UCONN possibly landing Batouly Camara? | Page 3 | The Boneyard

UCONN possibly landing Batouly Camara?

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So that is 12 players on the roster for the 17/18 season? That's about the limit for a UConn team. So how many more can Coach Geno take in from the 2017 and 2018 high school recruiting classes? Does this throw a spanner in the works?
 
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So that is 12 players on the roster for the 17/18 season? That's about the limit for a UConn team. So how many more can Coach Geno take in from the 2017 and 2018 high school recruiting classes? Does this throw a spanner in the works?
 

HuskyNan

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I agree with what you posted. However, I can't remember a starter or anyone playing significant minutes transferring out of UConn. There was a guard around 2000, who was a starter by default, several other guards, including Sue Bird, were injured. When she discovered she would not be starting the following year, she transferred out. I'm sure old timers will remember her name and the circumstances.
Kennitra Johnson was a key player on the 2000 National Championship team, was named to the All-Big East Rookie team, and averaged over 22 minutes a game. But she's painfully shy and was uncomfortable with the intense scrutiny the UConn players get.

Liz Sherwood was averaged only 8.5 minutes a game but she had an early season injury and a mid-season illness. Also named to the All-BE Rookie team, she was expected to be a key player in her sophomore year. Geno was very unhappy to lose Liz but she realized during the season that sh just chose the wrong school.

Samarie Walker averaged 18.8 minutes in her freshman year. No one really knows why she left; I'm not sure if Geno knows.

Those are off the top of my head.
 
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Ms Camara's twitter page strangely shows very little sign of interest in UConn...............she recently started following several U of Michigan players along with a]Michigan assistant coach.........................................just sayin...................
 
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I watched a bunch of KY games the 2nd 1/2 of the season and she really impressed me with her strength, toughness, rebounding skill and a nice offensive game for a freshman! With the UCONN coaching staff having a year to get her skills and mental outlook she'll be a load to handle in 2017-2018 with Azura Stevens, Natalie, Gabby, Collier, Irwin, the ceiling really is limitless for our Huskies! Geno never rests! Being that her choices out of HS were UCONN and KY she just took the path that was closest in her mind! WOW!

RSH: glad to get that first hand view. Appreciated here.
 
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OK, I'm sold. Based on the learned and informed opinions given here, the newspaper article, and the latest weather report (which way the wind is blowing), I'm convinced that there's a better than 50% chance UConn will land her.
When Dangerfield committed, I commented (predicted) that UConn would get 1-2 more coveted signees (not necessarily out of high school) this year. Stevens was the first, I would not be surprised if Camara was the second. OMG, wouldn't she be a huge get. :eek: Every time I log onto the yard, I expect to read that Camara has decided to come to Storrs. It's a gut feeling that I've had before. I'm pretty sure it's intuition and not gas. ;)

CARN: intuition vs gas? Hey, with a bloviator like you, you do have to wonder ( a wink back atcha)....on the other hand, intuition is your thing. I like your odds.:rolleyes:
 
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But Coach Geno has no reason to "change." He's won 11 national championships, and is the winningest coach over the past two decades. And during that entire period, he very rarely took in transfers. So for a guy who's just won his fourth straight national championship and is on the second-longest winning streak in WCBB history to accept three transfers on a single team is extraordinary.

It begs the question of what's changed? Is he acknowledging that recruiting has not been what he's wanted the past few years after his '02 catch? Or is it that he knows that some teams are hell holes, and that great kids have figured that out?

It will be very interesting to hear his answer to the "what's changed?" question when journalists are permitted to talk to him about it.
I don't believe anything has really changed for Auriemma. He is simply utilizing a recently expanding market to fill what he believes are gaps in his recruiting that he couldn't fill with HS kids. He doesn't pursue them but if the right type of kid at the right position becomes available and shows interest, he considers it and then let's them in. Just smart use of another tool.
 

Gus Mahler

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I don't believe anything has really changed for Auriemma. He is simply utilizing a recently expanding market to fill what he believes are gaps in his recruiting that he couldn't fill with HS kids. He doesn't pursue them but if the right type of kid at the right position becomes available and shows interest, he considers it and then let's them in. Just smart use of another tool.
It's hard to imagine my agreeing more.
 
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I don't believe anything has really changed for Auriemma. He is simply utilizing a recently expanding market to fill what he believes are gaps in his recruiting that he couldn't fill with HS kids. He doesn't pursue them but if the right type of kid at the right position becomes available and shows interest, he considers it and then let's them in. Just smart use of another tool.

Yep, agreed. With the pool of kids that fit UConn shrinking every year, he is using the newly expanding transfer market to add kids that do fit UConn, but initially chose to go elsewhere.
 
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Wait, has Camara visited UConn's campus recently? I did not hear that she did.
 
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This news really makes my day.
Next big thing will come from Walker? I hope ...
There may not be a scholarship for her if she waits too long. Camara makes it 13 for 2017.
 

UcMiami

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I think the transfer situation is pretty unique the last few years - you have three top ten type teams going through melt downs that are pretty unique for WCBB - first UNC lost 5 highly ranked recruits over the space of two years, and then KY has completely imploded this year. And Duke has been shedding high quality players on a yearly basis for the last three years.

That these programs seem to be driving the players away rather than individual players choosing to leave for more personal reasons I think makes the players 'more attractive', and it certainly raises fewer questions. And Butler's transfer was a similar type situation with a revolving door of coaches.

I agree with others who don't see this as a change in philosophy on the part of uconn, just a weird convergence of events at the top of the WCBB world.
 
