Recruiting: BeeJay Anya Headed to N.C. State in 2013

Mark Gottfried is on some kind of recruiting run over the last two years.

T.J. Warren and Rodney Purvis—the two top-performing Wolfpack of the young season—got the ball rolling with Gottfried’s first class, then 2013 recruits Anthony “Cat” Barber and Kyle Washington continued the surge in Raleigh by committing to North Carolina State during a one-week stretch in September.

Now seemingly everyone wants to join the Pack.

N.C. State wasted no time responding to Kennedy Meeks’ commitment to North Carolina on Friday night. The Wolfpack notched a commitment from another heralded senior center, this one in the form of BeeJay Anya.

Anya chose N.C. State over, well, nobody in particular. The Dematha Catholic star pivot had trimmed his list down to two—N.C. State and Indiana—but the Hoosiers backed off in recent weeks, leaving the Wolfpack with no appreciable competition.

Anya visited the N.C. State campus in late October, around the time when the Pack emerged as a serious player for his services. Current State pledges Barber and Washington, who were teammates of Anya on the Nike Global Challenge team, had been in the big man’s ear about a possible reunion in college, this according to Adam Zagoria.

Blessed with a freakishly long wingspan, Anya is a force down low, especially on the defensive end. He’s not particularly mobile or athletic, but the 6-foot-8, 260-pound pivot dominates down low with his brute strength and long length. Anya is an old school center who controls the glass and protects the rim. His offensive value is reducible to easy, second chance put-backs, and Anya’s post game is very raw at this present time. But the Hyattsville native will be a valuable cog in Raleigh even without a polished offensive game.

With Syracuse and Pittsburgh entering the ACC in 2013, and a spike in talented centers bound for the ACC in the coming years, this is a enormous get—in more ways than one—for Gottfried and company.