the one Purdue's seen in him.
"They just like how I have a competitive nature and how I want to win," Harris said. "That's pretty much all I care about when I play the game."
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