Recruiting Level

[spiderman]

I'm not for lowering standards. they're already substantially lower than the normal student profile. there's nowhere for weak student athletes to hide on the academic side of UR. and there are plenty of smart kids who can play.
love the profiles on the 5 kids we've landed in the next two classes. still think PF was a big get. Khwan's a stud, and I believe Julius and Jesse (if he stays) will be effective players. right now, they're freshmen on a team with 7 upperclassmen.

 

[SpiderFan]

Here's a question--other than from some recruiting violations--has Mooney ever fired an assistant coach? Maybe some of the guys he had/has on board are not what we need at this level and we need to increase that aspect of it? I could see AD Gill saying I like your class for next year, you're under contract, but you need to make some assistant coach changes...period.

 

[MrTbone]

I'm pretty sure he showed Mike McKee the door, although I don't think it was positioned as a firing.

 

[MolivaManiac]

I'm not for lowering standards. they're already substantially lower than the normal student profile. there's nowhere for weak student athletes to hide on the academic side of UR. and there are plenty of smart kids who can play.
love the profiles on the 5 kids we've landed in the next two classes. still think PF was a big get. Khwan's a stud, and I believe Julius and Jesse (if he stays) will be effective players. right now, they're freshmen on a team with 7 upperclassmen.

You have good points. My point is that a recruiting strategy of finding 'diamonds in the rough' that we can get through admissions simply is not a good strategy. The strategy of going on out finding guys that fall under the radar because they don't play AAU ball is not a good strategy.

We need to be winning recruiting battles against other A10 schools. We've done that with Sherod, Buck and Golden. We also did it with Khwan and Paul (who I also think is going to be a useful player for us). We did it with Godwin. Did we do it with Schneider?

There is a very common theme here. The guys recruited by other A10 schools can play in the A10.

 

[keefusb]

I'm not advocating we lower standards across the board for athletes. But if we can recruit a handful of true "impact players" over several years who might be just below our typical admissions standards for athletes, I think we should figure out a way to get these types of kids through the admissions process. The way I look at it, if Patrick Ewing can graduate from Georgetown in four years, anything is possible.

 

[keefusb]

I think we should take a page out of the Gonzaga recruiting playbook, and recruit more foreign players (Europe and Africa). GW seems to have done a good job of doing that, they have some very good foreign-born players. The Vandy team we played in 2011 had 3 or 4 excellent foreign players. Cast a wider net.

 

[spider fan]

Maybe Josh Duinker has some friends who want to play in the states?

 

[SpiderGuy]

Chandler Diekvoss had 4 points for Lindenwood in a tough loss at home against Central Missouri last night.

That was the lead in story on ESPN last night. The highlights were amazing.

 

[97spiderfan]

Lots of schools with tough admission standards are able to recruit top tier hoops players, without sacrificing their academic integrity. Duke, Stanford, Villanova, Georgetown are a few off the top of my head. I know we can't go after partial qualifiers, like some schools, but the pool of talent who could academically cut it at UR is still large enough.

So, to me, this is another excuse. Mooney and his staff just plain did not get it done in the 4 years following our NCAA bids. To me, someone needs to be held accountable for that. If it is not Mooney, than it should be one or more of his assistants. I'll say it again, whoever recruited Diekvoss should have been run out of here along time ago. You can not make that type of recruiting mistake, but yet we continue to make them over and over again and no one is ever held accountable.

We need some d*mn accountability within our program. If Mooney is unable to hold his staff accountable, than Gill needs to force his hand with some offseason staff changes. That is how this business operates.

 

[MrTbone]

I suspect the real issue here is our staff has gravitated towards under the radar guys or the so called diamond in the rough as another poster put it. Some of those will work out, but most won't I expect. I don't know if this is because we swung on and missed on some high caliber guys and maybe changed recruiting philosophy? We missed several over a 1-2 year stretch between AW3, Terry Henderson, and Marshall Wood.

Perhaps we were gun shy. At least this year's crop seems to have bucked that trend.

 

[Eight Legger]

Lots of good points in here. Yes, we can and should be able to recruit, attract and sign more guys like Buck, Sherod and Golden who can make an impact immediately. Yes, we need more accountability on the staff. Yes, there should be a change or changes to the staff this postseason. No, it's not a good strategy to look primarily for diamonds in the rough.