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Saniya & Tierney are seniors next year so when they graduate it frees up 2 scholarships!
 

JordyG

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I think the transfer situation is pretty unique the last few years - you have three top ten type teams going through melt downs that are pretty unique for WCBB - first UNC lost 5 highly ranked recruits over the space of two years, and then KY has completely imploded this year. And Duke has been shedding high quality players on a yearly basis for the last three years.

That these programs seem to be driving the players away rather than individual players choosing to leave for more personal reasons I think makes the players 'more attractive', and it certainly raises fewer questions. And Butler's transfer was a similar type situation with a revolving door of coaches.

I agree with others who don't see this as a change in philosophy on the part of uconn, just a weird convergence of events at the top of the WCBB world.
Yes. One wonders however if this is just a happy and fortunate strings of occurrences or if this is really the new normal.
 
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Yes. One wonders however if this is just a happy and fortunate strings of occurrences or if this is really the new normal.
I say both. It feels a lot like the players can have their cake and eat it too knowing that if they have buyer's remorse all they have to do is pick up the phone to Storrs the minute their championship hopes are dashed or their personal career development isn't going the way they want at the school they initially chose over UConn.
 

UcMiami

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Yes. One wonders however if this is just a happy and fortunate strings of occurrences or if this is really the new normal.
I for one, think it is just a freak occurrence. Within well run programs I just don't think you are likely to see this kind of thing happen and top 30 programs tend to be well run. They have the money and resources to attract good coaches and good athletes. UNC is unique to an academic scandal (aided by a 'manufactured' recruiting class dynamic that didn't work), and KY and Duke have been particularly unstable coaching staffs that sent up red flags. Looking around at other programs in that top 30 range, the only one that stands out to me with a revolving door of assistants is Maryland, but none of them have had more than the kind of attrition rate of Uconn - a few front line players over the past decade and a few more bench players looking for perhaps different competitive environments or better fits.

Perhaps there is an increase in players willing to cut and run, and there seems to be more coaching investigations and coaching changes as schools are looking for better performance, but even in those cases, the rosters appear to be more stable - it doesn't appear that Vanderbilt is losing any current players or signed recruits for example, and Nebraska has lost only one current player.

On Edit:
I do think we are seeing after 20 years a changing dynamic for HS players that may have reached critical mass - the WNBA is a reality that all these kids have grown up with, and the college game has reached a competitive spread that is real - pressure on kids to make the right choice 'for their career' is a new phenomenon, at the same time that viable college choices have exploded and recruiting intensity has exploded. I am not sure the advisory resources for girls and their parents has kept up - it was sort of a cottage industry, and suddenly they are in a national/international market.
 
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I think the transfer situation is pretty unique the last few years
That these programs seem to be driving the players away rather than individual players choosing to leave for more personal reasons I think makes the players 'more attractive', and it certainly raises fewer questions. And Butler's transfer was a similar type situation with a revolving door of coaches.
Great point. Only time will tell, of course. And yet, Geno has already suggested that there is a qualitative difference in today's players--their "me first" attitude and refusal to take "tough love"-- that we could see naturally leading to a greater tendency to transfer.

And maybe we're looking at only one end of the phenomenon. Maybe there is also an increase in team melt-downs because of increased pressure on the coaches to win. Maybe as WCBB coaching salaries improve, there is more urgency to grab the best jobs quickly, without spending the years developing certain people and coaching skills; and, after getting that type of job, coaches hold on to them by pushing their players to win in ways that aren't appropriate.

So, maybe players are getting "softer" and maybe coaches are getting stressed to be "harder." Maybe. Hard to turn these types of judgments into facts.
 
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Just a little Post Script...

Geno, in these transfers (assuming the reports on Batouly are correct) is addressing the only weakness in recruiting the past 4 years. He missed out on Reimer, McCall, Mavunga, Wilson, Turner, Westbeld, Cox, Holmes and McCoy. I'm not saying he went hard after all of them, but either UCONN chose to go in a different direction, or they eliminated UCONN on their own.

So what he's done is landed 6'5" transfer Butler, 6'6" transfer Stevens, and now possibly 6'2" transfer Camara. In general of course I think we'd all prefer he landed a kid the first time around and could expect to have her for 4 years, but lately, it's been a lot of being the 2nd choice, or not a finalist for most of these post players.

Think about the roster the year Camara and Stevens would be available to play:

Post - Butler (SR), Stevens (JR), Camara (SO), Irwin (SO)
Wing types - Williams (SR - and yeah, maybe she's a post too), Samuelson (JR), Collier (JR), Gordon (FR)
Guards - Ekmark (SR), Nurse (SR), Dangerfield (SO), Bent (SO), Espinosa (FR)

That's not only an incredibly talented team, but also a very versatile one. SO many options to mix and match. NO idea who the 5 starters would be - but certainly a team totally loaded in every area and probably one of, if not THE, favorite to win the NC that year...

13 kids on the roster. So does he bring in a Walker? a Jade Williams? That would total fifteen players on the roster. The following year there would be eleven on the roster. So would there be room for three or four recruits from the 2018 class? It would be quite unusual for an Auriemma UConn team to have a roster with so many players. He has stated in the past that it's impossible to keep a large number of HS AA's happy without major playing time for each. So what is coach's strategy? What is his thinking on this? We can say that times are changing, but this coach has never needed to change his approach to the game. If he is approaching recruiting differently in this new day and age, it will be fascinating to understand his new strategy.
 
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