Amida Brimah to UConn

[Mooch82]

Fair enough - my memory got clouded and I mis-remembered the timeline. I recalled JM committing early while we were still desperate for reinforcements, but was wrong on exactly when. But I think my larger point is still perfectly accurate. We had 10 schollies to give (figuring Boone-Gay-Williams would leave, which most expected). Thabeet wasn't on our radar at that point (nor Edwards) and we needed bodies. Our bigs were Adrien and a freshman Kelly coming in, both of whom were 4s.

We didn't want to wind up with no 5s at all, so we reached on a guy who we probably hoped we could recruit over later - knowing we needed both starters and backups. Hence the Mandeldove "project that didn't work out" theme deserved a caveat, since he was signed in a year we had very unusual needs in our recruiting class.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I hear ya. 10 schollies still seems high (we had AJP, JA, Marcus Johnson, Austrie and Garrison returning) but we used the 8 remaining ones we had. But I do understand your point about grabbing him early while we didn't have many other options on the radar.

Mandeldove was also considered a much better get than Brimah at the time. He has some solid offers and I believe was rated top 100 by at least one site.

 

[Gurleyman]

I hear ya. 10 schollies still seems high (we had AJP, JA, Marcus Johnson, Austrie and Garrison returning) but we used the 8 remaining ones we had. But I do understand your point about grabbing him early while we didn't have many other options on the radar.

Mandeldove was also considered a much better get than Brimah at the time. He has some solid offers and I believe was rated top 100 by at least one site.

Yeah - I went by the final total of who stuck around and totally forgot about MJ. In fairness, did he ever really exist? I'm not convinced.

I think Garrison was probably a rent a player we never planned to keep more than that one year (signed late in the summer after laptop gate and ended up a role player at Niagara), since he was basically a poor man's Austrie. That's largely hindsight, though - if he actually proved to be better than we thought, we may have kept him, so we might not have considered that an available schollie at the time.

 

[Kitaman]

Looks like Hobbs picked this one (KO recruited probably), those two have an eye for talent. No qualms here, good for them, great for me.

 

[TheChamps990411]

The thing is you never know. sure this kid could turn out to be a mandledove or even an ajou deng but there is also a chance this kid could turn into hasheem or mek. i dont know about any of you but to me thats the enjoyment i get out of recruits like this. i love the under the radar kids that develop over 2 or 3 years into big time players. you can have your one and dones. look at our national titles. how many of those kids that lead us to those titles were blue chip top 15 one and done caliber recruits? how many were 3 year players that developed? we`ll never recruit like uk does and we dont need too. btw hows that working out for cal this year?

1999-rip,kfree,jake,ricky and khalid.
2004-ben,mek,rash,liek,hilton and josh
2011-kemba,alex,bazz,jlamb