NEWARK, NJ—Will Bond, a 6-foot-4 wing player from Phoenix, AZ, is set to join the NJIT men's basketball team for 2010-11 as the fifth announced member of the latest recruiting class, coach Jim Engles announced.
Bond, who graduated from Desert Vista High School in Phoenix after winning the 2008 state championship, spent last year at Evelyn Mack Academy in Charlotte, NC, where he played on a prep school team loaded with Division I prospects, including Oklahoma signee Calvin Newell.
Playing alongside big-time players is nothing new for Bond, whose teammates at Desert Vista, where he was coached by Doug Harris, included Ty Abbott, an all-Pac 10 player for Arizona State. Bond's senior team at Desert Vista, which went out as Arizona state champs with a 26-5 record, also included Mike Proctor, who starts at Northern Colorado, and Josh Lowery, who plays for Pepperdine.
At Windward Prep in Phoenix in 2008-09, Bond teamed with Fresno State's WAC Freshman of the Year Greg Smith. Both Desert Vista in 2008 and Evelyn Mack in 2010 achieved Top 25 national ranking in USA Today.
At NJIT, Bond, who combines athleticism with the ability to make outside shots, will compete for playing time as a 2/3 (shooting guard/small forward).
“He's a big player for his position who can help us making shots and he's a good rebounder,” said Engles, of Bond, who is the fifth player announced for the incoming recruiting class. “He's athletic and he has a good understanding of the game.”
Bond, who was an Arizona region champ in both football and track, comes from an athletically-inclined family. His older brother, Lindon Bond, was a multi-sport high school athlete who played Division I college baseball at Texas Southern and then professional baseball in the minor leagues after being drafted by the Washington Nationals in 2007.
Will Bond, an all-academic honoree in high school, who plans to major in finance at NJIT, rounds out a five-man class of National Letter of Intent signees. The others, announced previously and listed alphabetically are: Dytanya Johnson (C/F; 6-7, 205; Waldorf, MD/Thomas Stone HS); Lamar Kearse (G; 6-2, 185; Jamesville, NY/Jamesville-DeWitt HS) ; Drew Onyebuchi (F; 6-6. 190; Sugar Land, TX/Travis HS); and, Kherel Silcott (F; 6-8, 195; Brooklyn, NY/Brooklyn Tech).
All five of the signees are players who can fill more than one position. “They're all multi-positional,” said Engles, who played then-sophomore co-captain Isaiah Wilkerson at every position except center in 2009-10. “Having players who can play different positions does a lot of good things for us and it should create problems for the opposition.”
The newcomers will add to a team that expects to continue the progress it made in its second season under Engles and his staff of assistants.
The Highlanders, who first faced Division I competition in 2006-07 and achieved full Division I status in 2009-10, are coming off of a season that saw them post a program-best 10 wins at the highest level.
The Highlanders in 2009-10 won 10 times, up from one win in 2008-09, and stepped up their scoring to 61.5 ppg to 49.5 ppg.
The returnees for next season accounted for 1710 of last season's 1905 points scored (90 percent). Returnees for 2010-11 also accounted for 882 of last season's 1064 rebounds (83 percent).
