How do we fix recruiting?

[Tenspro2002]

That's nonsensical. We're bringing in too many bad players who scare away the good players?

If Stone is scared away because of Brimah, how else would you characterize it?

IIRC, Chukwu (who I'm not saying is that great, but am using as an example) chose Providence over us and said "[UConn] already has their center."

 

[Stainmaster]

Maybe its time for us to heavily recruit the 1 and dones and step away from our recruitment of the 3/4 year players

Cause it's definitely that easy...

By the way, Facey committed in August of his senior year. Samuel followed in September. Way to propagate a false narrative there.

 

[BigErnMcCracken]

If Stone is scared away because of Brimah, how else would you characterize it?

IIRC, Chukwu (who I'm not saying is that great, but am using as an example) chose Providence over us and said "[UConn] already has their center."

Well, as you say, Chukwu is not a good example, because he's one of those developmental projects you're talking about. As far as Stone, I haven't seen anything to indicate that he would be scared off by Brimah. And the argument generally that guys at the upper echelon are seeing players like Terence Samuel and Omar Calhoun and saying "thanks but no thanks" is just silly.

 

[1999.2004.2011]

Cause it's definitely that easy...

By the way, Facey committed in August of his senior year. Samuel followed in September. Way to propagate a false narrative there.

When you have our pedigree, it should be:
-4 national titles in the past 15 years
-Coach is a 12 NBA veteran, who has a national championship ring
-We have one of the best basketball specific facilities in the country
-We have one of the largest alumni bases in the NBA of any team in the country over the past 20 years
-We have one of the largest fan bases in all of college basketball

What else do we need???

 

[caw]

If Stone is scared away because of Brimah, how else would you characterize it?

IIRC, Chukwu (who I'm not saying is that great, but am using as an example) chose Providence over us and said "[UConn] already has their center."

Chukwu also had SJU (the real one who has SJU branded) in his final two. He was going to a Catholic school.

Diamond Stone is choosing between his hometown school where half his extended family goes and his AAU sponsors home school. UConn would be the third school. Not saying it's not frustrating to not get him, but come on. Honestly people should be more concerned about losing out on other players like Ali, or even a few Georgetown got.

 

[Tenspro2002]

Chukwu also had SJU (the real one who has SJU branded) in his final two. He was going to a Catholic school.

Diamond Stone is choosing between his hometown school where half his extended family goes and his AAU sponsors home school. UConn would be the third school. Not saying it's not frustrating to not get him, but come on. Honestly people should be more concerned about losing out on other players like Ali, or even a few Georgetown got.

Stone is disappointing, but yes, losing a guy like that isn't cause for alarm.

On the other hand, Ali's de-commit and losing recruiting battles to the likes of VT, VCU, UNLV, and Marquette are.

Ali's de-commit in particular was worrisome, as he all but announced "UConn isn't big-time enough for me".

 

[johnhuskies95]

The conference is obviously a hindrance, but UNLV gets good kids every year. Memphis were monsters on the trail for years in CUSA, even after Calipari left.

So, it's not easy, but it can be overcome. You just need really good recruiters to do that and I'm not sure they have that right now.

Miller's never been a big recruiting guy and Hobbs hasn't landed a big time recruit since the Clinton administration.

Anyone know if Tom Moore is on the hot seat at Quinnipiac? He was a beast as an assistant here.

 

[Stainmaster]

When you have our pedigree, it should be:
-4 national titles in the past 15 years
-Coach is a 12 NBA veteran, who has a national championship ring
-We have one of the best basketball specific facilities in the country
-We have one of the largest alumni bases in the NBA of any team in the country over the past 20 years
-We have one of the largest fan bases in all of college basketball

What else do we need???

• Honestly, titles don't matter to kids. Why do Cuse/Kansas bring in blue-chip recruits each year? Hell, Kentucky's won only one this century but they're mopping the floor with everyone in recruiting. Arizona? Once in my lifetime but they're recruiting 4-5 star guys from all over the country.
  
• Coach has been recruiting for only five years and is going against people with 15-20 years of experience. Playing in the NBA doesn't make you great at recruiting.
  
• Where is there a comparison of our facilities?
• That's a falsehood. Our NBA numbers have dropped WAY off. We have only 8 in the league right now, and only Rudy, Kemba and Drummond are starting. Lamb and Gordon are buried on the bench, Shabazz is on his way to that same fate and Villanueva and Caron are role players at this stage of their careers. UK has around close to 20, same with Duke and UNC.
  
