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Originally posted by PTTB
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I guess he is not D-I talent after all...
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So Dunson is going to Vincennes JC, Mike Taylor has not yet said what he's going to do,
either go D-II so he can play college ball or go to Europe and play pro ball.
Also Corey McIntosh left, and Ross Marsden also lef the team.
This is an interesting thread about Greg McDermott's recruiting,
but one thing cannot be denied. He has only been at Iowa State for one year
and three of his own recruits AT Iowa State are already gone, booted, dismissed, or flunked out.
In fact, the very first three he got committments from are all history....in less than one year.
He also lost several other commits when he arrived (one was Jeremy Fears).
Most coaches when they are new hires, lose some of what they inherit in the cupboard, but
the startling thing is that McDermott loses all the ones he recruited himself, so
that is not very comforting to the Cyclone Nation.Comment
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I went looking for a story to help me understand why those players all left, and am left wondering.
This article says
"McDermott - cut Taylor - his best player - loose anyway. You don't have to like it. But you have to respect it.
Many coaches, especially young ones, would be afraid. Afraid of losing their meal ticket.
They'd scramble for a loophole. They'd tell the media and the public that they had their player's back, always, no matter what.
McDermott stood his ground. He kept his feet on the high road and walked away."
But they detail all the times Taylor committed violations and McDermott looked the other way and did not do a thing.
By this article's count, he had legal runins in Feb, April, June, and then academic issues, but he also had issues last fall that led to a suspension of a preseason game.
So I would hardly call McDermott the model for strong discipline as this story seems to portray him.
Seems like it took five swings to hit this one on the head finally, and dismiss the guy. He whiffed the other four times he had the chance to "stand his ground".
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Let's go over the losses:
Mike Taylor was dismissed from the team. He should have been dismissed last season after a series of infractions but Coach Mac covered a lot up.
Ross Marsden decided to forego basketball for the rest of his career.
Corey McIntosh left because he felt Coach Mac played favorites and had a double standard.
Dodie Dunson was completely eligible for next season and never flunked out (as many think he did) but decided to attend a JC as he struggled big time academically.Comment
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I find it very interesting that it seems Bradley fans are more concerned about McDermott's recruiting thatn Cyclone fans!Originally posted by tornado
McDermott did lose three of his five recruts from last year in McIntosh, Taylor and Dunson. Those three recruits were signed in two weeks after Greg was hired. He had little to no time to evaluate and be picky. He had zero, I repeat, ZERO guards on his roster and had to find whatever he could to attempt to field a team last year. He signed the best players he could and they did not work out.
Dunson has a learning disability and struggled at ISU. Taylor was an idiot. McIntosh was a quality young man, but he was not a Big 12 caliber guard as we were forced to play Taylor at point guard becuase Corey could not create anything. These were your typical spring recruits. They were all still available because they had character issues, acdemic issues or just were not that talented. I personally would love to have all three on the roster this year as I think Corey and Dodie were great young men and Taylor was obviously talented, but I will lose no sleep that they are gone.
If Greg's first full class that he had ample time to evaluate and recruit falls on it's face and all are a bust, then I will be concerned. As it is, I feel very positive about the future of the program.Comment
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Thank you FarmerClone, you have just helped support my argument that PTTB and I were disagreeing on.
(see posts on last page of this thread)
I have said that Greg McDermott seems to offer full scholarships to kids he has never seen play and to kids he has seen so very little that he cannot possibly know enough to have a good feel, and that a disproportionate number of those recruits never pan out.
You can add McIntosh, Taylor, Dunson to the list I gave on the last page of Davis, Polokovic, Raffington, Dunham, Stewart, Davis, Stephen Jones, Dylan Grimsley, etc.
Seems you have done a good job of helping prove my point.
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tornado-
I don't think this is a fair comparison. Mac got the job and had two weeks until signing day to gather a staff, go recruiting, and assemble a team. He was pretty much all done recruiting at UNI when he left to take the IoSU job. So, what is he suppose to do when there are ZERO guards coming back (Blaylock/Stinson going pro, Fears transferring out, and other incoming guard recruits leaving due to Morgan leaving). There was only walk-ons Brock Jacobson, Chris Ceasar, and Mark Currie returning. Walk-ons...no scholarship players. He had 4 returning scholarship players in total. 4....4....4 (we get it? 4). And then has a firm commitment from the only midwest recruit signed by Morgan in Corey Johnson...again, not a guard.
So, he has 8 scholarships to use and future APR restrictions coming down the line. What does he do? He takes the scholy restrictions the first year...that cut 2-3 scholys I believe. That leaves 5 scholarships to offer. Who does he go after?
1. Mike Taylor---yes, he may have been the best available guard in the country...but that was for a reason...he had some character/grade issues before. Who was his coach his first year at Chipola? Assistant coach TJ Otzelburger. I'm pretty sure he saw him play.