We need to announce ourselves as a premier program and institution in the A-10. We have been that in the past and have all the pieces in place to make it happen again. But others will view us the way we present ourselves to them. If we are only recruiting diamond-in-the-rough guy, then we are viewed as a second-tier program. We need to go after and land top A-10 recruits. We have three of them coming, after a relative dry spell. We need to recruit like that every year.

 

[MrTbone]

Agreed Eight. I'm not fond of analogies as they distract from the argument, but it's sort of like dating. Confidence is attractive as a suitor. No reason to not compete for guys we believe are up to the challenge of being a player at UR. We will still whiff on some, but I'd rather land a few good ones this way than a lot of guys we are just hopeful will blossom.

 

[spiderman]

I don't know where you guys are getting this "fact" that we changed philosophy to target diamonds in the rough instead of ranked players. ranked players go to P5 conferences. we aren't going to land diamonds without a wild card like location against the higher programs. we're not Duke, Stanford, Nova or Georgetown. we landed Buck and Sherod because they're in our backyard. special situation. nobody knew KA or Kendall or others would be studs either. they were diamonds in the rough too. Harp? location. and even he was no sure thing. came on very late.

 

[97spiderfan]

For instance, if we can't land Wesson, our back-up plan can't be some off the radar recruit with one mid major offer to his name.

 

[MrTbone]

I don't know where you guys are getting this "fact" that we changed philosophy to target diamonds in the rough instead of ranked players. ranked players go to P5 conferences. we aren't going to land diamonds without a wild card like location against the higher programs. we're not Duke, Stanford, Nova or Georgetown. we landed Buck and Sherod because they're in our backyard. special situation. nobody knew KA or Kendall or others would be studs either. they were diamonds in the rough too. Harp? location. and even he was no sure thing. came on very late.

S-man, I would concur that the comparisons to Duke/Stanford/etc. are not plausible, I was getting hung up on that too at first. But that said, there isn't a good reason for us to shy away from recruiting good quality "3 star" guys, and yes, I know the rankings are worth about the electronic paper they are written on.

All I'm saying is that it looked like our strategy for 2 or 3 years was to get a bunch of really under the radar guys, and they ended up not panning out. It was a deviation from the strategy before that.

I am not calling it a fact by any means, I specifically said "suspect". Others may feel more assured that this is the case. I admittedly don't know.

 

[MolivaManiac]

Misfiring on a 'backup plan' can be excused. Getting Dominaus really late when you have a free Scholly is a decent example. Low risk.

Accepting a commit from Diekvoss in the summer as your first commit to a recruiting class when his other offer is Northern Kentucky in pretty inconceivable.

 

[97spiderfan]

I don't know where you guys are getting this "fact" that we changed philosophy to target diamonds in the rough instead of ranked players. ranked players go to P5 conferences. we aren't going to land diamonds without a wild card like location against the higher programs. we're not Duke, Stanford, Nova or Georgetown. we landed Buck and Sherod because they're in our backyard. special situation. nobody knew KA or Kendall or others would be studs either. they were diamonds in the rough too. Harp? location. and even he was no sure thing. came on very late.

Nova plays in the Big East, a conference which we aspire to join, so if our argument is we are not Nova, than what is our argument for getting into the Big East. I'm sorry this is just defeatist and excuse making.

6 years ago, VCU wouldn't have dreamed of landing the recruits they are landing now, but yet now they are. We are not a 1980's CAA level program anymore, I don't know why some of us still feel that we can't compete for recruits with other Top A-10 programs, Big East programs and even other BCS programs. We have the arena, dollars, and conference affiliation to do that, just because our coach can't land better recruits is the only reason we aren't.

And if you can't figure that out, just gander 6 miles downtown for proof of how it can be done and how quickly it can be done.

 

[97spiderfan]

Misfiring on a 'backup plan' can be excused. Getting Dominaus really late when you have a free Scholly is a decent example. Low risk.

Accepting a commit from Diekvoss in the summer as your first commit to a recruiting class when his other offer is Northern Kentucky in pretty inconceivable.

Mo, I agree with Dominaus was low risk. But, last year we not only burned that schollie on Dominausn we also didn't even use one of our schollies and had to give it to a walk-on as a gift. So, last year, we had 4 slots to fill and could only fill two of them.

And not to continue on about VCU, but they lost there coach, there entire recruiting class, their best freshman players, and graduated 2 all program players. Their brand new head coach was able to come in, replace an entire lost recruiting class and bring in 2 transfers and has them now competing for an at large. That is 5 players he brought after he was hired in April..

