Chattanooga's LaVantez Knight and Warren County's Kendall Rutledge signed scholarship papers Thursday to continue their basketball careers at Tennessee Temple University. Both are guards. Rutledge averaged 13-plus points for the McMinnville high school last season, with 26 in one game, and was all-district in 6-AAA. He said Temple "is a great school with a bunch of great people." His cousin, Bree Smith, is a point guard on the TTU women's team, and he said he had watched some of the Lady Crusaders' games. "He's a good-shooting combo guard," new Temple coach Jeff Haarlow said. "He'll have a good chance for a year to learn our system from some veterans — and the work it takes to be a college player." The same will be true for Knight, who averaged 21.2 points, 11 rebounds, three assists and 2.6 blocks per games at the beginning of his high school career for Berean Academy, where his coach was TTU's No. 3 all-time scorer, but he made the rounds of District 6-AA after that — at Hixson, Brainerd and Howard — and played this past year as a postgrad for Gabriel Christian Academy in Smyrna, Tenn., and scored 17 points in one win and had 11 rebounds with nine points and seven assists in another. "He went through so much, but the kid is determined," said Howard coach Walter McGary, who was at the signing. "He's a real good kid and a real hard worker, and he's got a great love for the game. I look for him to do good things at Temple. I really do."