C.J. Leslie to sign LOI today at Sammy’s

If you’re planning on coming out to see C.J. sign his national letter of intent Tuesday at 5 p.m., you better come out early. Ryan Harrow’s signing party at Sammy’s was a standing room only affair and it was at 12 o’clock in the afternoon on a Wednesday. I suspect Mr. Leslie’s party will be a tad bigger. A Facebook event on the StateFans Nation page already has 241 confirmed guests. Not saying all those people will be there, but this represents just a small fraction of the crowd that could show up.

And for more proof of this being a big deal, WRAL has decided to carry the event live on its web site and via radio on 99.9 The Fan ESPN. Perhaps Joe Ovies and Adam Gold will be doing their afternoon show from Sammy’s to cover the festivities. I’m planning on being there in the flesh to offer thoughts, pictures and potentially video via Twitter and the message forums.

Here’s some other C.J. Leslie news from the last couple of days.

WRAL put up the video from today’s press conference at Word of God Academy. Originally Leslie had planned to sign his LOI today but in the end he decided to do that at Sammy’s in front of fans. Tim Stevens also wrote another piece on Leslie’s recruitment, this time focusing on C.J.’s mother and her role in all of this.

N&O: Leslie: My mom was State’s best recruiter

It turns out that N.C. State’s most effective recruiter for high school all-America basketball player C.J. Leslie was his mom.

The 6-foot-8 forward from Raleigh’s Word of God Academy joked Monday that his mother, a longtime Wolfpack fan, recruited him harder than State coach Sidney Lowe.

Lisa Leslie was admittedly thrilled last Wednesday when her son, who was courted by some of the nation’s most storied college basketball programs, came home and told her he had made his final decision.