Bellarmine Prep point guard Abdul Gaddy, one of the nation’s top basketball recruits, on Tuesday gave his oral commitment to play at the University of Washington.

Gaddy, 6-foot-3, 170 pounds, originally commited to Arizona. However, he withdrew that commitment this week when longtime Wildcats coach Lute Olson announced his retirement.

UW and UCLA were considered frontrunners for Gaddy once Arizona fell out of the picture.

Gaddy is about to play his senior season at Bellarmine and will become the fourth announced member of UW’s freshman class of 2009. The others are power forward Clarence Trent of Nevada, power forward Charles Garcia of City College of San Francisco and shooting guard C.J. Wilcox of Utah.

Their decisions can become official when the basketball signing period begins Nov. 12. And with four scholarships believed available, that will probably complete this UW class.

Gaddy’s father, Abdul Gaddy Sr., confirmed his son’s choice Tuesday to Dawgman.com and other news sources.

Meanwhile, in a notable smaller bit of hoops news, UW has announced that the tipoff of it's season opening basketball game at Portland has been moved back an hour to 8 p.m. Nov. 15.

That extra hour's wait might be frustrating for coach Lorenzo Romar, who met with the media Tuesday and sounded like a man mighty excited about his team and ready to get started.

"I’m telling you, our guys have really done a nice job," he said. "It is probably the toughest race for starting lineup and rotation that we’ve had. I went the scenario that the worst thing that can happen is you have four or five competing for one or two positions and none of them are stepping up. Well now this year we’ve got several stepping up for the same positions, so it’s making it pretty heated in practice."

Missouri coach Gary Pinkel and Boise State coach Chris Petersen both sort of just changed the subject today when asked about their potential interest in taking over when Tyrone Willingham's job comes open at the end of this season.

Both coaches just sort of said they were concentrating on their next games and don't need the distraction of the UW questions ... while, of course, the best way to eliminate that distraction would be to say, "I'm not interested."

So, the reading of tea leaves begins.

Two of the top contributors from UW's freshman class -- receiver Jermaine Kearse and tight end Kavario Middleton -- said they committed to the university while knowing coach Tyrone Willingham's job status was uncertain.

Therefore, both said they don't regret their decision to become Huskies, even after Monday's news that Willingham will leave at the end of the season.

When I commited to come here I commit to the school and not moreso the coach," Kearse said. "Coach, he recruited me, which I was thankful for, but I came to play at the University of Washington and that’s what I plan to do."

"I was going to come here anyway," Middleton said. "I like (Willingham). He’s a good guy. But I was coming here."

Kearse said he heard the news by university e-mail, and Middleton said he learned through a text message from Kearse.

Coach Tyrone Willingham's dismissal as coach of the Washington Huskies was the No. 1 topic today in the Pac-10 football coaches' conference call.

Everyone asked spoke well of Willingham, as might be expected.

Beyond the compliments, a few pieces of news dribbled out.

First, Oregon State coach Mike Riley made it clear that he has no interest in leaving Corvallis for Seattle.

And second, Willingham himself said he met with his staff yesterday morning, but that he did not formally offer them the same decision that he was offered: whether to leave immediately or coach the final five games. Indications are that all will stay, and Willingham said he expects them to react professionally.

Willingham said that he emailed most of his players with the news yesterday, and that he will discuss the topic with them as a group when they resume practice today. However, he then wants to shift their focus as quickly as possible to the Saturday game at USC.

Meanwhile, Trojans coach Pete Carroll said the news doesn't affect his team, but he does believe it will affect the Huskies. Carroll said he expects UW to play with great passion for their coach on Saturday.

Otherwise, the call was filled with tributes to Willingham. Typical was Oregon's Mike Bellotti, who handles such questions well in his role as dean of Pac-10 coaches:

"I have great respect for Tyrone Willingham, both as a friend personally – because he and I have coached against each other for many years and he’s been in and out of the conference and has done a tremendous job representing football coaches across the nation. He’s the president of the (American Football Coaches Association) and in that role I think his leadership has been essential in to us continuing to move forward. He has been a guy that I respect as a coach, I like and admire as a person and it’s always difficult when things don’t go right to see how it happened. I don’t have any understanding of the inner workings of that thing, but I thought they handled it in a manner that allowed him to finish this season and coach his players, and I think that’s really important. And he certainly had a choice probably not to do that, but knowing Tyrone there’s no other way he’d go out but coaching his guys and doing it the right way. I’ve always felt that Washington is a scary situation. They’ve had great recruiting years each of the last couple of years, in my opinion. A lot of kids that we would have liked to have had stayed in the state. I think he’s done a very good job in that regard. But as he said himself, if you don’t win enough, it’s not going to matter."