Meet Your New Basketball Eagles: Dennis Clifford

California has become a home away from home for the Boston College recruiters, but today’s featured freshman, Dennis Clifford (#24), is a local product. Coming from Bridgewater, Clifford played his high school ball at Milton Academy.

I haven’t met him, but if anyone has seen him on the BC campus, I’m sure he’s very hard to miss. Clifford is 7-0 and over 240 pounds — such height and weight would naturally mean he is a center. In his senior year at Milton, he was the Class A Player of the Year, averaging 18 points per game, 14 rebounds per game, 7 blocks per game, and 4 assists per game. In fact, in each of his only two seasons at Milton, Clifford, the #6 recruit in Massachusetts for 2011 according to ESPN, averaged a double-double. For three years, he went to Bridgewater-Raynham High before transferring to Milton.

Being as tall as he is, he dominated his high school competition. Any time a player is blocking an average of seven shots per game, which is practically an absurd number, it is clear that other teams did not have much of an answer for him.

Scouting reports speak of Clifford’s development as a player being quick. If I were an ESPN Insider (which just is not going to happen), I could have read more of this report, but if you are, then you may.

We do have some practice notes, however, which you can peruse if you subscribe to Rivals. In it, Eric Hoffses says that Clifford “just keeps getting better every time I see him” and also that “I doubt you’ll find a lot of centers that are better passers than Clifford.” That is just a small preview of his game, but based on the near-universal praise I’ve been hearing about Clifford, I don’t think we will be too disappointed with the rest of it.

The center position for this year will come down to him or Kyle Caudill (the next freshman to be featured), since they are the only two centers on the team. Indications right now are that the starter is going to be Clifford, and that he will make an impact right away.