Penn Wood's Brown to play basketball at West Virginia

These last few weeks, Aaron Brown desperately tried to referee a serious wrestling match inside his head. Is it Temple, where he could stay close to his Darby home; or is it West Virginia, a Big East program that went deep into the NCAA Tournament and plays regularly on national TV?

After a few mind bends, changing his direction hour to hour, sometimes minute to minute, the 6-5 Penn Wood senior swingman ended his internal debate by calling Mountaineers coach Bob Huggins on Sunday night to give an oral commitment that he will attend West Virginia next fall.

"Aaron is going to West Virginia," said his father, William. "He made an oral commitment to coach Huggins over the weekend. We just wanted to make sure all of the other coaches who have been with Aaron the last 2 years and have been interested in Aaron were informed of his decision privately, out of respect for them."

Brown, who averaged 18.7 points and 6.5 rebounds a game as a junior for Penn Wood and is considered the best player in Delaware County, will join former Pennsbury standout Dalton Pepper, who will be entering his junior year when Brown joins him in 2011. Brown also will join a program that went 31-7 overall and played eventual NCAA champion Duke in the Final Four. The Mountaineers also won their first Big East championship in school history last season.

"I'm real happy for Aaron, and proud, because Aaron has overcome so much to reach this level," Penn Wood coach Clyde Jones said. "To see this culminate and see him going to West Virginia and having schools the likes of Temple, Saint Joseph's, Rutgers and Florida is a real testament to his hard work . . . It could have easily been Temple. But he really found a home at West Virginia. Aaron always felt the need to prove himself. He's so competitive it's scary."

Being an Owl might have been a little too close to home for Brown, and West Virginia posed a nice challenge.

"It was a real battle, I was going back and forth over this for a while," Brown said. "I really liked it there, when I visited the campus, it was a place I could really feel comfortable playing in . . . It really did come down to West Virginia and Temple."

Brown, who is lefthanded, reinvented his game from a post player as a freshman at Roman Catholic to a slashing perimeter player who can also do damage inside. He was the premier player on the floor in scoring a team-high 20 points in leading Penn Wood to its first District 1 Class AAAA championship in beating Plymouth-Whitemarsh, which would exact its revenge on the Patriots in the state championship game.

Dave Bowen, Radnor's 6-7, 270-pound senior-to-be offensive tackle, has made an oral commiment to attend Boston College. The curiosity is that Bowen was recruited for BC based on potential, after starting only four games as a junior.

But Bowen's stock rose dramatically thanks to great camps at Boston College, Temple, Penn State and Villanova. The first offer came from Towson State on June 4, but Temple offered last Thursday, followed by BC on Friday.

Bowen made an unofficial visit in April to Boston College, where former Radnor player Johnathan Coleman is a redshirt freshman receiver.

"It's a good school academically, and I loved the coaching staff," Bowen said. "Coach [Sean] Devine [BC's offensive line coach] talked about things I could improve on and what it means to be a Boston College Eagle. They've had guys like me in the program and molded them into some of the best offensive linemen in the country."

Bowen is projected to play offensive tackle. *

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