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Recruiting - 2018 class


NextYearBill

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41 minutes ago, bauman said:

WHO?  and where is he from?

With all the offers, it appears that this staff recruits using the theory of throwing a lot of $#!^ against the wall and seeing what sticks.  So far that seems to be a far better approach than whatever Crews did/or didn't!  I guess I'll never understand how it would work if some of these guys (too many) would come back to us and say they accept our offer.  Do we just tell them to hold on if our priority is another player? 

Interesting. I used to talk about offering a lot of guys and everyone said it didn't make any sense

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Your statement is partially true -- but your offers seems to be biased towards every kid that ever laced them up in the STL PHL.   Seventh, eighth men on Vashon's team and the like. Guys that went nowhere -- if only I had kept my tally from back then.  Ah, V-time ...... 

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2 hours ago, Pistol said:

6-8 multi-position player from Iona Prep, where 2019 SLU recruit Bryce Wills plays. It's north of NYC, and I think Koureissi's family is from Harlem (Souleymane is a common name in the French-speaking countries of West Africa, but I'm not sure which country his family is originally from). He's been on the D-I radar for a while but started to rise rapidly in April on the adidas AAU circuit playing for Castle. He's got great handles and passing ability for his size (I've seen him listed as tall as 6-9, thought to still be growing, and with a long frame), a developing jumper, and projects as a wing or stretch forward in college even though he plays the post sometimes in HS. Late bloomer with a high ceiling.

As for your second question, I'm guessing every staff handles it a little differently. Every recruit is a different case and needs to be managed differently. You never know until you get to know a player what he wants to hear in your pitch. There are no absolutes. And there are a ton of variables at any point in time, which makes this sort of impossible to answer.

I think we know that Soderberg's downfall from a recruiting standpoint was twofold: getting hung up on certain players and not having a backup plan, and waiting too long to get involved with others. Basically, he overthought it. He's also an extremely frank guy, and sometimes your plan B and C players still might have some sensitivity about their status.

Crews was guilty of both of those things, as well, and he also thought he could build a roster of tall, lanky perimeter players with limited athleticism that may have been competitive in the 1980s and earlier but not today. So he'd be too late to offer the right players, too late to have good backup options in place, and too content to sign too many of the same type.

Ford and his staff have a more modern approach. They have no fear of missing out on a kid. They have plenty of options in place. They're staying in contact with a lot of these guys. They're working all the local/regional angles well. They're building pipelines where the assistants have strongholds - NYC, the Southeast, Chicago, etc.

Put another way: When we missed out on Tatum, there was nowhere else to go. If we miss out on, say, Torrence Watson, we still have a glut of worthy options.

Pistol, thanks for the reply and for all the work you put in on updating Billikens.com on all things recruiting.  You really make this Board an outstanding place to get real Billiken info.  Unfortunately, we often have to scroll through pages of name calling to get real info or opinions of many of the really good posters who come to this Board.

I also appreciate your insight on the recruiting process.  It just seems strange to me to have so many offers out there.  For example, we have only one scholarship to give in the 2018 Class, yet we have a large number of offers to many different type players.  I know Ford and staff know what they are doing so I trust them to somehow be able to get a player they really want, and that we need.

 

 

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1 minute ago, bauman said:

Pistol, thanks for the reply and for all the work you put in on updating Billikens.com on all things recruiting.  You really make this Board an outstanding place to get real Billiken info.  Unfortunately, we often have to scroll through pages of name calling to get real info or opinions of many of the really good posters who come to this Board.

I also appreciate your insight on the recruiting process.  It just seems strange to me to have so many offers out there.  For example, we have only one scholarship to give in the 2018 Class, yet we have a large number of offers to many different type players.  I know Ford and staff know what they are doing so I trust them to somehow be able to get a player they really want, and that we need.

The mantra of every coach today: Never Stop Recruiting.

You can't look at your scholarship chart and get complacent. The past few years, we've seen ~700 transfers at the D-I level, which is about 2 per team at 351 total teams. You never know when someone is going to leave, or for what reason. Rotations only go so deep, guys get homesick, run into academic trouble, off-court issues, feel they're being recruited over, whatever. So there's always that. You don't need to oversubscribe - I'm not a fan of that - but you have to be ready for whatever happens in the spring.

I'll also say this - when I was doing this during the Crews years, there were a lot of guys I really had to squint to see the positives on. Like, I had trouble seeing them at this level, really tried to look at them as pieces of a puzzle, or just shrugged and said I hope it works out. But now, about 80% of the 2018 and 2019 lists I have no reservations about whatsoever. The last 20% are still more exciting prospects than most of our offers under Crews, and they appear to be high-ceiling players, or late bloomers, or guys we're in on early. This staff is doing a tremendous job of evaluating talent and making sure that no scholarship will be wasted.

