Junior guard D.J. Byrd committed to Purdue's class of 2009 according to Brian Neubert of www.GoldandBlack.com. Byrd had scholarship offers from IU, Notre Dame, Xavier and Butler.
Byrd, a Crawfordsville native, is one of several Indiana players being recruited by both Kelvin Sampson and Purdue coach Matt Painter in the 2009 class. It will be interesting to see how the recruitment of forwards Steven VanTreese and Derek Elston plays out between IU and Purdue (with other schools in the mix obviously). Painter has been successful recruiting the state so far as evidenced by his incoming freshmen. However, Sampson snagged the crown jewel in the Indiana H.S. class of 2007, Eric Gordon. I imagine there will be some heated recruiting battles between these two coaches in the coming years.
So is Painter out-recruiting Sampson for home-grown talent? Or is Sampson hand-picking the top Hoosier players to play along with top national recruits such as Devin Ebanks? Who will be the better in-state recruiter? Better overall recruiter?
