Tara and recruiting? | The Boneyard

Tara and recruiting?

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Has Tara done something new with recruiting? For at least a decade, her recruiting was always good, but not great, except for the O sisters. But recently, she has had a real uptick: Lexie Hull, Haley Jones, Cameron Brick, and Brooke Demetre.

Is she doing something different?

With that kind of talent, she will be most dangerous in the tournament, as we know.

Thoughts?
 

CocoHusky

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Has Tara done something new with recruiting? For at least a decade, her recruiting was always good, but not great, except for the O sisters. But recently, she has had a real uptick: Lexie Hull, Haley Jones, Cameron Brick, and Brooke Demetre. Is she doing something different?
With that kind of talent, she will be most dangerous in the tournament, as we know.
Thoughts?
@triaddukefan and @CamrnCrz1974 are not going to like this but I think the decline of the Duke program has a lot to do with Stanford's uptick in recruiting. Traditionally for women that were both academically & BB gifted there were three main destinations ( Duke, Stanford, ND) and only two remain. Brink, Demetre, Carrington and Jones were all kids that made decisions to stay home or close to home and play. But if you look back a little further Tara has pulled kids out of Georgia (Dotson & Jenna Brown) and Florida (Fingall) and Virginia (Wilson). Traditionally some of these kids would have ended up at Duke if the program had just maintained.
 

CamrnCrz1974

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@triaddukefan and @CamrnCrz1974 are not going to like this but I think the decline of the Duke program has a lot to do with Stanford's uptick in recruiting. Traditionally for women that were both academically & BB gifted there were three main destinations ( Duke, Stanford, ND) and only two remain. Brink, Demetre, Carrington and Jones were all kids that made decisions to stay home or close to home and play. But if you look back a little further Tara has pulled kids out of Georgia (Dotson & Jenna Brown) and Florida (Fingall) and Virginia (Wilson). Traditionally some of these kids would have ended up at Duke if the program had just maintained.

@CocoHusky , it is not about whether @triaddukefan and I like it. It is simply what actually happened.

On August 15, 2018 and again on November 19, 2018, I explained how Gail Goestenkors leaving Duke in April 2007 led to "rebirths" (if you will) of Notre Dame and Stanford -- or at least created circumstances of which ND and Stanford could take advantage.

April 2007 - Gail Goestenkors leaves Duke for Texas.
May 2007 - ND hires Niele Ivey as an assistant coach.

  1. When Gail Goesteknors left Duke in 2007, her teams had made 4 Final Fours and 7 Elite Eights in the previous 10 seasons.
  2. When Gail left Duke in 2007, her record was 2-2 against Geno Auriemma (winning the last two matchups, both in Connecticut).
  3. When Gail left Duke, her record was 5-4 against Pat Summitt (including winning the last three matchups, winning the last two matchups in Knoxville, and going 3-0 against the recruiting class of Parker/Hornbuckle/Fuller/Anosike).
  4. Had Goestenkors stayed at Duke, Nneka Ogwumike would have attended Duke (info from Nneka to Alana Beard to my source).
  5. Had Nneka gone to Duke, Chiney Ogwumike would have gone to Duke (info from Nneka to Beard to my source).
  6. Had G stayed at Duke, Skylar Diggins likely would have gone to Duke (per my source). But Muffet McGraw and Niele Ivey had targeted and recruited Diggins for years; getting her was the beginning of something truly great for the Irish.
And Notre Dame was able to leverage Diggins into getting other great recruits -- and to emerge as a perennial national title contender. Stanford used the Ogwumike sisters to also leverage other great players and became a consistent Final Four contender this decade.

Had Gail Goestenkors stayed at Duke, I firmly believe that the Blue Devils would have emerged as the new rival for UConn -- or at least continued being the program that could pose a threat to UConn's dominance.
The two biggest beneficiaries of Gail Goesktenkors leaving Duke were Muffet McGraw and Tara Vanderveer.

And let me repeat - that is what is so frustrating for me, as a Duke grad/fan - to see where the program was, where the program is, and what the program should have become but did not.

