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Welcome Demarius Jacobs!


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13 minutes ago, ChangeOfPace said:

Although I agree with your overall opinion about S2 hurting recruiting (at least short term), continuing to go to games of our signed recruits is not an indicator of recruiting being damaged. It is very common to continue checking in on your signed recruits, especially those like Carteare.

not when you could be at the game of a very hotly contested unpledged recruit elsewhere.    

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I like the Jacobs commitment quite a bit.

-He's a slasher. He's really smooth and athletic, and gets to the rim with ease. He finishes in traffic, loves to show off a bit in transition, can handle it extremely well, and while he's definitely a heavy right-handed player, he finishes in a number of ways. He's got good length and strength for his size (6-3), allowing him to block shots and rebound his position well. That said, he can also knock it down at a mid-30s percentage from the perimeter, based on the best stats I could find. It doesn't seem like he's looking to score from the perimeter most of the time, but he does have that tool, as well.

-So he's not the pure shooter or pure point guard that we've been talking about needing, but he offers the other thing we need - solid backcourt depth. If we find a good PG (Austin?) and a shooter (one of the jucos?), then he's the perfect piece for this roster on paper. Goodwin can still be the lead guard, and I love the idea of a grad transfer senior PG for a year behind him, with Thatch and Jacobs and a TBD shooter, and then Bess, Johnson, and Pearson on the wing and Santos, Foreman, French, and Gordon in the frontcourt. That's a tough roster at every position, and it assumes we only fill 12 scholarships.

-There's a ton of video on Jacobs available on YouTube, as a lot of you have noticed (and shared) by now. I spent some time last week watching a good amount of it, and really like what I see.

-As for the academics argument, I'll start by saying it's an absolute joke for Illinois to suggest that they backed off for this reason. SLU would not take a player that Illinois wouldn't for academic reasons. In almost all cases, they're either both going to take him or both taking a pass, and if anyone is going to have the ability to take a chance on a guy who might not qualify, it's the gigantic state school with more resources, majors, and easy classes for athletes. The Illinois fans and writers saying otherwise are lying to themselves or their readers in order to save face for a program that has landed one major 2018 target and whiffed on every other one. If the Illinois staff actually changed their mind on Jacobs, it probably has more to do with the fact that they have almost all guards on the roster and need to put a frontcourt together quickly.

-As for Jacobs' academics more specifically, his official reason for getting out of his LOI to SIUC was "to get his academics in order for college", so he may or may not have been a qualifier out of HS. SIUC was going to take him anyway, so this tells me at least one of two things: 1. SIUC thought he was good enough to take a chance on, even if he didn't qualify and had to sit a season, and 2. He was going to qualify, and used academics as an excuse to get out of his LOI, take a prep year, and seek a bigger stage or better fit. Now, Hillcrest is first and foremost a basketball program and a school second. They had major problems in the 2016-2017 year, with students and parents complaining about poor academics, substandard housing conditions, inadequate food, and so forth. Since then, the coach has been fired and some improvements have been made. But if Jacobs was really trying to get himself in better academic shape, this isn't the place he would've gone. He would've gone to one of the many actual schools that offer a prep year, not a charter school set up to house a basketball program. There's still no indication that he wouldn't be a qualifier immediately. I'm assuming he has his test scores and credits in order, because we wouldn't be taking guys who can't play in the fall.

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38 minutes ago, RiseAndGrind said:

I've always put EJ Lidell into the McKinney camp -- He's just not that into SLU. 

he was until we didnt step up our focus as he got older.   when a freshman/sophomore the kids at west say that he constantly talked about being a billiken.  

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2 minutes ago, Billikenbooster said:

hines has been Hines all year, occasionally great, oftentimes exasperating with the turnovers and ill advised shots, not distributing.

 

Wrong. Hines is the goat

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2 minutes ago, billiken_roy said:

he was until we didnt step up our focus as he got older.   when a freshman/sophomore the kids at west say that he constantly talked about being a billiken.  

Didn't he attend the LaSalle game or some other recent game? I have no doubt this staff will go all out if there is mutual interest. Most high school kids change their minds a LOT. If the kid goes elsewhere, I don't think it will be because this staff has lost "focus."

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32 minutes ago, Billikenbooster said:

I see Jacobs as a tremendous upgrade over Hines.  Hines has been Hines all year, occasionally great, oftentimes exasperating with the turnovers and ill advised shots, not distributing.

mhg

Hines was technically replaced already. We graduate Hines, Anthony, and Roby. The signees were Thatch, Gordon, and Pearson. Three upgrades - not perfect position-for-position trades, but close enough. And I would add "major" in front of "upgrades", too.

Pulling back, we now have to replace Hines, Anthony, Roby, Graves, Henriquez, and Bishop, and possibly Welmer.