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2 hours ago, STL Hoops Insider said:

Interesting. I used to talk about offering a lot of guys and everyone said it didn't make any sense

Ford offers legitimate high D1 players.  you (VTIME) wanted us to offer everyone on the Vashon roster and every other D2 player within a 50 mile radius.  #SanjayWatts

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There's very little risk in offering 10 times the number of scholarships available to in-demand recruits.  It's just a way to stroke a kid's ego so he can announce another "offer" on Twitter.  In reality, coaches will eventually spend most of their time and resources tracking the top 10-12 guys on their board for a given class.  The rest of the offers will grow stale.

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24 minutes ago, 3star_recruit said:

There's very little risk in offering 10 times the number of scholarships available to in-demand recruits.  It's just a way to stroke a kid's ego so he can announce another "offer" on Twitter.  In reality, coaches will eventually spend most of their time and resources tracking the top 10-12 guys on their board for a given class.  The rest of the offers will grow stale.

aka my approach to women in my younger years 

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Here's a nice short article about his EYBL shooting stats, along with a video. He's a nice looking player. Great size, can put it on the floor, shoot from all over, seems to have a nose for the ball. Really efficient scorer. Here's his bio on the Recruiting Lists thread:

Jared Rhoden - SG, 6-6, 190 - Baldwin, NY (Our Savior Lutheran) - Twitter: @ihoop_jaay

Offers: SLU, Rhode Island, St. Bonaventure, Old Dominion, Monmouth, Iona, Hofstra, Niagara, Stony Brook, Boston, American, Towson, Quinnipiac, Loyola Marymount, MTSU.

Interest: St. John's, Penn State, Oklahoma.

Latest News: Rhoden will take an unofficial visit to SLU on 6/23. (6/21/17)

Scouting Report: Rhoden is a long, high-scoring shooting guard who can stroke it from deep and uses his length to create mismatches at both ends. He's got great ball handling and passing skills for his size, too.

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31 minutes ago, Pistol said:

Here's a nice short article about his EYBL shooting stats, along with a video. He's a nice looking player. Great size, can put it on the floor, shoot from all over, seems to have a nose for the ball. Really efficient scorer. Here's his bio on the Recruiting Lists thread:

Jared Rhoden - SG, 6-6, 190 - Baldwin, NY (Our Savior Lutheran) - Twitter: @ihoop_jaay

Offers: SLU, Rhode Island, St. Bonaventure, Old Dominion, Monmouth, Iona, Hofstra, Niagara, Stony Brook, Boston, American, Towson, Quinnipiac, Loyola Marymount, MTSU.

Interest: St. John's, Penn State, Oklahoma.

Latest News: Rhoden will take an unofficial visit to SLU on 6/23. (6/21/17)

Scouting Report: Rhoden is a long, high-scoring shooting guard who can stroke it from deep and uses his length to create mismatches at both ends. He's got great ball handling and passing skills for his size, too.

-I like the analysis, my gosh we can always use players that can make shots, the competition for this player at this point is not like most of our other targets

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On 6/20/2017 at 1:31 PM, TheChosenOne said:

The last month of the season he made 3 of 17 from 3 or 17.65%. 40.71% from the field during that same time, but up to 84.21% from the free throw line. He really lost his shot the final month of the season. And at that point the team became less unselfish as he kind of became a ball hog with little success. So he really brought the team down as they looked nothing like the team that was so good early in the season playing incredibly unselfish team basketball. He started to force a lot and kind of relied upon getting fouls called. 

In EYBL play, he is shooting 38.1% from the field (43 for 113), 26.9% from 3 (7 for 26), and 78.6% (44 for 56) from the line while averaging 8.8 points, 5.8 rebounds (26 offensive/68 defensive), and 1.2 assists vs. 1.9 TOs.

Like I said, I have seen the kid play a dozen or so times and follow the Chaminade program really closely. He is a below average athlete at the major college level if you project him as a wing player, so he likely won't succeed on the wing, but then he lacks the length/strength/toughness to play in the post. So he is between positions in my opinion at this level. Early in the season when he was shooting a really high percentage from deep and showing a strong mid-range game I thought maybe he could be kind of Jayson Tatum extra light. Then he really lost his perimeter shot and became kind of an offense killer while not turning up the intensity in some of his other areas of weakness. Defensively he is fairly soft against kids who are more post type players and while he can go and get rebounds he doesn't do a very good job of boxing out and fighting guys for rebounds. He lacks the foot speed to guard on the perimeter against above average competition.

For me, I would not offer Hellems at this point. If he improves some of his deficiencies and finds his shot again, maybe I would reconsider.

I don't know whether they should offer him or not, but pulling a small sample of 17 shots to say someone is not a good shooter is ridiculous. Looking at the entire body of work is a much better indicator.

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1 hour ago, BIG BILL FAN said:

I don't know whether they should offer him or not, but pulling a small sample of 17 shots to say someone is not a good shooter is ridiculous. Looking at the entire body of work is a much better indicator.