We lost one player unexpectantly, ANO, our head coach who has been here 11 years, can't find anyone else than a kid who has UT-Martin offer.

 

[fan2011]

Nova plays in the Big East, a conference which we aspire to join, so if our argument is we are not Nova, than what is our argument for getting into the Big East. I'm sorry this is just defeatist and excuse making.

6 years ago, VCU wouldn't have dreamed of landing the recruits they are landing now, but yet now they are. We are not a 1980's CAA level program anymore, I don't know why some of us still feel that we can't compete for recruits with other Top A-10 programs, Big East programs and even other BCS programs. We have the arena, dollars, and conference affiliation to do that, just because our coach can't land better recruits is the only reason we aren't.

And if you can't figure that out, just gander 6 miles downtown for proof of how it can be done and how quickly it can be done.

The Big East is not expanding. They have no reason to. The argument for us getting in was:

1) Private school
2) New market, but not too far travel wise
3) Proven willingness to invest substantially in athletics
4) Great academics (although many of the current Big East schools are not that good academically)
5) Program stability / performance

 

[spiderman]

lol. we don't have a good argument for getting into the Big East. we never have.
oh we'll talk about it all day. point to our facilities, endowment and academics. but it'll probably never happen. there's no reason for them to add any school with just 3,000 undergrads.
guess that's just the defeatist in me. and I never saw any good reason for the Big 10 to add Rutgers, so what do I know?

 

[keefusb]

Xavier another example of a private school that has made great strides in basketball. They have a good shot at a #1 seed in the tourney. It wasn't that long ago that we were playing them twice a season, and even beating them. I'm not even sure if we deserve to walk onto the same court as them nowadays.

 

[97spiderfan]

The Big East is not expanding. They have no reason to. The argument for us getting in was:

1) Private school
2) New market, but not too far travel wise
3) Proven willingness to invest substantially in athletics
4) Great academics (although many of the current Big East schools are not that good academically)
5) Program stability / performance

Agreed, I didn't say there were. But if they do, you know we are going to position ourselves to be in the mix.

 

[urmite]

Back to recruiting...

Before we start expecting to win against the P5 and Big East, Let's start winning consistently against CUSA, MWC, AAC, and our own A-10, instead of beating out the America East, MAAC, NEC, and SoCon for their second choice.

 

[MrTbone]

I don't spend a lot of time comparing our case to Duke, Stanford, Villanova, etc. because frankly, they just aren't comparable.

But we absolutely compare (and compare favorably) to our A10 competition. Frankly, I don't think there's a school in the A10 that I would look at and say they are far and away a better option on the whole than UR. But if I'm a high-tier basketball recruit, I'm probably going to look more favorably at the programs with recent success.

So we have a bit of an uphill battle there.

 

[Eight Legger]

The only thing that makes me wonder about our admissions policy is JJ Avila. We had him, then he was denied entry, went to Colorado State and was their best player for two years. I am sure we would have made the NCAAs at least once with him here. And in theory, that might have changed some of how I view Mooney's regime at this point.

So was it just because of cheating on a test at Navy, or was he way off academically or what? I now nothing about his situation, but he seemed to be a perfectly fine student at CSU, never got into any trouble and was a great player. if we are denying entry to a lot of guys like that, then I will back off my Mooney criticism.

 

[SFspidur]

There was definitely something weird with the Avila situation...transferring to a school without a basketball program. All seems to have worked for him though.

 

[MrTbone]

Yeah, I don't remember details of what happened there. Was he definitely denied admission? If so, feels like that's a tough thing to hang on the coach unless he was bringing in someone egregiously unqualified, and you don't get into navy if you are unqualified.

 

[Eight Legger]

There was some type of honor code violation while he was at Navy. I think cheating on a test. But from what I recall, that was known from the beginning and not what kept him out of UR. I recall it being presented as a situation where he wanted to be here, Mooney wanted him but something else prevented it.

 

[SFspidur]

At the time, he said his GPA wasn't high enough to get admitted to Richmond because some of his classes wouldn't transfer. Presumably once those classes were thrown out, what was left wasn't a high enough core GPA. So the plan was to head to JC for a year to get the classes and grades under his belt and then come to UR.

Even after he was at the JC, he publicly said he was still committed to coming to UR, but as it got closer to the end of that school year, something happened that he basically just said was "between me and the coaches".

UR could never say anything publicly about him because as a transfer he never officially signed or enrolled.

