2019 Chris Ledlum Welcomed At Northfield Mount Hermon
The Notre Dame men’s basketball team signed one of its top recruits in the Class of 2018 from Northfield Mount Hermon with Nate Laszewski.
The Irish will have another chance to ink a top target from the Massachusetts prep school this cycle now that 2019 swingman Chris Ledlum has transferred St. Peter’s Boys High School in Staten Island.
“We’re very excited,” Northfield Mount Hermon head coach John Carroll told Irish Sports Daily. “As a person, he has his priorities appropriately aligned. He’s a terrific kid. He’s an outstanding student. He’s nearly a 4.0 and he’s just a terrific, terrific basketball player who has really made every team he’s been on better.”
It’s obvious Carroll loves the 6-foot-6, 200-pounder’s versatility.
“He competes, multi-positional, great defender, great teammate, skillset is really unlimited as far as what he can do on a basketball court,” the coach continued. “I think he’s great at everything he’s been taught to do and I think he’ll get better at the things he hasn’t been taught yet. There’s a lot of untapped potential there.”
While Laszewski’s recruitment went to an entirely new level the summer before his final prep season, Ledlum’s explosion as a prospect has been even more sudden.
During the spring, he had some low to mid-major offers before an offer from Pitt in May. That was followed with offers from St. John’s, Wake Forest, Florida, Illinois, Virginia Tech, Georgia, Iowa, Xavier, Texas Tech, Vanderbilt and Notre Dame. The Irish extended their offer in mid-July.
“We have an expression where recruiting can take six months, six weeks, six days or six hours and the process has to happen the same regardless of the timeframe,” Carroll said of dealing with the additional attention. “Whether or not you blow up out of nowhere like Chris, the process is the same. It just has to happen in a more condensed space.
“For Chris, he just has to understand what his core values are as far as what’s important to him in recruiting and what he’s looking for in a school and stay true to those core interests. That’s what he has to learn at the moment and that’s true of every recruit. You can get recruited by 300 Division-I schools, but really only 30 fit what you’re looking for and only seven have exactly what you’re looking for.”
Carroll has a history with Mike Brey and the Irish and said Ledlum would “100 percent” be a fit for the program.
“They’ve had players play there who have a similar style to what he has,” he said. “Our guy, (former NMH star) Ty Nash, who played there is one form. Bonzie (Colson) is another.”
When Ledlum was mulling the decision of whether to transfer to Northfield, Carroll said he asked which players he should watch to get a feel for where he’d fit on the court.
“I said, ‘Pick any of them. You play like all of them,’” Carroll said. “That multi-positional, multi-skilled player that Notre Dame has had great, great success with, Pat Connaughton, you go on and on with all of the guys they’ve had. He fits in that same mold as those guys.”