Star basketball recruit Isaac Hamilton leaves UTEP for UCLA

ESPN.com and CBSSports.com are reporting that star basketball recruit Isaac Hamilton has been admitted into UCLA.

Hamilton will have to sit out the 2013-’14 basketball season.

Hamilton signed a National Letter of Intent to play at UTEP in Nov. 2012. He asked UTEP to be released from his NLI after he said he wanted to be closer to home to be with his ailing grandmother.

UTEP denied the request and in mid-August he filed an appeal with the NLI committee which the committee denied last week.

The day the appeal was denied UTEP coach Tim Floyd released a statement saying, “We still consider the University of Texas at El Paso to be his best option when you weigh risk versus reward. Hopefully he will understand that he has until Tuesday (Sept. 10) to enroll, and he would be welcome with open arms. We still believe he made his decision to come here for the right reasons.”

Floyd told the Los Angeles Times in July that Hamilton wanted to attend USC so he can be closer to his ill grandmother.

Hamilton had tweeted on July 11 why he was not in El Paso.

“To all Utep fans my grandmother is ill and I’m dealing with a death in the family that’s why I haven’t made it yet,” Hamilton tweeted.

UTEP senior center John Bohannon, on his since-deleted Twitter account, tweeted to Hamilton this weekend after the LA Times story came out.

“nothing but support for ya my boy I was in a similar situation outta HS..hmu if you need to talk about it,” Bohannon tweeted to Hamilton.

Hamilton tweeted back to Bohannon, “thanks bro means a lot, I really do appreciate that.”