• How is this quantifiable?

I get it, everyone here thinks that recruiting requires spouting off a few talking points and waiting for kids to start bowing down to you. News flash -- your experience "recruiting" with College Hoops 2K8 by pressing a few buttons on an XBOX controller completely undersells how difficult it is.

 

[caw]

I am concerned about recruiting. That said, the recruiting should be good enough to be a top 25ish team and absolutely a tournament team. Next years class is around the 20th best already.

I am equally concerned about player development and talent evaluation. The fact that the staff spent so much time going after energy wings and not shooters is mind blowing to me.

They do seem to think they can teach shooting, I want to believe them because some of the kids have improved immensely since Ollie took over:

Boat has gone from 37% under Calhoun to 33% to 38% to 43% under KO
Napier went from 33% to 35.5% with Calhoun to 39.8% and 40.5% under KO
Giffey went from 32% to 42.9% with Calhoun to 29.4% and 48.3% under KO
Daniels went from 24% under Calhoun to 30.9% and 41.7% under KO
Kromah went from 31% and 22% at GW to 34% under KO

Calhoun has gone from 32% to 24% (injured) to 34% so far, though on 1.5 fewer shots, so this is neutral in a recovery year.
Purvis has shot 36% this year on 4 attempts per game so far after 38.5% at NCState on about 2 attempts per game (I consider this neutral at worst).

The only two multi year players who didn't/haven't improved as shooters under this staff are Samuel and Tolksdorf. Samuel hasn't exactly gotten worse, he just has never made one.

Hamilton and Cassell don't have good comparisons to see if they have improved or not as this is their first year in D1.

Even Brimahs range has increased considerably.

There was some improvement by Facey also over the summer but not enough.

 

[Connrack]

The conference is hurting recruiting. No question.

But can we at least recruit well enough to not finish in 6th place??? To be able to score easily in the 60's against this competition.

I'm not asking for much at this point.

I'm pretty sure we've lost stature because of our conference affiliation. Because of that, I think attracting a 5-star prospect to the team is rather unlikely and the coaching staff needs to adjust their recruiting strategy to reflect that reality. Zeroing in on 4- and 3-star recruits with high ceilings early and establishing a strong relationship with them, I think. is a plausible strategy. Gonzaga plays in a weak conference and they attract "players". Memphis and SMU have attracted talent. That said, I think it is easier for an in-conference team to recruit by saying to a prospect that he can play against UConn, the National Champions, than the other way around.

 

[businesslawyer]

Recruiting was hurt by a lack of scholarships and restrictions on our staff over the past couple of years. This was compounded by a couple of recruiting misses with players like Samuel, Nolan and Facey. A school that is expected to compete for national titles can't have this many misses when we only have 12 scholarships to give out. Maybe its time for us to heavily recruit the 1 and dones and step away from our recruitment of the 3/4 year players

Exactly! Let's abandon a gameplan that has won us twice as many championships as anyone else over the last sixteen years because it's been 11 months since our last championship.

 

[Sportsman5]

When we were in the former Big East playing against strong conference teams was our recruiting better? I think so. The conference affiliation is an anchor. But the upside is that we can say we are pretty much one of the teams that has a great chance to win our league every year.

Funny though that the women's team is still getting some of th top recruits and the AAC for women's hoops is a barren wasteland

the women play more top teams than any other team in the country. It also plays on national TV significantly more than any other team. Don't forget about their own $18 million practice facility. As far as I know there is no other womens team that has their own facility that is anything close. Unfortunately the men don't have these types of advantages.

 

[yankeewc]

We have never recruited a lot of top level talent. During the last 20 yrs., you could almost count the McDonald's All Americans that went to Uconn on one hand. We worked with the talent we had and became successful. However, we now find ourselves in a conference that is somewhat irrelevant and don't have the luxury of developing thse 2 and 3 star recruits. Unfortunately, we're on every recruits radar but the commitment never comes. If we can't get these guys with our history over the last twenty years. What's going to happen after 5 years in this league. God save the Husky.

