Re: Recruiting At A Glance

From: Keith Wedinger
Date: 02 Mar 2007 - 07:24 AM EST

To add a bit of emphasis to your point below about recruiting HS players, it
is not limited to the PG position. The perfect example is Kenyon Martin.
He came in as an athletic, unpolished center and left four years later as
the National POY.

On 3/2/07, address@hidden <address@hidden> wrote:

DF-
Agreed, that it is refreshing to have a good intelligent conversation
about UC basketball...always interested to hear interesting thoughts instead
of the same old Huggs/Zimph. That being said...I'll add again to this
thread.

My #6 point should be taken as a result of the first 5, and it's the one
you're referring to. I said that "We put ourselves in emergency situations,
instead of planning ahead." I should have said..."More often than not, we
put ourselves in emergency situations because of poor planning." And this
is simply only my opinion, but I try to defend with good evidence.

Like I have stated before...I used to live with Mel Levett, and even after
he graduated I got to know all the players very well, especially the Logan
years. I got to know K-Satt and let me tell you first hand...regardless of
how NBA ready he really was, we were lucky to get him back for a second
year...and there was NO way he was going to stay for a third. I agree that
he was not NBA ready...but to a McD All-American and starting PG as a frosh
for the #1 team in the country, he thought he was and nothing was going to
change his mind. My point is that Huggs knew this, and so did all the
players and assistants. This is #1 example of poor planning. (I don't
know the answer) But it'd be interesting to see how many MCD AA PG's
actually stay for more than 2 years...I bet, not many (even if they aren't
NBA ready, bc they are NBA EGO ready). So for Huggs to "try to convince"
him to stay (even though everyone knew he was gone) was simply not a smart
choice.
To your point, that leaves you with Logan (who to that point was more
of a SG) and Stokes (who was always a wing player, not really a PG or
SG). So I think getting a better PG should have had much more emphasis
placed on it and wouldn't have caused the emergencies it did. As a recruit,
having the chance to start at PG with Logan as a SG and Stokes as the #3
seemed like a great opportunity!
As for your argument that even with Satt, it would not be a great place
to be for a top recruit...look at the North Carolina's and even the Memphis'
and many other schools. They get top teir recruits to come still, knowing
they won't play 35 minutes a game right away. Another angle is the
Villanova way...last year they played 4 guards (which is a huge opportunity)
and only 1 was a Senior. They still got 2 Top 30 guards to come this
year. Point is, if you are that good...they will find a place for you to
play.

I understand that recruiting is relationship based more than
anything...and in an emergency, a top recruit (especially at PG or C) is
very difficult to land. This leads us to your debate of JUCO player vs.
Inferior player. First, I don't know how accurate it is to say that a TOP
250 player (who is not Top 50) is inferior to a JUCO player. There's a
reason that guy is a JUCO and it's usually because he's not that good either
or he's had trouble (with law, school or coaching)...and notice I said
"usually".

Second, not all the players on the floor have to be a star; they have to
be a decent player, and most importantly smart and coachable. Think of all
the guys (especially guards) from the Dayton's and Miami (OH)'s and Northern
Iowa's, etc. that have eaten UC up in the past. Look at the early rounds of
the NCAA tourney, where no name teams with no name guys play awesome. That
smart, decent player can be the general of a team of more talented
players. Point being, that you don't have to always have the "best" player
available.

Third, I would rather take a mid level player as a frosh, more than a 2
year JUCO. Now I'm going to say that at Guard, you are usually more safe to
do this than at the Center position (you might end up with a
Souley..yikes!!!!!). Look at the complete end of the spectrum; Jamal
Lucas. As a non Top 400 and a walk on,in my opinion, he was every bit as
valuable as #1 ranked JUCO guard Taron Barker or Michael Horton or Top
ranked JUCO guard Shawn Myrick. Teaching guys a system and to play as a
team for 4 years is much better than only 2 years. Don't get me wrong, a
Ruben Patterson or a Pete Mickeal are expections...but generally, I would
take a 4 player over a JUCO and especially at PG (where learning the system
means everything, and guys don't grasp it to year 2). I think JUCO's are
thought to be more valuable than they really are (again, with the exception
of a complete stud).
Fourth, Huggs strength was coaching to get the most out of his
players. In most years, we had guys overachieving due to our recruiting
deficiencies. So there is reason to assume that by recruiting a decent HS
guard over a JUCO guard, that HS guy would have gotten much better
throughout his 4 years...been valuable to the Bearcats for a longer period
of time and known the system inside and out.
Lastly, I think Huggs recruited "athletic wing" players far too much,
instead of recruiting a more traditional "planned" lineup. Every year we
seem to have an abundance of 6'5" to 6'7" guys who are "slashers", but can't
shoot well, don't play in the post well, and at times seem to think they are
PG's. Yet, we hardly ever have PGs, SGs, and Cs. I think this was a major
recruiting deficency of Huggs. Also, we always recruited transfers (Nick
Williams, White) who weren't that good at SG, and tried to make them PGs or
we went with JUCO PGs, and we always struggled at PG. With the expection of
NVE, our best PG play always came from High School guys (Durden, Logan,
Satt).
This is just a small part of my "more often that not, we put ourselves
in emergency situations because of poor planning" argument. Just think how
good Huggs could have been if he'd planned a just a little better. He could
coach the hell out of a player and push them to be the best they could be...

