And the starting 5 are...

[GatorDawg]

I also think Drew will be the starting PG. If Clark is so good why did he go JC route? I don't have much faith in JCs after the Richard era.

Some guys go the JuCo route for grade issues. Others start out as high profile recruits and lose some thunder during the year (due to injury or whatnot) and go JuCo to try and get some of the offers they were hearing at first back (even though the elite programs avoid JuCos when possible).

We have our share of JuCo success. Tim Rattay went that route. Matt Combs played JuCo ball before starting for us last season. Even players like Haskins, McDowell, McKenzie, and Disy (who were good players for us).

[1L_dawg]

i thought lavelle felton was a solid JUCO point guard for us.

[LouisianaSelect]

Yeah, but we dont even have any 6-8 or 6-9 guys except one 6-8 true freshman who is supposedly very green.


Hopfefully all of our 6-3 to 6-7 kids can run and shoot past our competition.

Hey Jay, do you remember Mohammed Ibrahim? Well i am working at the Michael Jordan Basketball camp in Santa Barbara today and i have his younger bro on my team. How was this kid?

[JAY]

Hey Jay, do you remember Mohammed Ibrahim? Well i am working at the Michael Jordan Basketball camp in Santa Barbara today and i have his younger bro on my team. How was this kid?

i remember he was supposed to be a shooter but richard never played him because he couldnt play defense. he only stayed here one year.

[johnnylightnin]

i remember he was supposed to be a shooter but richard never played him because he couldnt play defense. he only stayed here one year.

I watched him in a scrimmage one year and he was a great 3-point shooter.

[theprofessor]

Some guys go the JuCo route for grade issues. Others start out as high profile recruits and lose some thunder during the year (due to injury or whatnot) and go JuCo to try and get some of the offers they were hearing at first back (even though the elite programs avoid JuCos when possible).

We have our share of JuCo success. Tim Rattay went that route. Matt Combs played JuCo ball before starting for us last season. Even players like Haskins, McDowell, McKenzie, and Disy (who were good players for us).

typically -- and i say typically because there are always exceptions -- i'd try to stay away from jucos in football and basketball. baseball is a different story because it's a different setup. with the scholarship limitations, and the way the mlb draft is structured, many of your better players actually go the juco route.

i really liked lavelle felton as a scoring point guard, and daevon haskins was a great distributor. both good juco guys. oklahoma under kelvin sampson build a reputation on bringing in quality jc guys every year. but it should be guys you've seen for a while. many guys who go the jc route, in basketball, tend to have character issues or aren't quite the level on the court that they should be.

[boxerdog]

In my estimation, about half the guys who sign D-1 basketball scholarships would benefit from a year of juco. I say that because most of their respective high schools failed to prepare them for the academic rigor of college. Thus, you have many universities that bend the curricula just to keep these kids on campus.

[SkeeterDawg]

The point of JC recruiting should be to fill an immediate glaring need. Sometimes you have to wait on a high school kid to mature a little, physically, mentally, scholastically, etc. But Richard was always signing JC kids that couldn't even play. Why waste a scholarship on someone to sit on the bench, if you can sign a high school kid that may be a project and let him ride the pine until he is ready to play.

[skilldawg]

The point of JC recruiting should be to fill an immediate glaring need. Sometimes you have to wait on a high school kid to mature a little, physically, mentally, scholastically, etc. But Richard was always signing JC kids that couldn't even play. Why waste a scholarship on someone to sit on the bench, if you can sign a high school kid that may be a project and let him ride the pine until he is ready to play.

I agee that Juco's should be signed sparingly. Richard was able to get two or three that helped out. That was the exception rather than the rule. Mostly, we tended to sign tremendous athletes that were not very good basketball players.

Under Richard, we were usually superior athletically to everyone we played. But, basketball requires more than just athleticism and we rarely saw those athletes turned into basketball players, guys who understood the game and could execute the fundamentals.

A lot of people on this board weren't particularly fond of Haskins, but he was a player. Very fundamentally sound with a good head on his shoulders for playing the point. If he had been a shooter as well, we probably never would have seen him in Ruston.

The most recent crop of Juco's however did not have a very high basketball I.Q. or basketball skills. Probably why we struggled to win 10 games last year.

[boxerdog]

The point of JC recruiting should be to fill an immediate glaring need. Sometimes you have to wait on a high school kid to mature a little, physically, mentally, scholastically, etc. But Richard was always signing JC kids that couldn't even play. Why waste a scholarship on someone to sit on the bench, if you can sign a high school kid that may be a project and let him ride the pine until he is ready to play.

Richard's primary recruiting strategy of "networking" resulted in some bad signees. Bottom line, the recruiting budget was around a buck six five.

[1L_dawg]

Bottom line, the recruiting budget was around a buck six five.

as in 165,000? what is it now?

[boxerdog]

as in 165,000? what is it now?

I really don't know what it was, but I heard that the coaches were not allowed to make several "exploratory" recruiting trips. A friend of mine says: "I got about a buck six five.", every time he's asked to cough up some money. Sorry for the confusion.

[geek34]

I'm not big on building a program the JUCO route but going way back we had good success with JUCO's.... Willie Bland, Louis Cook, Maurice Jackson, Ronnis Spivey and Adam Frank all played key roles on NCAA tourney teams.