@triaddukefan
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TheFarmFan

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I'm less familiar with Stanford recruiting in the 2000s than in the 2010s, and I am always skeptical of "if this had happened then that would have happened" counterfactuals, but I'll re-quote from my post from about a month back, which addresses what I know about Stanford recruiting over the past 5-10 years, and why I think Tara is on a hot streak which - tl;dr - doesn't actually have all that much to do with her:

Since we're talking about my alma mater, here's my two cents:

Stanford coaches have said that in the average year, roughly 5-10 of the Top 100 girl's basketball recruits are ultimately admissible at Stanford, which means that Stanford is not actually actively recruiting anywhere near as many players as other top programs, because they simply won't get in. You can see this early on because in most years we start with about 10-15 or so hopeful targets early in the recruiting class's sophomore years, and then they dwindle down to a handful by the end once it's clear who's admissible, etc.

In some seasons, the admissible players don't happen fall among the top in the country, and suddenly we're recruiting players no one had been following much. A good example of this was the recruiting class of 2015, which just graduated. There was one top 30 player we were actively recruiting, and y'all know her pretty well: KLS. When she decided to go east, that was it for us for top players. Next highest recruit was Marta Sniezek, #38. Tara saw the writing on the wall early, which is why we ended up with Alanna Smith - the first international player Stanford ever recruited. And suddenly we signed Shannon Coffee and Alexa Romano, two players no one had on our radar or were nationally recruited by the big programs. But they had the grades/test scores and could fill spots on the roster, so in they came. (Tara makes a point of always filling all 15 roster spots because she wants to give as many young women the opportunity to get a Stanford degree as she can.)

In other recruiting cycles, for whatever reason, a number of the top recruits are admissible, and we tend to land most of them: the class of 2019, with Jones, Belibi, and Prechtel, is the rare class where we can get 3 top 20 recruits. And the fact that we've found 3 top 5 recruits in 3 classes is also really unusual for us (with Brink in 2020 and Demetre in 2021), because often times the very best girl's basketball players don't care enough about academics to want to work that hard to make Stanford possible. If you know you want to be a pro baller, it may just not be worth it to you, even if you could. Bueckers seems like an example of such a candidate: based on her GPA, etc., I would bet she could get into Stanford if she really wanted to take the extra APs, summer schools, etc., but she's clearly angling to be the next DT, so is Stanford really that worth jumping through all the extra hoops vs. getting 4 years of hoops coaching from Geno? Probably not.

That said, once you have top recruits who have been told they are admissible, the process totally flips: we rarely tend to lose out to players who have been admitted. If Williams was admitted at Stanford and chose UConn, that is news to me; no one on the Stanford board ever thought she was a likely prospect and her admission was never mentioned anywhere around our parts. The recent players we've known were admitted to Stanford and went elsewhere include Skylar Diggins (ND) and Mikayla Pivec (OSU). KLS had actually declared UConn before we ever heard that she had been admitted, but I think everyone assumed she would have been given her sisters.

Incidentally, my guess is that Dalayah Daniels is one of those players who's waiting to confirm admissibility and that she will come to Stanford if she gets the big envelope. Although players like Brink and Demetre will sometimes commit relatively early in their high school careers (Anna Wilson was another example), not every recruit can get the assurance until early senior year, with final SAT scores, etc.

As for Sonia Citron, and back to the topic of this thread, I'll be interested to see what happens with her. She's from Scarsdale, which, like Garfield High in Seattle (Daniels' school), is definitely a feeder for Stanford, which means there will be more expectation of her going to a place like Stanford than for some other recruits. No idea which way that cuts, but she does have the profile of the Stanford target.

My view of it is you go Geno if you want to maximize your chances of a career as a baller, and go Stanford otherwise. For that reason, I have nothing but respect for the KLS and Bueckers of the worlds - their picks make total sense.

Just my two (ok, looks more like 12) cents.
 

bballnut90

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@CocoHusky , it is not about whether @triaddukefan and I like it. It is simply what actually happened.

On August 15, 2018 and again on November 19, 2018, I explained how Gail Goestenkors leaving Duke in April 2007 led to "rebirths" (if you will) of Notre Dame and Stanford -- or at least created circumstances of which ND and Stanford could take advantage.

April 2007 - Gail Goestenkors leaves Duke for Texas.
May 2007 - ND hires Niele Ivey as an assistant coach.

