Eight days before his John Thompson's sudden resignation in 1999, the Washington Post reviewed Georgetown's recent slide and pronounced the cause as recruiting. A long time recruiting analyst, speaking under the cover of anonymity, remarked: "It's the big men. They don't have real good ones."

The year before, Thompson went after two of the top five players in America, a pair of rising stars with high risk and high reward: 6-7 Korleone Young and 6-10 Stromile Swift. Neither, however, would play for the Hoyas. Young skipped college altogether for what would become a NBA career of just 15 minutes over one season. By contrast, Swift would become the second selection in the 2000 NBA Draft and complete a nine year career in the NBA.

Standing 6-10, Swift was the most dominant player to come out of the Shreveport, LA basketball scene since Robert Parish in 1974. Averaging 21 points, 10 rebounds and 3 blocks a game, he seemed an ideal candidate to reinvigorate a Georgetown front line that had been increasingly sluggish since the departure of Alonzo Mourning in 1992. Swift was such a rising star that Nike offered to outfit his high school team. When the school district rejected the offer, Nike offered then to outfit every high school in the city. The offer was accepted.

Swift was the Louisiana Player of the Year, a Parade and McDonald's All-America, and a finalist for the Naismith Prep Player of the Year Award. What he wasn't was an early signee. Swift did not secure a qualifying standardized test score, which kept a final list of four schools (LSU, Michigan, Georgetown and UCLA) awaiting a decision well into the spring.

Even a visit to Georgetown might not have been enough to get Swift out of Louisiana, however. In a story in the Lafayette Daily Advertiser, former LSU assistant Butch Pierre recalled first year coach John Brady's visit to the Swift household, hoping to close the deal before Thompson, Michigan's Brian Ellerbe, or UCLA's Steve Lavin could change his mind.

"John made one of the all-time greatest recruiting moves I'd ever seen," Pierre said. "Stromile's mother had made dinner for everybody, and John just walked in the kitchen and lifted a lid off one of those pots and smelled the food, and then got himself a drink out of the fridge, telling her how hungry he was. He made himself at home because they made him feel like he was at home. That's family, and that's what they were looking for. John said the blessing, and he sounded like a preacher doing it, which also made an impression on Stromile's mother. The only thing that would have made it better was if he sung a little Al Green."

The Swift family was all-in on LSU, but Stromile could not sign the letter of intent until the test scores came in, but the score remained insufficient. At Georgetown, UCLA, or Michigan, this would have precipitated Swift sitting out the 1998-99 season under NCAA eligibility rules, but SEC schools always seem to find a way around regulations, and Brady had a plan.

A player with insufficient test scores was ineligible when he actually enrolled at a Division I university, so Swift simply did not enroll, auditing courses instead. A qualifying ACT score followed late that year, and Swift then registered for the spring 1999 semester at LSU without penalty. Seeing limited time over 16 games, he averaged 7.6 points during a 12-15 season where LSU was under probation.

As as sophomore, Swift moved to forward alongside senior Jabari Smith at center and freshman Ronald Dupree at shooting forward, and the Tigers completed a worst-to-first turnaround in the SEC standings. LSU won its first 13 games of the season en route to a 28-6 record, a regular season SEC title, a #10 national ranking, and its first NCAA round of 16 appearance since 1987. Swift led the team with 16 points and 8 rebounds a game, and shared the SEC Player of the Year honors with Vanderbilt senior Dan Langhi.

Despite a college career of just 50 games, Swift declared for the 2000 NBA Draft, selected second by the Vancouver (now Memphis) Grizzlies. Lacking a mid-range shot and predisposed to dunking the ball, Swift's inexperience caught up with him, as he quickly became a journeyman player, never averaging more than 26 minutes a game and starting just 97 games over nine seasons, averaging 8.4 points and 4.6 rebounds a game. Stromile Swift was waived by the Phoenix Suns on October 12, 2009, a decade removed from a place as Georgetown's last great recruiting target of the John Thompson era.