So we've done that with Thatch, Gordon, Pearson, Jacobs, and a couple TBD.

Seniors: Bess, Foreman

Juniors: Johnson, Santos

Sophomores: Goodwin, French

Freshmen: Thatch, Jacobs, Pearson, Gordon

This is where Austin makes a ton of sense as a grad transfer PG, and landing one of those juco shooting guards - who would be sophomores or juniors - would be really nice, as well. Edit: David Sloan (juco) would be a sophomore and might make sense if the staff thinks he and Goodwin could coexist.

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8 minutes ago, billiken_roy said:

he was until we didnt step up our focus as he got older.   when a freshman/sophomore the kids at west say that he constantly talked about being a billiken.  

Gee whiz Roy!  Are we going to have to star calling you VTime  East?  I get it.  You like Lidell.  Hopefully we'll get him and hopefully if we do he's as big a priority as you think he is.  Ford is an excellent recruiter and Demarius Jacobs is a terrific recruit.  Granted Ford has limited time and would have more time to lavish on your guy if he wasn't still looking for players for next year....... 

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8 minutes ago, Pistol said:

It'd be a shame to derail DJ's welcome thread with an argument over which local 2019 kids are interested in SLU or not.

Fair point. Pistol thanks for the research on the academics. A couple of articles i saw from the southern Illinois paper said that he definitely did not qualify. As you mentioned I’m inclined to believe he’s in better shape now with his academics otherwise the staff wouldn’t have offered. Don’t really have the luxury to take a flier

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15 hours ago, BillIkenFan_Dan said:

You do realize about 90% of the recruits in the 2018 class have already picked a team so there’s not a whole lot to pick from 

For the few who aren’t thrilled with this signing, let’s just do some quick, only slightly oversimplified math. There are 351 D1 college basketball programs. 13 players per team, so that’s 4,563 total. Roughly evenly split across four years of eligibility, that gives us over 1000 players per class. Signing top 300-ish guys means that we are getting guys who are in the top third/quarter of their class!!! A team of those players alone across four years is enough to build a top 100 program. Add them to the top-50/100/150 guys we have on board, and you have a model for sustained success. 

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49 minutes ago, ACE said:

Didn't he attend the LaSalle game or some other recent game? I have no doubt this staff will go all out if there is mutual interest. Most high school kids change their minds a LOT. If the kid goes elsewhere, I don't think it will be because this staff has lost "focus."

yes he and family were at the Lasalle game and after the game went to the lockerroom.  

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6 minutes ago, Zink said:

For the few who aren’t thrilled with this signing, let’s just do some quick, only slightly oversimplified math. There are 351 D1 college basketball programs. 13 players per team, so that’s 4,563 total. Roughly evenly split across four years of eligibility, that gives us over 1000 players per class. Signing top 300-ish guys means that we are getting guys who are in the top third/quarter of their class!!! A team of those players alone across four years is enough to build a top 100 program. Add them to the top-50/100/150 guys we have on board, and you have a model for sustained success. 

thrilled and content are definitely two different things.    thrilling imo means we just signed the next stephen curry, content means we signed a significant upgrade to hines and/or bishop that will give us more than just goodwin in the backcourt next year.    both are positive reactions.  one is realistic.   

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3 minutes ago, BillIkenFan_Dan said:

so is their any word if this kid has good or bad handles I know he can get to the rim but how does he do bringing it down the floor, and can he pass well 

He has a really nice handle, actually. Very good passer, too. Shows off both in transition. He's not a PG by trade, but he's got a pretty complete guard skill set.

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17 minutes ago, billiken_roy said:

thrilled and content are definitely two different things.    thrilling imo means we just signed the next stephen curry, content means we signed a significant upgrade to hines and/or bishop that will give us more than just goodwin in the backcourt next year.    both are positive reactions.  one is realistic.   

You don't thrill easily.......

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26 minutes ago, billiken_roy said:

thrilled and content are definitely two different things.    thrilling imo means we just signed the next stephen curry, content means we signed a significant upgrade to hines and/or bishop that will give us more than just goodwin in the backcourt next year.    both are positive reactions.  one is realistic.   

So off all 351 so less than 10 get Curry level "thrills"? If that was my threshold very few thrills in 55 years of being an avid sports fan. Still addicted.

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1 minute ago, bauman said:

Frank C. just said that Jacobs was sitting next to Thatch at the GW game.  Did anyone else see that?

-I saw Thatch, who was sitting on the rail to the tunnel used by the officials and there were two kids on Fred's left, so Jacobs was one,  who was the other?

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9 minutes ago, Cowboy said:

-I saw Thatch, who was sitting on the rail to the tunnel used by the officials and there were two kids on Fred's left, so Jacobs was one,  who was the other?

Great planning by TF and staff to have FT, a most solid Billiken recruit, sitting with a recruit.

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