 

[Huskygamble19]

Terence Ali said Uconn isnt big time enough for me. Gee I think 4 national titles would be big time enough. granted they are in a sub-par conference, but they were in that conference when we won the 4th. If i was a recruit I would surely see that Ollie can coach a less than talented team to the promised land. AAC is the bloodsucker in all this thinking, but the only thing we can achieve at this point is to make this sorry conference a lot better with better coaching to raise its viability. Either that or build a no way we can lose team in the future and hopefully the football team gets real good real fast.

 

[TouchdownHusky]

We are always in a recruits top 3 r 5. Sometimes its all on position and who can offer more playing time. UCONN is a young team and the only position really open was point. Example....If a big man thinks Brimah is a challenge, they might not want to chance it (Diamond Stone) Maryland and Wisconsin has a better position available for a big man

Then UConn should pull in 5 top recruits cuz all positions are wide open.

 

[David 76]

Let's calm down and not assume that after winning a NC we are suddenly in a death spiral

Recruiting needs to be improved. But it's tricky. Facey, Calhoun and Cassel were pretty good gets that, so far haven;t worked out. Whereas Brimah, Samuel & Lubin were lower-rated recruits and AB has been a plus. Our top tier, I think, are Hamilton, Boat & Purvis and even with the new guys hitting some bumps in the road, they are our most solid guys.
So what does it mean for recruiting? Five stars & near five stars are good to get. After that, at least for us, it's a crap shoot. So do we need to get better at finding good players in the 50-100 range? Or get better at recruiting top 50 guys? Both? I think both. We may need to recruit 2 top 50 players a year and hope that our over 50 guys are more like Brimah than Samuel.

 

[David 76]

Do we know Ali really said that? I thought e left because we had Adams and were going after other top guards (Briscoe) plus we had purvis & Hamilton

 

[zls44]

You could always hire assistant coaches based on qualifications rather than the school name on their degrees. There's that.

 

[Stainmaster]

Do we know Ali really said that? I thought e left because we had Adams and were going after other top guards (Briscoe) plus we had purvis & Hamilton

Who cares? It fits the narrative that the sky is falling.

 

[Huskies2324]

Jim Calhoun seems to have some time on his hands. Why can't we get a HOF coach to get on the road and advocate for the program a bit?

 

[polycom]

The issue is many(read:most) have no idea what is necessary to be a good recruiter. Bringing up championships, coach is a NBA vet..etc...more than likely doesn't matter because if it did...our recruiting would look much different. What is hurting our recruiting is 2 things the first being our current conference situation, the second being a factor that honestly I'm not sure of. Until we figure it out the recruiting will continue to go as it has recently fairly average, although I'm confident our coaching staff will figure it out.

 

[Tenspro2002]

Do we know Ali really said that? I thought e left because we had Adams and were going after other top guards (Briscoe) plus we had purvis & Hamilton

Ali de-committed before we got Adams. It is true that we were still pursuing a number of top guards at the time though.

But what really precipitated his de-commitment was having a monster tournament at some big AAU event. Seems like he decided he wanted a bigger spotlight than a commitment to UConn would give him. (This was the same event that Turtle Jackson had a horrible showing at and ultimately led to a mutual parting of ways and his commitment to Georgia -- probably a good outcome for both sides.)

 

[blackbird]

We've got a lot of talent in Hamilton and Purvis.

Here's a controversial opinion. We need to recruit a real point guard. We haven't actually had one since Price. The NC teams couldn't even score that well (although last year's was better than most years.) What we've had was tiny shooting guards running the point. You want to score..you need a floor general and someone who can run an offense. We've got to get out of this midget shooting guard pattern. I know it worked with Shabazz and Kemba..but that's because they were great. In most cases it won't..and that experiment will never produce a lot of points.

 

[caw]

We've got a lot of talent in Hamilton and Purvis.

Here's a controversial opinion. We need to recruit a real point guard. We haven't actually had one since Price. The NC teams couldn't even score that well (although last year's was better than most years.) What we've had was tiny shooting guards running the point. You want to score..you need a floor general and someone who can run an offense. We've got to get out of this midget shooting guard pattern. I know it worked with Shabazz and Kemba..but that's because they were great. In most cases it won't..and that experiment will never produce a lot of points.

That's an interesting thought but I disagree a bit because Napier his Junior and Senior year was a true PG in every sense of the word. He could also score. The issue that may fit better is that UConn hasn't had a tallish PG since AJ.

I love Walker, Napier and Boat but I do think the lack of height/length did affect their abilities to some extent as passers.

