Pair of 2018 commitments headline productive day for SFA hoops

Have you heard of Mitchell Seraille or Jock Hughes?

If you follow Stephen F. Austin basketball, there's a good chance they'll be quite familiar names in short order.

On a particularly productive July 6th, the Lumberjacks landed their first two 2018 verbal commitments in a long summer recruiting season that has seen 27 visits over the past two months. The duo  - who also happen be high school teammates - together fill two of the three projected open spots on a Lumberjacks roster that has been essentially rebuilt in a year since head coach Kyle Keller took the reigns of the program.

A couple big gets, we should add.

Mitchell Seraille, a 6-foot-7 consensus four-star prospect, is listed by 247Sports as the 41st best power forward in his class nationally. Among all prospects in Texas, he is ranked 17th. Some who have watched him play feel those numbers may actually do an injustice to his potential as a collegiate basketball player. Seraille, who also saw interest from the University of Texas, UTSA, Old Dominion, La Salle, and fellow Southland Conference teams in New Orleans and Incarnate Word, played alongside 2017 signee Cameron Mack in the AAU ranks for the Houston Defenders.

In fact, the whole Mack to Seraille thing is probably worth getting used to:

"Cam is like a big brother to me," Seraille told The Sawmill. "We had a great relationship when we played together." At SFA, that relationship now looks to continue. An athlete who can elevate and shoot, Mitchell can be a scorer and prolific shot blocker. He's not the only Yates High School product who can play basketball, though.

A few short hours after Seraille announced his intention to commit on Twitter, his high school teammate, point guard Jock Hughes joined in the fun:

Hughes is an interesting story because folks around the SFA program believe they may have pulled off the steal of the year in his commitment. "The single most underrated player in the state of Texas," one coach told us.

Confidence certainly does not escape Hughes. "I feel like me and Mitch can dominate in the Southland and make an immediate impact as freshmen," he told The Sawmill after his Twitter announcement on Thursday.

As a junior at Yates, the 6-foot-1 Hughes scored 52 points in one game. He largely flew under the radar in recruiting circles, something SFA is probably quite thankful for, but there is a belief that he could be a huge asset for the Lumberjacks. "A very high-level player," says an SFA basketball source who has studied his play.

The pair of commitments come as SFA prepares to open a season with 2017 freshmen Cameron Mack, Stefon Fisher, and transfers John Comeaux and Shannon Bogues joining a team that finished second place in the Southland Conference in 2016-17. The season ended a run of three-straight NCAA Tournament appearances for the Lumberjacks which included wins over VCU and West Virginia in the Round of 64.

The winning culture has not escaped the walls of William R. Johnson Coliseum. Even without considering the pedigree of Keller's staff, the source of SFA's brilliant recruiting run is not hard to trace. Just ask the athletes.

"My favorite thing is just the culture and the way the fans love basketball in Nacogdoches," Hughes tells us. "It's a great basketball program," echos Seraille. "I'm comfortable with the environment and people. The coaches' loyalty is different. They're more like family."

The general mood around the league is that the 2017-18 title, again, might be SFA's to lose. By adding pieces like this duo from Houston, that could well be the preseason story every year - at least for awhile.