Rice signs with GW

Add Maureece Rice to the list of talented players GW men’s basketball head coach Karl Hobbs has recruited over the past three years. Hobbs confirmed this week that the highly touted Rice will attend GW in the fall on a basketball scholarship.

At Strawberry Mansion High School, the 6-foot, 215-pound guard racked up 2,681 career points, shattering Wilt Chamberlain’s Philadelphia career high school scoring record (the Stilt had 2,206).

“What impressed me most was (Rice’s) maturity and his ability to pass the ball,” he said. “Everybody talks about how many points he scored, but he has the ability to set up his teammates well.”

As an assistant at the University of Connecticut, Hobbs recruited future NBA players Ray Allen and Caron Butler, who were more than just scorers. Rice, Hobbs said, is also very well rounded – he has the ability to play the point or the shooting guard position.

Rice graduated high school in 2003 but reportedly did not meet the requisite 820 SAT score needed to qualify for Division I basketball last season.

Houston joins coaching staff to replace Broadus

The athletic department hired Roland Houston last month to replace Kevin Broadus as an assistant coach for the Colonials. Broadus, an assistant at GW since 2001, left the program last month to become an assistant coach for the Georgetown men’s basketball team.

Houston comes from fellow Atlantic 10 member La Salle, where he had been an assistant coach since 1999.

“I’ve seen the quality of players (Houston) has recruited,” Hobbs said. “He has a great reputation for developing big guys, and that’s something we’ve been concerned with. He fits in well with the rest of the staff.”

Houston’s first project could be center Jaaron Greene, who appeared in only four games as a freshman last season before being sidelined with a hand injury.

Hobbs and Houston go back to the late 1970s, when Houston was a player at Rhode Island and Hobbs was a high school star at Cambridge Ringe and Latin in Massachusetts.

“I had a great relationship with him before that goes back to when he was in college,” Hobbs said. “He used to come and try to recruit me to URI.”

After graduating from Rhode Island, Houston played professionally overseas. He speaks several languages fluently, including French and Spanish.

Forchion transfers to West Georgia

Senior Tamal Forchion will transfer to Division II West Georgia University after an up-and-down three years as a Colonial.

While Hobbs said last week that Forchion’s status with GW was “still up in the air,” West Georgia head coach Ed Murphy announced on the school’s Web site last month that he had signed the forward.

“He had a serious injury at GW,” Murphy said in a written statement on the Web site, referring to a broken ankle that hampered Forchion for much of the 2002-03 season. “When he came back he had to split time. He’s coming here because he wants to play.”

While Forchion could not be reached for comment, a GW player close to the forward also confirmed the transfer.

At 6-feet-6-inches and 252 pounds, Forchion had a promising freshman season but never made his way back as a regular in GW’s lineup after his injury. After struggling last season, averaging under four points in nine minutes per game, Forchion decided to follow the path of former GW guard Darnell Miller, who transferred to West Georgia last year.