  1. When Gail Goesteknors left Duke in 2007, her teams had made 4 Final Fours and 7 Elite Eights in the previous 10 seasons.
  2. When Gail left Duke in 2007, her record was 2-2 against Geno Auriemma (winning the last two matchups, both in Connecticut).
  3. When Gail left Duke, her record was 5-4 against Pat Summitt (including winning the last three matchups, winning the last two matchups in Knoxville, and going 3-0 against the recruiting class of Parker/Hornbuckle/Fuller/Anosike).
  4. Had Goestenkors stayed at Duke, Nneka Ogwumike would have attended Duke (info from Nneka to Alana Beard to my source).
  5. Had Nneka gone to Duke, Chiney Ogwumike would have gone to Duke (info from Nneka to Beard to my source).
  6. Had G stayed at Duke, Skylar Diggins likely would have gone to Duke (per my source). But Muffet McGraw and Niele Ivey had targeted and recruited Diggins for years; getting her was the beginning of something truly great for the Irish.
And Notre Dame was able to leverage Diggins into getting other great recruits -- and to emerge as a perennial national title contender. Stanford used the Ogwumike sisters to also leverage other great players and became a consistent Final Four contender this decade.

Had Gail Goestenkors stayed at Duke, I firmly believe that the Blue Devils would have emerged as the new rival for UConn -- or at least continued being the program that could pose a threat to UConn's dominance.
The two biggest beneficiaries of Gail Goesktenkors leaving Duke were Muffet McGraw and Tara Vanderveer.

And let me repeat - that is what is so frustrating for me, as a Duke grad/fan - to see where the program was, where the program is, and what the program should have become but did not.

@triaddukefan
@EricLA
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Worth noting too, even if she didnt land Diggins or the Ogwumikes, the cupboard was far from bare and Duke wouldve likely stayed a huge force under GG:

Abby Waner was a junior in 07-08 and coming off a season where she led Duke in scoring. That season Duke went undefeated during the regular season. And was the #1 overall team entering the NCAAs. She also had a very good 6-5 center back in Chante Black. Waner's promising career took a nose dive under P, and Black was good but didnt develop into an AA post.

She landed Jasmine Thomas and Krystal Thomas, both top 10 recruits who didnt fully shine at Duke under P but proved their abilities in the pros. Also had Karima Christmas who never really blossomed at Duke and has carved out a nice pro career. If those 3 develop under GG instead of P, they may reach more of their potential at a younger age and are likely a much stronger offensive team in 2009. 2010, and 2011.

It was a long time ago now, but people should remember that Duke was the only program that was consistently a peer to both UCONN and Tennessee from 2001-2007. Almost every year Duke was strongly in the title hunt and feared at the same level as those 2 programs. It is crazy how far the program has fallen under P, especially since she recruited so well for a long time too.
 
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I know that Tara has been telling recruits for at least the last five years that she "will coach as long as I want to coach" when they have asked whether she will stay the full four years of their basketball careers.

The strong Class of 2019 recruits for Stanford likely don't fully believe that Tara will be there for all of their careers, but they recognize the future value of a Stanford degree as well as have an understanding that the program will be in good hands with Kate Paye at the helm following Tara's retirement.

I would speculate that Tara hasn't changed her recruiting ways much during the past five year other than allowing her assistants to do more of the traveling to watch the top recruits. She prefers to work on her relationships with the top recruits over the phone.
 
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triaddukefan

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This thread was about Stanford, but now Im here looking like this


pup.jpg
 
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@triaddukefan and @CamrnCrz1974 are not going to like this but I think the decline of the Duke program has a lot to do with Stanford's uptick in recruiting. Traditionally for women that were both academically & BB gifted there were three main destinations ( Duke, Stanford, ND) and only two remain. Brink, Demetre, Carrington and Jones were all kids that made decisions to stay home or close to home and play. But if you look back a little further Tara has pulled kids out of Georgia (Dotson & Jenna Brown) and Florida (Fingall) and Virginia (Wilson). Traditionally some of these kids would have ended up at Duke if the program had just maintained.
Yeah, the academically gifted Francesca Belibi was Stanford bound all the way, plus being in Pac-12 her folks would be able to see games at Colorado. Tara’s mother lives in Boulder, by the way...
 

oldude

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There is always a relative argument when it comes to academic excellence. ND & Duke are certainly excellent schools, but Stanford is, and has always been in a class by itself when it comes to academics, reputation, endowment and alumni among top D1 athletic programs. Stanford is matched only by the Ivies and perhaps MIT when it comes to academic reputation.