Adams is a bit of a scoring guard but he looks a legit 6 foot 2 or 6 foot 3 and he's got an incredibly long wingspan.

Next year will be the first year Ollie will have a team he has recruited which includes (it appears) taller PGs like he was.

 

[CardiacAndre7]

That's an interesting thought but I disagree a bit because Napier his Junior and Senior year was a true PG in every sense of the word. He could also score. The issue that may fit better is that UConn hasn't had a tallish PG since AJ.

I love Walker, Napier and Boat but I do think the lack of height/length did affect their abilities to some extent as passers.

Adams is a bit of a scoring guard but he looks a legit 6 foot 2 or 6 foot 3 and he's got an incredibly long wingspan.

Next year will be the first year Ollie will have a team he has recruited which includes (it appears) taller PGs like he was.

I'm excited for Adams and hopefully he makes the transition from go-to-guy on Brewster to facilitator.

 

[ConnEd]

And the argument generally that guys at the upper echelon are seeing players like Terence Samuel and Omar Calhoun and saying "thanks but no thanks" is just silly.

Samuel and Omar are bench guys. Wings are being scared off by Purvis and Hamilton, PGs by Adams, centers by Brimah. By that, I mean the top guys who want starting jobs or big minutes as freshmen. PF's should not be scared off, but we have a ton already - Lubin, Facey, Enoch, Nolan - and can't afford to take anything but a top 25 guy who can step in and take the job on day 1.
I think Adams can succeed with this roster as a pass first PG who penetrates and shoots well enough to knock down open 3's. They need a rebounding monster of a 4 who can pass from the high post and hit a 15-17 ft jumper to let D Ham play outside against zones. It's not that he isn't good at the FT line taking that entry pass. It's just that he's not an offensive rebounder and neither is AB. They could also use John Gwynn.

 

[traitor71]

Calhoun, TSam, and Phil also are not integral parts of next year's offense, and don't need to be. If we can get solid secondary minutes out of them, that's great. This offense moving forward runs through a Adams, Brimah, perhaps Enoch, and grown-up versions of Purvis and Hamilton. Secondary contributions from Lubin, Phil, TSam, and Omar would just be gravy.

Two guys that aren't here yet and a guy that has no clue what to do with the ball when it is in his hands. Good lord that is scary.

 

[3rdbass]

Samuel and Omar are bench guys. Wings are being scared off by Purvis and Hamilton, PGs by Adams, centers by Brimah. By that, I mean the top guys who want starting jobs or big minutes as freshmen. PF's should not be scared off, but we have a ton already - Lubin, Facey, Enoch, Nolan - and can't afford to take anything but a top 25 guy who can step in and take the job on day 1.
I think Adams can succeed with this roster as a pass first PG who penetrates and shoots well enough to knock down open 3's. They need a rebounding monster of a 4 who can pass from the high post and hit a 15-17 ft jumper to let D Ham play outside against zones. It's not that he isn't good at the FT line taking that entry pass. It's just that he's not an offensive rebounder and neither is AB. They could also use John Gwynn.

You really think diamond stone was scared off by AB? If any center was scared off by AB I don't want him. AB is an adequate center who can't play against real strong tall big guys. Maybe he will be a lot better next year with a full offseason but right now he is decent but far from scaring off real recruits at that position.

 

[3rdbass]

That's an interesting thought but I disagree a bit because Napier his Junior and Senior year was a true PG in every sense of the word. He could also score. The issue that may fit better is that UConn hasn't had a tallish PG since AJ.

I love Walker, Napier and Boat but I do think the lack of height/length did affect their abilities to some extent as passers.

Adams is a bit of a scoring guard but he looks a legit 6 foot 2 or 6 foot 3 and he's got an incredibly long wingspan.

Next year will be the first year Ollie will have a team he has recruited which includes (it appears) taller PGs like he was.

Are real problem is that we can't recruit even adequate big man rebounders. Are small point guards have done fine but we have been lacking too much upfront physically that we get overmatched there. Calhoun's teams were always good rebounding teams. Hopefully we can find an Adrien, rod sellers, Marcus white, josh Boone, edmund Saunders, Kirk King or jake voskul guy too toughen us up inside.

 

[ConnHuskBask]

The idea that recruits are scared off by our incumbent players is by far the weakest excuse with regards to our lack of recruiting success.

Yes, an NIT team that losses it's best player can't recruit due to its core being so strong.