ONLINE ONLY: Promising Lineup

Coach scores with basketball recruits.

Kyle Terada/Stanford Athletics

GAME PLAN: Five “first class” players will join the Cardinal under Dawkins.

The Johnny Dawkins-coached era of men’s basketball picked up momentum and national attention with the November announcement of a highly rated group of recruits for the 2010-11 season.

One recruit-watch website, Yahoo’s Rivals.com, ranked the five players who chose Stanford as the ninth-best set of future freshmen in the country. At the top of the list is Dwight Powell, a 6-foot-10 power forward who attends a basketball academy and school in Florida. Originally from Toronto, he’s considered an elite, five-star prospect and was one of two high schoolers invited to train with the Canadian national team last summer.

Just a bit less prominently touted is Anthony Brown, a 6-foot-7 forward-guard from Ocean View High School in Huntington Beach. He was the California Interscholastic Federation’s southern section player of the year as a junior, as well as a first-team all-state selection.

Adding depth and versatility are 5-foot-11 guard Aaron Bright, forward-center John Gage and forward Josh Huestis. Bright, from Bellevue High School in Washington state, is another first-team all-state player. So is the 6-foot-10 Gage, the most valuable player on the Vashon Island High team that won the Washington state championship in his junior season. Huestis, 6-foot-8 and projected for either small or power forward, was the Gatorade player of the year in Montana as a junior, leading C.M. Russell High in Great Falls to the Class AA state title.

“We built great relationships with this group as players, but even more importantly as people,” Dawkins said in the press release on the signings. “They will represent Stanford in a first-class manner both on and off the court.”