UConn Basketball Recruiting Chart

[upstater]

That's 6 out of 8 cases of bad recruiting.

Haralson was touted as a sharpshooter, but was skittish and unproductive. Miles was just a bad apple. Majok we should have been able to see the writing on the wall about NCAA difficulties and family concerns. Jamal Coombs-McDaniel was a bad fit, both in terms of his talents being overrated (like Haralson) and in terms of headbutting with JC. Frankly, Oriakhi hasn't been too much different, only that he was given playing time outright since he was expected to be our post anchor for 3+ years. And Smith and Trice just didn't belong in a Husky uniform; they were bad, desperation signings when we failed to land the guys we wanted.

Most of that is on the coaching staff.

Two of those kids were keys to an NCAA championship season. Even Jamal Coombs-McDaniel kept UConn afloat in at least 3 games when the team was struggling, and one could argue the team's seed would have been much different without him.

Majok was a Sudanese refugee. Bad recruiting taking a chance on a kid like that? Please.

Smith and Trice were no different than the 12th and 13th kid at the end of the bench on a great many successful UConn teams. Go back and look at the 13th player from the past. Some of these kids don't contribute until their very last season. You would have to be a fortune teller to know ahead of time that Darius Smith would never turn into a Donnell Beverly or Craig Austrie.

 

[Philawolf]

Hey Huskies I just wanted to give you some updates:

For those of you who were having issues with the size of the chart being too large and having to scroll left to right, I've made a fix so that viewing the page should be easier with no scrolling.

The rankings are now in lock-step with ESPN, Scout and Rivals. I've now put in place a process that checks for new rankings nightly, so they should stay in sync. I've also added the change between the current rankings and the previous rankings for each player.

I've added a check for changes in the star value for each player's profile at Scout, Rivals and ESPN, so issues with the star values being "stale" for players should now be addressed.

I've added the team committed to for the player ranking pages, and addressed the issue where the 2013 rankings weren't showing up properly.

I've also added twitter profiles for every ranked recruit (overall or by position) that I could find for the classes of 2012 and 2013.

Take a look and let me know what you think.

http://verbalcommits.com/schools/14

 

[Ed-D]

This is great stuff. What struck me is that Kentucky is in the process of (again) putting together a great class. Not sure how Calipari does it (and neither is the NCAA, it would appear). Also Providence has quietly signed two of the most highly-touted players. Some big prizes are still out there though.

 

[caw]

Two of those kids were keys to an NCAA championship season. Even Jamal Coombs-McDaniel kept UConn afloat in at least 3 games when the team was struggling, and one could argue the team's seed would have been much different without him.

Majok was a Sudanese refugee. Bad recruiting taking a chance on a kid like that? Please.

Smith and Trice were no different than the 12th and 13th kid at the end of the bench on a great many successful UConn teams. Go back and look at the 13th player from the past. Some of these kids don't contribute until their very last season. You would have to be a fortune teller to know ahead of time that Darius Smith would never turn into a Donnell Beverly or Craig Austrie.

I agree, if UConn had a full 13 scholarships 1 or more of those players may still be at UConn (I would bet on Trice or Harellson).

Majok's family issues were bigger than expected but if he had stayed he might have been a pretty darn good college player eventually.

Miles was a great talent who wasn't a horrible kid, but def. did not follow NCAA rules. I think he would have benefited from having JC as his coach but he messed up too much before JC got a shot at him.

Jamal Coombs-McDaniel just had it in his head he was a star when he should have had it in his head he was a role player.

 

[Philawolf]

I agree, if UConn had a full 13 scholarships 1 or more of those players may still be at UConn...

I read this and was struck by the indication that UConn may not have the full compliment of 13 scholarships due to a scholarship reduction of some sort. Is this so? I want to update your chart to appropriately capture the scholarship situation.

 

[caw]

I read this and was struck by the indication that UConn may not have the full compliment of 13 scholarships due to a scholarship reduction of some sort. Is this so? I want to update your chart to appropriately capture the scholarship situation.

I'm just going to assume you are serious and not be snarky.

