The Recruiting Short History: Hits & Misses.

Need for increased continuity and retention.

-gtmoBlue

Folks over at the BJC are up in arms. Several laments – Too high expectations. Too young a team (still). Poor coaching. Lack of effort by the team members. Poor recruiting. Not enough hardy, tough Midwestern kids, and too many slick 3 & 4 star players. On and on it goes.

I have pointed out/argued on the BJC that had we not been fortunate enough in our recruiting to snag several West Coast, Texas, and other out-of-area players, that the Jays would indeed be in dire straits. We have fallen on hard times in our recruitment of midwestern region kids. We have dropped to approx 20% success rate in regional recruiting.

Much of the fault lies with coaching changes in many of the regional universities, and as such, an increase in the competition for regional recruits.

Mike Anderson – Missouri

Tubby Smith – Minnesota

Rick (Tubby) Majerus – St Louis

Cuonzo Martin – Missouri St

Gregg Marshall – Wichita St

Iowa State

Iowa

Butler

both Dakota State teams

Also as some of our traditional recruiting opponents have seen recent program successes, their respective recruiting has also prospered.

Wisconsin

Minnesota

Marquette

Illinois

Bradley

Kansas State

Illinois State

Colorado State

Butler

When the above schools are added into the areas’ traditional Big 10, Big 12, CUSA, MAC, & MVC recruiting wars – it’s a crowded field.

Now add in intruders from outside the region:

Providence

Seton Hall

Virginia

Baylor

SMU

Santa Clara

Arizona State

Gonzaga

Portland

Oregon State

and others…

The Midwestern recruiting grounds have now become a free for all, a melee with elbows flying, a serious slugfest.

The chart below shows the Jays recruiting hits and misses over the last few years. In reviewing this chart one can see that because of the increased competition we have missed several good midwestern kids. Were it not for our out-of-area recruiting, we would have a very shorthanded squad today.

Two points:

Our missing an additional big in 2006 & 2007, along with some negative retention issues have left us short of talent in-the-paint. It is not lack of talent, but lack of bodies.

1) Our missing out on Matt Hill and Keith Spenser (2006), and George Goode, Festus Ezeli, or Chandler Parsons (2007) hurt more than we could have imagined back then (we still had AT & Dane aboard). Not landing one of the many 2008 midwest bigs or Greg Echenique further compounded the problem.

2) Additionally, not retaining Steve Smith and Ty Morrison contributed a bit to the problems, although they would have graduated last year. Both could/would have lent some continuity for the current bigs.

We are painfully short on Bigs. We need to be smarter in both our recruiting and retention policies. The coaches are ‘busting butt’ to fix the problem(s). What is also called for is a bit of patience, a bit of support, and a little faith in the program.

Go Big Blue.

CU Recruiting Talley Hits and Misses: 2006 – 2010
2006-2007	2007-2008	2008-2009	2009-2010	2010-2011
Chad Millard (So.)	Booker Woodfox (Jr.)	Justin Carter (Jr.)	Ethan Wragge (Fr)
Ty Morrison (Jr.)	Cavel Witter (So.)	Josh Jones (Fr.)	Andrew Bock (Fr)
Kenny Lawson (Fr.)	P’Allen Stinnett (Fr.)	Antoine Young (Fr.)
Isaac Miles (Fr.)	Kenton Walker (Fr.)
Casey Harriman (Fr.)	Kaleb Korver (Fr.)
D’Angelo Jackson (Fr.)
Aaron Brandt (Fr.)
2	1	4 (3)	2 (3)	3
Matt Hi NE	G Goode MO	G Gibbs IA	Cougill IA	C Creekmur IA
C Johnson MN	Anthony Slack KS	M Gatens IA	Uhlenhopp IA	Cody Larson SD
C Bailey KS	Conner Teahan KS	J Reid KS	Van Deest IA	E Anderson WS
K Spenser KS		J Brandenburg MO	Bohannon IA	C Cerroni WS
M Moss KS		J Coy MO	E May IA	C Godfrey WS
R Gentry IA		M Denmon MO	D Kelly KS
		S Moore MO	R White MN
		S Suggs MO	R Cowels MN
		W Eikmeier NE	M Dixon MO
		A DuFault ND
		C Iverson SD
L Fields CA	R Westbrook CA	R Miller CA	A Stover CA
A Smith AZ	F Ezeli CA	Frank Otis CA	T Honeycutt CA
M Maynard AZ	JD Luster CA	J Underwood AZ	A Marshall NV
W Donahue AZ		T Whitehead AZ
B Young FL	C Parsons FL	X Keeling AL	J Carmichael CT
T Crocker NC	A McFarland NH	G Echenique NJ	M Henderson TX
B Morningstar NH	Jordan Crawford VA	E Negedu NH	M Marquis TX