BATON ROUGE — The LSU athletic department has verified and made official the national letter-of-intent for men’s basketball signee Marcus Thornton, a 6-4, 195-pound guard from Baton Rouge.
The signing of Thornton gives LSU two spring signees to go with four previously signed during the fall period and a recruiting class that HoopScooponline.com ranks as the fourth best in the nation.
Thornton who prepped at Tara High in Baton Rouge and played the last two seasons at Kilgore College in Texas, ranked fifth nationally among junior college players with a 26.6 points per game scoring average. During his senior season at Tara, the second-team Class 5A All-State selection made 35 percent of his three-point field goals, was a 47-percent shooter from the field and made 81 percent of his free throws.
The Tigers also signed 6-1 guard Bo Spencer from Glen Oaks High in Baton Rouge in the spring signing period. Spencer is a two-time honorable mention all-state selection who averaged 22 points and five assists a game.
In the fall signing period, the Tigers signed Garrett Green, a 6-10, 215 pound forward out of Woodland Hills, Calif., and Taft High School; forward Quintin Thornton of Odessa College (Texas) from Orlando, Fla. (6-9, 230); Anthony Randolph (6-10, 220) from Woodrow Wilson High School in Dallas, Texas; and D. J. Wright (6-7, 220) of Sault St. Marie in Ontario, Canada.
“This is a good group because we addressed a lot of different needs and also recruited young men who have character and are going to represent our program and LSU very well,” said LSU Coach John Brady. “You could take this recruiting class of six players and put a pretty good team on the floor and that doesn’t happen very much.”
As the Tigers roster for 2007-08 stands at present, the six signees would be joined by senior Dameon Mason, juniors Tasmin Mitchell, Terry Martin, Garrett Temple, Magnum Rolle and Chris Johnson along with sophomores Alex Farrer and Greg Terrebonne.