2. Dodie Dunson---Mac had seen him play. They were actively recruiting him to UNI while at both Bloomington and Brewster. Mac says he was watching him over both those tenures:
"We have followed and recruited Dodie the past few years at both Bloomington H.S. under coach Ron Rose and at Brewster Academy coached by Jason Smith."
3. Corey McIntosh---the California Junior College Player of the Year...I admit, I'm sure Mac had not seen him play besides on some film. He probably went with information from assistant TJ Otzelburger...who that year had been working out in California.
4. Wesley Johnson---he was a SF that was recruited by assistant coach Jean Prilou at Wichita State (from other stories I have read). Wesley signed with UL-Lafayette I believe, but then decided to go to prep school in Michigan. This prep school folded halfway through the year, and he never got to play ball. Everyone had forgotten about him, until they got a phone call from his prep school coach and recommended that they give him a shot. With an open scholy, not much film, and probably an open gym look at him, they gave him that shot. That one totally fell in their laps. He was the best recruit out of all of them last year as he started 30 of 31 games.
5. Alex Thompson---transferred from Iowa back to his home town of Ames to play. It's unsure whether he has a scholarship or not. Farmer could probably answer that better than I could. I believe that Alex was offered a scholarship by Mac while at UNI.
So, Mac got 3 guards on scholarship. 1 he had seen. And 2 he hadn't see play much (probably just open gyms), but probably went on 1st hand observations of at least one of his assistants (who had coached one of them for a year). The other (Wesley Johnson) was a total 'drop in the lap'...and you can put him for sure in the list of players who didn't get many looks in game time situations. But, starting 30 of 31 games is probably far from not 'panning out'.
So, we have debated the UNI players (who I will no longer discuss, b/c we have debated it into the ground as far as I'm concerned), and I guess now the ISU players. I just don't think that we can hold Mac to the standard of seeing each player he signs in that class (in games, first hand) before signing them as all of those players' seasons were over when he got the job. His recruiting was pretty well all done at UNI. He wasn't recruiting Michigan or Texas or California while at UNI. He had 2 weeks until signing day to stock some guards (which he signed 3).
If Jim Les takes over Bradley with zero guards, two weeks until spring signing day, the recruits that were coming leaving b/c of the previous coach left (and other issues)....would you want him to hold off on signing players until he had seen them play in real games (basically the next season), play only walk-on guards in the MVC, and not rely on the knowledge and first hand accounts of his assistant coaches he put there...or would you rather him try to find some guards (whether seen or unseen by his eyes), rely on his assistant coaches, and dig for diamonds in the rough to fill out a 10 scholarship player team?
All this, knowing that the following year you have at least 3 scholarships to use (1 departing post player and 2-3 scholys back from the APR hits) on guys you can pretty well guarantee lots of playing time to. I guess that is why I don't think you can paint a broad brush with his time at UNI (which again we disagree on) and at ISU. They are all unique situations...same goes for his time at ISU.
Am I missing something here?Comment
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No, I think you are pretty much seeing what I am seeing.
He has offered numerous scholarhsips to kids he had only heard about, seen once at a summer camp, or had never seen them play varsity ball.
You don't seem to be denying that, and I am saying it is risky because so many of those players don't pan out.
Guess what, now enough time has gone by and the facts support me, as so many of those players he gave those scholarships to either never arrived or lasted less than a year.
I don't deny that it happens to most coaches, but only rarely to most while it has happened a ton to McDermott.
Of those 11 that I listed just above your post, only a couple ever played at all for Mac, and none lasted over a year.
Keep in mind that I noted McIntosh and Dunson were mid-major caliber and even predicted how this would turn out.
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You seem to imply tornado that any coach worth a darn could have recruited a much better class in two weeks after being hired at a different school with ZERO scholarship guards to start with. List for me please the players Greg should have recruited and signed in two weeks last spring that would have had better results than McIntosh, Taylor and Dunson. I would wager your list would be very short and probably not be a realistic list. Greg did rely on his staff's evaluations to sign those players he signed and they were looked at as three of the top players available in the spring signing period and as you mentioned, McIntosh and Dunson were mid-level talent. But the fact is, they were the best talent available. He did the best he could and if the only player that stuck was a stud in Wes Johnson, so be it.Comment
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Yup, with the drawing power a Big XII school has, he could have done better.
Mizzou got UNANIMOUS BIG XII Newcomer of the Year, Stephon Hannah, recruited by brand new head coach (who had only been on the job a few weeks) Mike Anderson.
Mick Cronin at Cincy got several studs, including John Williamson and Marcus Sikes within the same time span McDermott was at ISU.
