Dalonte Hill and Scott Spinelli to Join Turgeon’s Staff

Fence off the area between Baltimore and DC, folks, Maryland has come to play in the recruiting world. Dalonte Hill will reportedly join Mark Turgeon’s coaching staff, as will top Texas A&M assistant Scott Spinelli.

Hill is one of the best DC-Area recruiters in the nation, if not the best, and the same can be said about Bino Ranson and Baltimore. Hill was the former head coach of the DC Assault AAU team, and brought players like Michael Beasley and Wally Judge to Kansas State, as well as uncovering the gem that was Jacob Pullen.

Hill also has ties to Team Takeover, DC’s other top AAU team, as current Takeover coach Keith Stevens was an assistant at the Newport School when Hill was an All-Met forward there.

The former Kansas State assistant was the highest paid assistant coach in the country with a base salary of over $420,000 annually. IMS is reporting he will take a paycut of around $100,000 to come back home.

Spinelli is no slouch as a recruiter, either – he helped landed two nationally-ranked recruiting classes at Nebraska and landed a top-70 recruit in the country (Terrance Whiters) to Loyola-Chicago.

This is huge news for Maryland’s recruiting efforts. We’ll see if this has any effect on Nick Faust (who is rumored to announce tonight) and Martin Breunig (or any of the other available 2011 recruits) over the next few days. In the meantime, raise a glass to a fantastic hire by Mark Turgeon and co.