Top women's hoops prospect commits to U of L

The University of Louisville's men's basketball team isn't the school's only hoops program recruiting well this year.

Asia Durr, the No. 2 women's high school basketball recruit in the country, verbally committed to U of L on Tuesday during an announcement ceremony at her Atlanta-area school.

The top point-guard prospect in the Class of 2015, the 5-foot-10 Durr is believed to be the highest-rated recruit to ever commit to the Cardinals.

Her pledge also gives Louisville women's basketball one of the top recruiting classes in the country, with three of ESPN.com's top-20 prospects in the 2015 class committed to U of L.

Only Connecticut, which has won eight of the past 14 women's hoops national championships, has a higher-rated recruiting haul.

Should all four of the verbally committed high school seniors sign with U of L, they would represent Louisville coach Jeff Walz's best signing class in his seven-plus years at the helm.

"It's a group of great guards," said Bret McCormick, who runs the All-Star Girls Report, a women's basketball recruiting service.

Durr, a five-star recruit on ESPN.com, joins a class that already features five-star wing Brianna Jones, four-star point guard Taja Cole and four-star forward Erin DeGrate.

Walz recruited four top-80 prospects for the 2014 class and one top-40 player in 2013.

"Durr, Cole and Jones could play at the same time," McCormick said. "DeGrate is an impact post player, a lefty who gives them a true low-post scorer."

The commitment reverberated throughout women's college hoops.

Durr, a member of the Under-17 U.S. national team that won gold in July at the FIBA U17 World Championship, picked Louisville over four women's basketball heavyweights.

In addition to U of L, Durr's final list of schools included Baylor, Duke, Maryland and Notre Dame. Each of those programs reached a national-title game at least once since 2006.

Maryland won the national championship that year, and Baylor (2005, 2012) won two more recent titles.

In other words, the commitment puts Louisville more and more in the conversation of elite women's basketball programs.

A season after reaching the national championship game, U of L secured a No. 3 seed in the NCAA tournament and reached the Elite Eight.

Louisville lost four of its five top scorers from last season's team, and the Cardinals could experience some growing pains in the early going of the 2014-15 campaign.

But a talented 2014 signing class, paired with the 2015 group Walz has recruited, could produce more of the same results U of L 's had in recent years.

Durr averaged 13.4 points and nearly 3.5 assists in the seven games she played with Team USA at the FIBA tournament.

At St. Pius X Catholic School in Douglasville, Ga., Durr has guided her team to two consecutive state championships.

She averaged 24.4 points, 7.1 rebounds and 2.5 steals a game last high school season and was named Georgia's Gatorade Player of the Year.

"Durr is an explosive lefty who can do it all," McCormick said. "She scores in all ways, is a vocal leader and defends. She has the full package and will be a starter once she hits campus."