Maya, is that you? Nah, just Hampton's latest addition

The cherry on top of Hampton's gotta-have-it-sized recruiting sundae is a 6-1 scoring machine about whom Lady Pirates coach David Six gushes so much, you'd think he'd just inked Maya Moore.

"She's a flat-out scorer," Six said of Jasmine Lytle, who blew up at New Jersey's New Brunswick High as a senior with 21.5 points and 17.5 rebounds per game. "A tremendous athlete. Great shot-blocker. And her best attribute is she's a great defender. We're definitely fortunate to be able to get her."

Maya, is that you?

Even before the addition of Lytle (pronounced lie-TELL), Six was touting his six-player incoming class as perhaps Hampton's best ever. Now that Lytle has made it a Magnificent Seven, "this sends it through the roof," Six said.

That a player with Lytle's apparent upside was still available in April of her senior year was due in part to a bit of misinformation according to John Stone, Lytle's AAU coach with the New Jersey-based FBC Defenders. Stone said that last summer, after Lytle suffered a sprained knee, "somebody somewhere said it was a (torn) ACL.'' The false report threw several schools off Lytle's scent, the coach said.

Lytle wound up visiting four schools - St. Peter's, Mount St. Mary's and Maryland-Eastern Shore in addition to Hampton - and thought long and hard about UMES before making Six's day.

Stone said that in addition to Lytle's physical attributes, the soon-to-be Lady Pirates comes with significant intangibles. One of those is loyalty - when Lytle began to develop she was frequently wooed by higher-profile AAU outfits but chose to remain with the tiny FBC Defenders and the coach that had mentored her since eighth grade.

The coach also raved about Lytle's infectious personality.

"When she walks into a room, everybody notices her," Stone said. "Her leadership qualities are just natural."