 

[Ulla1]

Read earlier where JJ had a 4.0 gpa in high school. Never saw the reason he left the Naval Academy. If someone has read that he cheated, please provide the link or do not accuse. JJ certainly would have helped our program. OSC

 

[97spiderfan]

JJ got suspended from the Navy basketball team mid-season for an honor code violation. I don't think it was ever explained further than that. ESPN link below said it was academic issues that prevented his transfer to Richmond. To my knowledge, JJ was the only person that was denied admission to UR that Mooney would like to get in. I still would like to give a swift kicks to the gonads of the admissions genius who made that decision.

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-bas...-avila-traveled-interesting-path-get-where-is

 

[WebSpinner]

know absolutely nothing but if he was good enough, he would have been admitted. we don't know the details but did seem fishy from the start. what he did in high school is great but what he did at the academy would be telling to our admissions people. maybe even i could have gotten a 4.0 at his high school which does not mean i would have cut it at the academy or any other challenging academic environment. it smelled from beginning to end and we will never know where the odor was.

 

[I-M-UR]

Look guys Butler, Creighton, Gonzaga, even Davidson, there are plenty, they get players good enough to eventually compete at a high A10 level. You can keep looking for excuses but the reason for our struggles, to me, is clear.

 

[urmite]

There seemed to be a rumor that he thought certain individuals at the academy had it in for him because he was on the basketball team. That seemed to escalate until he stopped completing courses. But by waiting a while to start transferring, those courses showed up as failing because of incomplete.

That seemed to be the explanation at the time.

 

[Eight Legger]

Look guys Butler, Creighton, Gonzaga, even Davidson, there are plenty, they get players good enough to eventually compete at a high A10 level. You can keep looking for excuses but the reason for our struggles, to me, is clear.

I don't disagree, but at the same time, Gonzaga has been to the NCAAs 15 years in a row or something, Butler went to the championship game two years in a row and Creighton gets 18k fans a game and is in the Big East, so I think they are able to attract higher-level recruits inherently than a program that has missed the NCAAs for 5 years in a row. Even Davidson has more of a calling card at this point than we do.

But yeah, in general, if we can actually make the tournament again at some point, we should be able to build on that in a similar way, if not to that same extent right away.

 

[keefusb]

With the way we finished this season, it will make recruiting even more difficult than it has been, we will need the 2016 recruits to be everything they have been advertised to be and more.

 

[fan2011]

Look guys Butler, Creighton, Gonzaga, even Davidson, there are plenty, they get players good enough to eventually compete at a high A10 level. You can keep looking for excuses but the reason for our struggles, to me, is clear.

Butler, Gonzaga and Creighton have much lower academic standards than Richmond. Their acceptance rates are all around 70-80%. Academically these schools are on par with VCU, a trained monkey could get accepted.

McKillop has had some decent success recruiting despite being at perhaps the most academically rigorous D1 school, but Davidson is like us in that they aren't pulling in players that had P5 offers. McKillop's recruiting is actually the worst in the A10 in terms of average player rating (coming out of high school) so he is good at 'finding diamonds in the rough' but that is what most people here want to move away from.

 

[SpiderK]

Butler, Gonzaga and Creighton have much lower academic standards than Richmond. Their acceptance rates are all around 70-80%. Academically these schools are on par with VCU, a trained monkey could get accepted. McKillop has had some decent success recruiting despite being at perhaps the most academically rigorous D1 school, but Davidson is like us int that they aren't pulling in players that had P5 offers.

Totally agree Fan2011. My dog just received early acceptance to VCU, but turned it down to be a stay at home pet.

 

[SpiderK]

Tin Singleton scored 2 points for the Javelina Javelinas in a tough loss over the weekend at Texas A&M - Kingsville campus.

It's a damn disappointment that Lindenwood, Eastern Illinois and Javelina aren't doing more to develop their talent.

Bet those school's fans thought they were getting some good players when they heard A-10 UR transfers. Oops!!

 

[Not-A-Homer]

Butler, Gonzaga and Creighton have much lower academic standards than Richmond. Their acceptance rates are all around 70-80%. Academically these schools are on par with VCU, a trained monkey could get accepted.

McKillop has had some decent success recruiting despite being at perhaps the most academically rigorous D1 school, but Davidson is like us in that they aren't pulling in players that had P5 offers. McKillop's recruiting is actually the worst in the A10 in terms of average player rating (coming out of high school) so he is good at 'finding diamonds in the rough' but that is what most people here want to move away from.

Maybe he is a top tier Coach