In addition, in the present world where transfers are a fact of life for every major basketball program, Stanford is alone in their ability to fill 15 endowed scholarship spots on the roster and keep those players for 4 years whether they play or not, primarily for the prestige of earning a Stanford degree.

Finally, Stanford has been a top 10 program for some time. On paper, Stanford’s recent recruiting success appears formidable. It remains to be seen if Tara can get back to the top of WBB by winning another national championship. Time will tell.
 

Plebe

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There is always a relative argument when it comes to academic excellence. ND & Duke are certainly excellent schools, but Stanford is, and has always been in a class by itself when it comes to academics, reputation, endowment and alumni among top D1 athletic programs. Stanford is matched only by the Ivies and perhaps MIT when it comes to academic reputation.

In addition, in the present world where transfers are a fact of life for every major basketball program, Stanford is alone in their ability to fill 15 endowed scholarship spots on the roster and keep those players for 4 years whether they play or not, primarily for the prestige of earning a Stanford degree.

Finally, Stanford has been a top 10 program for some time. On paper, Stanford’s recent recruiting success appears formidable. It remains to be seen if Tara can get back to the top of WBB by winning another national championship. Time will tell.
In most college rankings, Notre Dame is a distant 3rd to Stanford and then Duke.

Generally speaking, the people who try to claim ND is on par with the other two are blowhard Notre Dame fans, the same ones who were highly moved by the tragic story of Manti Te'o's girlfriend.
 

Plebe

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Closer than I would've expected in the USNews rankings which has them #6, #10, #15.
Yeah that's the most generous I've seen. Another symptom of the downward spiral of traditional media outlets ;)

Forbes has them 2, 9 and 18. Niche.com has them 2, 6 and 17. Washington Monthly had them 1, 11 and 24.
 
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Yeah, the academically gifted Francesca Belibi was Stanford bound all the way, plus being in Pac-12 her folks would be able to see games at Colorado. Tara’s mother lives in Boulder, by the way...
Belibi is the gem of all incoming freshmen. She can do things no one else can. She’s still a little raw, but has mountains of potential.
 
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Stanford's academics, and their network, after graduation, is just so amazing, and attractive. I have worked with many Stanford grads in my industry, and if the recruit is looking for great academics, great athletics, it is just so difficult to recruit against Stanford. Not too many kids who want both choose another school.
 

TheFarmFan

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Stanford's academics, and their network, after graduation, is just so amazing, and attractive. I have worked with many Stanford grads in my industry, and if the recruit is looking for great academics, great athletics, it is just so difficult to recruit against Stanford. Not too many kids who want both choose another school.
Incidentally, your team’s own Mikayla Pivec is one of the rare Stanford admit offers who went elsewhere. She certainly seems to be the model of a student athlete at OSU, with a near 4.0 in BioHealth Sciences.
 

Dillon77

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Had G stayed at Duke, Skylar Diggins likely would have gone to Duke (per my source). But Muffet McGraw and Niele Ivey had targeted and recruited Diggins for years; getting her was the beginning of something truly great for the Irish.

Thanks for your thorough and candid examination of Duke and it's fortunes both with and after GG left. Has to be hard.

I've read numerous articles on the courtship of Skylar Diggins and virtually all of them focus on Stanford and Notre Dame. That makes sense given that GG was in Austin by the closing innings, so to speak. Nonethelss, your factoid adds to one of the thread's premises on how the three schools are often after many of the same players. While Diggins stayed in South Bend, Duke won the services of Rebecca Greenwell, who ND really wanted (and I really liked.)

Here's an excerpt on the Stanford - ND decision from a very recent profile on Diggins on the USA Basketball site:

"Diggins-Smith grew up in South Bend, Indiana, just eight miles away from the University of Notre Dame, and started in basketball when she was young. After being named to the all-state team three times in high school, she went on to play four seasons at Notre Dame after choosing the Fighting Irish over Stanford University.

