Many NBA hopefuls are relative unknowns, but the former Friar star is very well known to pro scouts and teams.

01:00 AM EDT on Monday, May 30, 2005

BY KEVIN McNAMARA
Journal Sports Writer

With four weeks to go before draft night, NBA scouts are trading tales of intrigue and guesswork about most of the premier talent.

While every scout agrees this draft will again be dominated by college underclassmen, foreign players and high-schoolers, deciding which relative unknown to grab is a great mystery. Item number one focuses on perhaps the top overall pick, North Carolina freshman Marvin Williams. But getting a complete read on a 6-foot-9 forward who didn't even start in his one and only college season is not easy. Neither is picking out the plum prospects from among a supposedly talented crop of foreign big men. Are Tiago Splitter, Johan Petro, or Martynas Andriuskevicius the next Dirk Nowitski or the next Jake Tsakalidis?

While grabbing many of these players requires a leap of faith, Ryan Gomes offers the flip side. Unlike highly rated prep forwards Gerald Green and Martell Webster or Turkish flash Ersan Ilyasova, the scouts know all about Gomes. In fact, NBA teams might know more about the Providence College All-American than any other available prospect.

Since early May, the 22-year-old has criss-crossed the country, showing scouts the skills that made him PC's all-time leading scorer. That's very different from the American teens who'll run, jump and shoot for scouts, but decline to match moves in a 5-on-5 setting, or most of the Europeans who are refusing to work out at all.

"Some agents like to hide their guys. Ryan is the opposite," said Dan Tobin, a sports agent with DBD Sports in Washington, D.C., who is responsible for Gomes' basketball preparations for the draft. "I want teams to see his improved outside shooting and how his body is in great shape and also to sit down with Ryan for five minutes and see how mature and bright he is. He's got a great package to sell."

The question is will that package entice any team to make Gomes their choice in the first round. Those players sign guaranteed, three-year contracts. The 30 second-rounders aren't guaranteed a penny or a spot on a team. According to virtually every mock draft drawn up by media members on the internet, Gomes is a second-rounder. The wave of 115 college underclassmen and foreign players who have applied for the draft has pushed collegiate stars like Gomes, Wayne Simien (Kansas) and Ronny Turiaf (Gonzaga) well down the draft lists. In fact, the only college seniors seen as definite first-rounders are Danny Granger (New Mexico), Joey Graham (Oklahoma St.), Channing Frye (Arizona) and Hakim Warrick (Syracuse).

"We'd like to get Ryan in a workout with those guys," said Tobin. "Ryan has one of the thickest scouting books of any player in recent memory. Scouts know him. They only really need to see him against other top players but those guys don't always work out."

The Gomes that PC fans saw this year, the one with an improved perimeter game, is the one scouts like. The 6-7 forward weighs about 235 pounds and is viewed as a combination forward, not a power forward like he was when he auditioned for the pros after his junior season. Several teams are looking at Gomes for the second time and notice his marked improvement.

"I wasn't here last year when he came in, but our coaches said he's a much better shooter than he was a year ago," Utah Jazz coach and general manager Jerry Sloan said after a mid-May workout. "He's gone back and made some improvement. The most important thing is the guy did something to make himself better and that's always a good sign."

Utah basketball operations chief Kevin O'Connor is clearly a Gomes fan. "He's gotten quicker. He's added a couple of inches to his vertical jump, which we kept track of from last year. He's improved in some physical categories as well as making himself a better player out on the perimeter," he said.