It’s rare that Rice can compete with bigger NCAA Basketball programs on the recruiting trail, but they found a way to land four-star forward Keanu Dawes.
A few years ago, the Rice Owls landed one of its top recruits out of high school in Drew Peterson, a 6’8 guard that could do a little bit of everything. He was good for the Owls and eventually ended up in the transfer portal, currently with the USC Trojans as a senior leader.
Like many regular mid-major programs, Rice has to win by landing 2-3 star prospects that eventually develop and stay, leading them to success in both league play and the conference tournaments. However, every once in a while a recruit ranked in the top 100 decides that they don’t want to play for a power conference program.
That proved to be the case for Keanu Dawes, a consensus four-star prospect from the state of Texas (originally from Utah). The power forward is just ranked outside of the top 100 according to 247sportsComposite and had plenty of interest from some big names. His final six had included Oklahoma State, Texas A&M, BYU, Utah, Texas, and Rice. On paper, the Owls were supposed to be an afterthought in the process. But that’s why you let the process play out.
10️⃣0️⃣% committed!* BB🦅. #GoOwls🦉 @RiceMBB @TiptonEdits pic.twitter.com/z7ab7jltLT
— Keanu Dawes (@keanu_28) October 11, 2022
It’s a major haul for Rice, who’ll be moving to the American Athletic Conference after this upcoming season. This is a roster that has a couple of juniors to build off of in guard Travis Evee and forward Max Fiedler and adding Dawes gives them a chance to compete in the first year of the brand-new league.
As for the others, it’s not much of a loss for the other Texas programs and Oklahoma State since there are other options for them. But for a BYU program set to join the Big 12 a year from now and a Utah roster that’s rebuilding in the Pac-12, both of them could’ve used Dawes and don’t have as many options in the 2023 class.
Rice beat out five power conference programs for Keanu Dawes and he becomes the highest-ranked commit out of high school in program history. He’ll soon become one of the key players to watch out for the AAC in the future and an important guy for the Owls long-term.