Marvin Kilgore went to UTEP, Takais Brown went to Georgia, James Davis had a great first year at Lamar, Cyrus Tate, Andre Smith, Lance Stemler, Anthony Slack, Matt Salley, and others were all good pickups during the late signing period, and turned out to be better than those guys who got booted at Iowa State.
Coming from Bradley, with the limited name recognition we have and conference affiliation, I have a really hard time feeling pity for the recruiting ability of a BIG STATE SCHOOL in the Big XII.
The point I made was that McD was giving out scholarships to kids that were obviously NOT BCS caliber, as I noted in my last post....I predicted they would not last and were midmajor caliber.Comment
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FWIW, Stephon Hannah was offered a scholy by IoSU.Comment
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Just as I expected, your list is marginal at best. Stephon Hannah was a JC teammate of Taylor's and our assistant coach, who had been an assistant at Chipola and coached them both, had his reasons for not pursuing Hannah and Hannah was not offered.Originally posted by tornado
Over half the players you named were big men and not guards whch is what ISU needed. Tate was already committed to Iowa. Davis had drug charges in the past or something to that affect which is why he landed at Lamar. I am not in any way saying to take pity on ISU because we do not need any, we will be just fine, I am just pointing out that recruiting a Big 12 caliber set of guards in the spring is dicey at best.Comment
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marginal??
Half the jucojunction.com list of the Top 100 juco kids in 2006 were signed during the late signing period, and nearly HALF of them are guards.
Here's the top 100 overall
I don't have the time to try again and again to give you a list you'll finally agree is satisfatory and not marginal, just do a little work and check it out yourself.
here, I'll make it even easier....a link to a list of top 64 juco point guards of 2006.
You are free to make whatever judgement you want or whatever excuse you want for why so many of Grag McDermott's recruits never make it or stay less than a year.
but it is NOT a new phenomenon, and the alibi about only being on the job for a couple weeks, sure can't explain why it happened IN SPADES while McD was at UNI.
Of my list of 11 examples over the past couple years, 8 of them were from UNI, and it is no coincidence that I have also presented the evidence that he never saw most of them ever play a high school varsity game before offering them a scholarship. It's all about doing your homework.Comment
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Your list proves my point.Originally posted by tornadomarginal??
Half the jucojunction.com list of the Top 100 juco kids in 2006 were signed during the late signing period, and nearly HALF of them are guards.
Here's the top 100 overall
I don't have the time to try again and again to give you a list you'll finally agree is satisfatory and not marginal, just do a little work and check it out yourself.
here, I'll make it even easier....a link to a list of top 64 juco point guards of 2006.
You are free to make whatever judgement you want or whatever excuse you want for why so many of Grag McDermott's recruits never make it or stay less than a year.
but it is NOT a new phenomenon, and the alibi about only being on the job for a couple weeks, sure can't explain why it happened IN SPADES while McD was at UNI.
Of my list of 11 examples over the past couple years, 8 of them were from UNI, and it is no coincidence that I have also presented the evidence that he never saw most of them ever play a high school varsity game before offering them a scholarship. It's all about doing your homework.
The highest rated guard on the list went to Charlotte and averaged 6.2 points and 2.6 assists.
The next highest guard went to K State and averaged 5.3 points and 2.2 assists.
The third guard was Charles Burggess, a very solid guard that had committed five months before Greg was hired to Texas Tech.
The next guard had a great year at Troy but had verballed two months before Greg was at ISU.
In fact, as I sift down through that list, all either had underwhealming years last year or had verballed before Greg had been hired. There are very few like Hannah and Kilgore that were signed later and had solid years. Your argument is Greg was offering non-high major players scholarships which was true, because there were not very many high level D1 players left. The link you provided proves it. Most of those guards went to mid level schools and most underwhealmed last year. Taylor was probably in the top three in production of the guards on that list.
Time will tell if Greg's trend of having players not pan out continues, but I do find it interesting that with the success he has had that the focus is on the ones that didn't work and not the Eric Coleman's, Grant Stout's, etc that he did find early and did succeed.Comment
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Originally posted by FarmerClone
hmmm...those numbers are at least as good as Dunson's, and ISU fans seem satisfied with Dunson's contributions.
But the issue wasn't just getting kids with stats, but getting kids that would stay at school, and obviously with Dodie and Taylor, something was missed.
That's why you gotta KNOW who you're recruiting.
You can know a lot about the talent just by looking at the stats.....as you did.
But you need to know the player, and I cited that there were lots to choose from, but McD chose poorly.
It's an offshoot of his tendency to offer before he even knows much about them.
How else to explain that he offered kids full rides just by seeing them at his summer camp? How can you know a thing about that kid, but he offered none the less, and those kids testified McDermott hadn't even sent them a postcard prior to that!Comment
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