UConn is missing 3 scholarships this year. 2 because of APR issues and 1 due to NCAA sanctions. Drummond is technically a walk-on. So UConn has 10 scholarship players this year and Drummond. Next year UConn might get 1 or 2 scholarships back due to the past few years having an increase in APR scores. The 1 missing due to NCAA sanctions will not come back until after next year, I believe.

 

[Philawolf]

I'm just going to assume you are serious and not be snarky.

UConn is missing 3 scholarships this year. 2 because of APR issues and 1 due to NCAA sanctions. Drummond is technically a walk-on. So UConn has 10 scholarship players this year and Drummond. Next year UConn might get 1 or 2 scholarships back due to the past few years having an increase in APR scores. The 1 missing due to NCAA sanctions will not come back until after next year, I believe.

Totally sincere question. I had no idea you guys were under scholarship restrictions for APR scores. I think our football team might have the same problem, I saw something to that effect when the NCAA announced some new standard relating to the APR scores, and NC State has been on probation before as well, so there would be little to no room for me to engage in snark. For future reference when I'm snarky its usually directed at myself.

 

[Ricky1Moore]

Totally sincere question. I had no idea you guys were under scholarship restrictions for APR scores. I think our football team might have the same problem, I saw something to that effect when the NCAA announced some new standard relating to the APR scores, and NC State has been on probation before as well, so there would be little to no room for me to engage in snark. For future reference when I'm snarky its usually directed at myself.

This is part of the ridiculousness of the NCAA changing the apr rules retroactively. We have already been punished for those old apr scores with the scholarship deductions. The new system punishes us twice, and doesn't punish any of the kids that had were here for the bad apr scores (except oriakhi, though he did not contribute to bad apr).

I'm pretty sure the rule will be changed in the spring to use more recent scores, but with the NCAA you just never know

 

[caw]

Totally sincere question. I had no idea you guys were under scholarship restrictions for APR scores. I think our football team might have the same problem, I saw something to that effect when the NCAA announced some new standard relating to the APR scores, and NC State has been on probation before as well, so there would be little to no room for me to engage in snark. For future reference when I'm snarky its usually directed at myself.

It's just a bit surprising you haven't heard of at least some of these issues at UConn, considering the news it got since 2009 and you seem to follow college basketball pretty closely. It is mentioned in most every article about UConn (slight exaggeration, but just slight). Considering your posting history, I answered you seriously. I meant I wouldn't be snarky in my response.

 

[DonaldDraper]

Philawolf, how about using a median ranking to make up for outliers like drummond who may not be listed in a service for one reason or another? That may capture the rank better.

 

[Philawolf]

It's just a bit surprising you haven't heard of at least some of these issues at UConn, considering the news it got since 2009 and you seem to follow college basketball pretty closely. It is mentioned in most every article about UConn (slight exaggeration, but just slight). Considering your posting history, I answered you seriously. I meant I wouldn't be snarky in my response.

You know I remember reading something weird going on with the late reclassification of Drummond and you guys having to juggle scholarships around, but I didn't put two and two together when I was creating the site and saw that it looked like you guys had scholarships to spare. I should have asked myself then, "If they have scholarships to spare, why all the drama surrounding Drummond?"

Oh, and of course it would help if I could read tense you said "be snarky" not "being snarky". Duh

 

[Philawolf]

Philawolf, how about using a median ranking to make up for outliers like drummond who may not be listed in a service for one reason or another? That may capture the rank better.

Thats a really good idea, I know that an earlier poster mentioned an index of all the rankings was already out there. I'll have to figure something out in this respect, as I'm guessing that unless Rivals updates their player rankings for 2012 one more time Nerlens Noel will suffer the same fate as Drummond due to his late reclassification. Right now, I've still got his rankings from 2013 for Rivals, but if the next update doesn't include both, I'm going to end up with some really wonky results.

 

[caw]

You know I remember reading something weird going on with the late reclassification of Drummond and you guys having to juggle scholarships around, but I didn't put two and two together when I was creating the site and saw that it looked like you guys had scholarships to spare. I should have asked myself then, "If they have scholarships to spare, why all the drama surrounding Drummond?"

Oh, and of course it would help if I could read tense you said "be snarky" not "being snarky". Duh

No worries man.