I also would love to move back into the "good recruting" vs. "effective
recruiting" debate (bc I can see this touching on that area)...meaning that
just because a guy is highly ranked, doesn't mean he's a good recruit. We
had too many guys who didn't even play a single game (Jerome Harper, Banks,
Evans, Pilgrim) or guys who had character issues that caused their careers
to suffer (Bobbitt, Whaley, Antwan Jones). I wouldn't consider that
"effective recruiting". You can get the TOP 10 players to sign to UC, but
if they all go to the NBA straight out of HS or don't qualify academically,
is that good recruiting? Not in my book. The whole point of recruiting is
to build YOUR team with players, not just list the best "rated players by
Scout.com". But we'll save that for another post.

From: dfairchild
Date: 28 Feb 2007 - 08:06 AM EST

DMUC,

Thank you for taking the time to actually think through some of the
important questions. At the end, you make some important observations. One
of your key conclusions, if I read it right, is that Huggins didn't plan
well. That may be true and certainly he made some mistakes. I'll comment
on your conclusions this weekend when I have more time.

I'd like to propose a little exercise to demonstrate how difficult and
complex recruiting is. Let's take the K-Satt situation.

Early signing period: During his sophomore year - UC had K-Satt (soph),
Logan (junior) and Stokes (soph). Satt may or may not leave. If you are a
top recruit - does that look like a situation where you are going to get a
lot of playing time? So, it might be a little difficult to get a top PG
recruit to sign on in the early stage.

Season ends and K-Satt leaves.

Late signing period:
How many HS PGs are available? (Look at the current top 150

http://insider.espn.go.com/ncb/recruiting/tracker/espn150?&action=login&appR
edirect=http%3a%2f%2finsider.espn.go.com%2fncb%2frecruiting%2ftr there are
only 6 players available - 1 is a PG). So, we can chase that top recruit
though it is highly unlikely that we will land him since we most likely
don't have a strong relationship with him and it is likely this recruit
has
some issue - the reason he is still available. I believe in 2002 Jarrett
Jack was still available and Huggins was chasing him, but wasn't able to
land him.

Now 2 options: JUCO or drop down (Jerry's reasonable suggestion).

So let's look at the HS PGs who are outside of the top 150 -

http://scout.scout.com/a.z?s=10&p=9&c=11&cfg=bb&yr=2002&pid=40&iSchoolStateP

rovinceId=-1&iRatingValue=-1&iGetJUCOFlag=0&iCommitFlag=-1&iGroupbyPosition=

0&toinid=-1&iInterestLevelId=-1&iOffer=-1&iRecruitVisitFlag=-1&OrderbyColumn
=RatingValue

Here is the exercise - pick any of the PGs below the 25th ranked PG -
Daryll
Hill. Look through the list and choose the one that you think will be the
player who can develop into a solid point guard. Then, I will look up how
well that player actually performed.

Note - this assumes all these players are available, which would not be
true - still for this exercise I think it will add to illustrate how
difficult recruiting is.

Another point to consider - 2002 is during the 5/8 rule, so you have to do
a
lot of juggling to make sure you can actually recruit as many players as
you
may need in a given year. You also may be cultivating a solid relationship
with a top recruit in 2003 and might risk losing that recruit or not
having
a scholarship because of the 5/8 rule.

Finally, do you really want to risk a 4 year scholarship on an inferior
player or is it better to give a 2 year scholarship on a solid but not
great
player?

Go Cats!

I hope others find this exercise fun. It moves away from the tiring
Huggins
conversation. It raises important recruitng classes. And, it helps to
illustrate some of the important, difficult decisions Mick will be making
in
the next month or two.

Darryl
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--
Keith Wedinger
Bearcatnews.com
Sciotofootball.com

References:
- Re: Recruiting At A Glance
  - From: dmuc2000

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