September 3, 2009

Kevin McCarthy
NorCalPreps.com Analyst

Talk about it in the Message Boards

Anderson Cooper is one. Garry Trudeau too. Count Henry Louis Gates, Bill Belichick, George H. W. Bush and Meryl Streep as among the graduates of this Ivy League University. Five years from now, Jeremiah Kreisberg will join this elite circle of alumni as he has agreed to head to the east coast for college to study and play basketball.

The esteemed names above are all Yalies and Kreisberg has cast his lost with this premiere university located in New Haven, Connecticut.

"Yale was one of my top choices from the beginning," Kreisberg said of his selection. A 2100 SAT score plus a topnotch grade point average while attending Head-Royce, one of the top five college preparatory schools in the country, provided the academic gravitas necessary to gain entry. Of course, solid basketball skills combined with Kreisberg's 6-foot-9 height made it a no-brainer for Bulldog Coach James Jones to extend an offer.

What also caught Kreisberg's attention was the fact that "Jones has the longest coaching tenure in the Ivy League." That being the 2009-2010 season as his 11th season at the Yale helm.

There is also a geographical family connection as "my dad played college basketball at Wesleyan (Middletown, Connecticut) and my grandfather played professionally in New York (70 or so miles away) so it's a family tradition."

Backcourter Reggie Willhite, formerly of Woodside Priory School in Portola Valley, is also on the team.

Coach James Jones brought in three backcourters as his 2008-2009 recruiting class and two of Jones' bigs will have graduated by the time Kreisberg steps foot on campus so opportunity for early playing time will be available.

The Bulldogs finished 15-15 overall last season, going 8-6 in conference while finishing second to Cornell.

Kreisberg was the most valuable player for the Bay Counties League - East in 2008-2009 when Head-Royce went 27-3 and 12-0 in league play. The season ended with 43-37 loss to Branson. In fact, the Jayhawks three losses last year were all to Branson, by three, five and six points.

But even bigger plans are being made as Kreisberg noted, "we're returning a lot of good players and our goal is winning the Division Five championship."