Remember the name. Mike Howlett has become the fourth member of Penn basketball's Class of 2012.
Howlett, who is currently finishing a second prep year at the New Hampton School in New Hampshire, called Quakers coach Glen Miller on Sunday night to inform him of the decision, according to the young man's father, Jay.
Howlett, described by his dad as "between 6-9 and 6-10," originally committed to Lehigh's Class of 2011 under former coach Billy Taylor.
But Taylor left that position to take over a troubled Ball State program a few weeks before the 2007-08 academic year began.
"He wasn't comfortable staying there," the elder Howlett said of his son. "So he made the very difficult choice of going back to prep school . and many of the schools that he had spoken to last year offered him again."
That bad experience, he said, made the quality of the coaching staff the most important consideration for Mike during his second experience with the recruiting process.
"It really throws you, especially [for] a young man who put his confidence in people."
His profile on several recruiting Web sites lists him at 6-8 and 215 pounds, but Jay Howlett offered an admittedly biased appraisal of his son:
"Mike's unique in that he grew late," he said. "He's been playing guard for many years. . He's a big strong kid who shoots the three pretty well and can handle the ball."
Howlett chose to go to prep school in 2006-07 because of a senior year at St. John's that netted him 20.1 points and 16.7 rebounds per game but no offers to play basketball at the level he was looking to.
Taylor, who eventually won the fight for Howlett's services, reportedly found him on an Internet site featuring players who were taking a postgraduate year.
After he left Lehigh's program and decided on a second postgraduate year, coaches at New Hampton helped Howlett narrow his list down to Holy Cross, Davidson, Bucknell and Penn. They had eliminated seveal Patriot and Ivy schools, and others like Vanderbilt, Stanford and Northwestern, from consideration.
In the end, it came down to Penn and Holy Cross, where Jay spent his college days playing football. But the coaching staff at the Quakers program was enough to draw him in.
Howlett joins point guard Zack Rosen, swingman Rob Belcore and center Garvin Hunt in Miller's second recruiting class at Penn.
Van Nest to Harvard. 6-10 forward Andrew Van Nest, who had shown interest in Penn and whose mother attended the University, committed to Harvard over the weekend.
