2017 C Olivier Sarr commits and signs with Wake Forest

According to @BE_BasketFr, and reported first by @Kevin_Anstett, Wake Forest head coach Danny Manning landed a commitment from 6-11 Olivier Sarr today. Sarr chose Wake Forest over Vanderbilt, California , and UCF.

It was originally reported back on April 3rd in a tweet by Kevin Anstett:

Evan Daniels confirmed the commitment this morning:

The Frenchman is listed as 6-11, 225, and had recently named Wake Forest his leader back on March 24th. He played his high school basketball in France.

Sarr averaged 4.5 blocks per 40 minutes at the FIBA U17 World Championships, and is lauded for his ability on the defensive side of the ball. A lot of this stems from his quickness and athleticism that allows him to play great pick and roll defense against smaller players.

Pick and roll defense was a pretty severe deficiency for Wake Forest this year. Sarr provides exactly the type of frame and player needed to help provide an immediate help in that area.

As Rob noted in the article he wrote on Sarr’s visit back in February, a weakness is that needs to get stronger and improve his offensive game around the basket. Well what better place to do that than at Wake Forest, where Ryan Horn has demonstrated some truly incredible transformations in the strength department, and Manning can point to John Collins as a great example of somebody he helped coach up as well.

All in all this works out very well for Sarr and Wake Forest, as it should be a pretty good match overall. This will provide the Demon Deacons with much needed front-court depth and is vital to the long-term success of the program.

This is a great grab by Coach Manning and company, and the staff continues to show they can get out there to identify talent and bring them into Winston-Salem.

Welcome to Wake Forest Olivier, we are happy to have you and hope you enjoy the campus and college as much as we all do!