I had previously commented that he completely lost his shot late in the season, so I looked it up and the numbers supported what I saw over the final 3rd of the season. I went onto look into his numbers from EYBL to see if his poor shooting had carried over and his numbers are in line with the final month plus of his high school season, so the trend line is not good. I can discuss Hellems at whatever level you want since I have watched him closely since his freshman season including when he was absolutely great offensively for most of his junior season. If you want to focus on the entire body of work, he was not an elite shooter early in his career (6-24 (25.0%) from 3 during his sophomore season and 10-28 (35.7%) his freshman season), so his impressive shooting from distance last season was a real pleasant surprise. Obviously he was playing on loaded teams at Chaminade prior to last season with a very different role, so it is tough to put too much on those first two seasons, but if you want to look at the entire body of work there are the numbers. I think he is between positions at the major college level and the relevance of looking at his stats over the last 1/3 of his junior season and from EYBL is that if he had developed into an elite shooter maybe that would trump some of his deficiencies. Those stats would have to make you question that being the case. I think he is probably a Valley level player where he wouldn't be exposed either in the paint or on the wing. Really nice player with a solid all around skill set, just a notch below in my opinion. What programs have offered Hellems?

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31 minutes ago, TheChosenOne said:

I had previously commented that he completely lost his shot late in the season, so I looked it up and the numbers supported what I saw over the final 3rd of the season. I went onto look into his numbers from EYBL to see if his poor shooting had carried over and his numbers are in line with the final month plus of his high school season, so the trend line is not good. I can discuss Hellems at whatever level you want since I have watched him closely since his freshman season including when he was absolutely great offensively for most of his junior season. If you want to focus on the entire body of work, he was not an elite shooter early in his career (6-24 (25.0%) from 3 during his sophomore season and 10-28 (35.7%) his freshman season), so his impressive shooting from distance last season was a real pleasant surprise. Obviously he was playing on loaded teams at Chaminade prior to last season with a very different role, so it is tough to put too much on those first two seasons, but if you want to look at the entire body of work there are the numbers. I think he is between positions at the major college level and the relevance of looking at his stats over the last 1/3 of his junior season and from EYBL is that if he had developed into an elite shooter maybe that would trump some of his deficiencies. Those stats would have to make you question that being the case. I think he is probably a Valley level player where he wouldn't be exposed either in the paint or on the wing. Really nice player with a solid all around skill set, just a notch below in my opinion. What programs have offered Hellems?

So you can almost make the case that he was unusually hot in the first half of the season, not unusually cold down the stretch. I hope that's not the case, for his sake, and that his shot is real.

He has offers from Indiana, Tulsa, Illinois State, IUPUI, SIUE, and Georgia Southern - but it should be noted that the IU offer came from Crean and that it doesn't look like Miller has refreshed it.

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Just now, Pistol said:

So you can almost make the case that he was unusually hot in the first half of the season, not unusually cold down the stretch. I hope that's not the case, for his sake, and that his shot is real.

He has offers from Indiana, Tulsa, Illinois State, IUPUI, SIUE, and Georgia Southern - but it should be noted that the IU offer came from Crean and that it doesn't look like Miller has refreshed it.

Crean was known to throw around crazy offers after only seeing a player once, or sometimes never. This was one of them.

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6 minutes ago, HoosierPal said:

What did Crean use?  AAU stats?

With regards to Hellems, any chance he was at the Chaminade/Althoff game where Hellems put on an absolute show offensively. Anyone at or who watched film of that game had to be really impressed. He knocked down shots from deep (7-9 from 3) as well as hitting mid range shots and getting to the rim (8-14 inside the arc and 10-12 from the line). The timing would line up (the game was on January 21st and the offer from Indiana was on January 24th). One of the better offensive games I have seen a kid have. In that same game, Goodwin had 42 points and 18 rebounds, so an impressive battle.

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29 minutes ago, TheChosenOne said:

With regards to Hellems, any chance he was at the Chaminade/Althoff game where Hellems put on an absolute show offensively. Anyone at or who watched film of that game had to be really impressed. He knocked down shots from deep (7-9 from 3) as well as hitting mid range shots and getting to the rim (8-14 inside the arc and 10-12 from the line). The timing would line up (the game was on January 21st and the offer from Indiana was on January 24th). One of the better offensive games I have seen a kid have. In that same game, Goodwin had 42 points and 18 rebounds, so an impressive battle.

It was that game. I believe Crean made the trip that week to recruit Mark Smith but went to the Chaminade/Althoff game as well. 

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8 minutes ago, RiseAndGrind said:

I hope we get a 2018 commitment soon. That keeps me occupied for at least a week watching highlights and reading the press clippings. 

Looking ahead, unless we can land a high quality 2018 player, I don't think it would be a bad idea to wait until after this upcoming season to see if we can land an impact transfer. That way, the transfer can sit for the 18-19 season and be ready to step in after Henriquez, Bess and Foreman graduate. I know Ford has said he doesn't want to continue to build his team around transfers, but I don't think it is a bad approach with this scholarship.

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