“It was like a perfect scenario for me, because I got to stay home,” she said. “You think you want to go far, but I kind of wanted to stay home, because I knew realistically that it would be hard for my parents to go all the way to see me play at Stanford. It was a perfect situation that I had with coach Muffet McGraw. And so, it worked out pretty well.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BTW, I've been going through a somewhat similar experience with the ND womens' soccer team that was a constant Final Four presence until Randy Waldrum left to coach in the pro's. Now the Irish are mired in mediocrity...:(. In fact, last year was the first in decades that they didn't qualify for the NCAA's.
 

CamrnCrz1974

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Thanks for your thorough and candid examination of Duke and it's fortunes both with and after GG left. Has to be hard.

I've read numerous articles on the courtship of Skylar Diggins and virtually all of them focus on Stanford and Notre Dame. That makes sense given that GG was in Austin by the closing innings, so to speak. Nonethelss, your factoid adds to one of the thread's premises on how the three schools are often after many of the same players.

Goestenkors left Duke toward the end of Diggins' sophomore year in high school. Duke was never a serious contender (or any type of contender, really) for Diggins under McCallie; it was a race between two schools (Stanford and Notre Dame) from then on.

My source works in women's basketball at the highest of levels. Nneka Ogwumike (HS 2008) told Alana Beard she would have gone to Duke had Goestenkors stayed (and Beard told my source immediately afterward). And Chiney Ogwumike (HS 2010) would have followed her sister to Duke, had Goestenkors stayed.

The information about Skylar Diggins (HS 2009) was that it was "likely" -- not a certainty -- that she would have gone to Duke had Goestenkors stayed (whereas it was "definite" with respect to the Ogwumike sisters). Had Diggins picked Duke, her first season's teammate would have included a junior Jasmine Thomas, a sophomore Nneka Ogwumike, a junior Krystal Thomas, a junior Karima Christmas, among others.

On the other hand, had Diggins gone to Duke, it is very likely that Duke would not have had Chelsea Gray (HS 2010), as Diggins would have been the lead guard for the four years that she was at Duke (with Jasmine Thomas being a secondary ballhandler, similar to how Wanisha Smith played PG as a freshman out of necessity at Duke but was an off-guard with secondary playmaking responsibilities when Lindsey Harding returned).

On another note, even if Goestenkors had stayed but Diggins still picked Notre Dame, Duke might not have won the Chelsea Gray recruitment. One thing that McCallie has done better than Goestenkors is recruiting in California.
  • Goestenkors was only able to land two top (either MCDAA or WBCA AA) players from California -- Brooke Smith (HS 2002) and Rometra Craig (HS 2000) -- but both players transferred (to Stanford and USC, respectively).
  • In fact, the most successful California player under Goestenkors was Nicole Erickson, who transferred from Purdue for her junior and senior seasons at Duke, where she was an All-ACC player and was twice named to the NCAA Tournament All-Region.
  • On the other hand, McCallie was able to land the following MCDAA players from California: Chelsea Gray, Oderah Chidom, Kendall Cooper, and current senior Leaonna Odom.

While Diggins stayed in South Bend, Duke won the services of Rebecca Greenwell, who ND really wanted (and I really liked.)

I must admit, I was very surprised that Greenwell picked Duke over Notre Dame (or Louisville, for that matter).

Greenwell was part of the vaunted 2013 recruiting class for Duke, with three MCDAAs (Greenwell, Chidom, and Cooper), plus Kianna Holland (top 35/40 player who transferred to Ohio State). Greenwell just "looked" like a "Muffet McGraw-type" -- fluid wing player with shooting range. Watching the 2013 Sweet 16 game between Louisville and Baylor, I commented how Greenwell (who was graduating HS) would have done very well in Jeff Walz's system that he deployed to take down Brittney Griner and Baylor.

Side note...Greenwell worked as a special assistant for Duke as well as a color commentator for Duke Women's Basketball through the Blue Devil Network on GoDuke.com. during 2018-19, after graduating with her BA in psychology with a Markets & Management Studies certificate then attending the Fuqua School of Business). She is now the "Operations Assistant -- Basketball Development" for the NBA's Atlanta Hawks.

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