Recruiting - 2025

[WVBilliken]

On 8/28/2024 at 2:25 PM, SLURadioBoy said:

Looks like 2025 recruiting is about to pick up.

 

SLU will have a solid returning group next year if all 5 of our Juniors come back (Avila, Hughes, Thames, Anya, Casey).  May be a good year to deveop a few frosh.  But losing 3 guards in Jimerson, Swope, and Johnson.  Would like to see Shertz bring in at least one transfer guard.

[thetorch]

3 hours ago, VeniceMenace said:

Was it foolish of Utah State to do so and beat SLU on the road & finish in the NCAA round of 32, eliminated by Purdue?

1 team did it right.  50 did it wrong, including SLU.

I like those odds.

[thetorch]

4 hours ago, willie said:

Not sure this take is right. With the portal and NIL we will see. I hope you are right but I have my doubts. 

I can't spell it out for people much more.

How high is SLU's NIL budget in comparison to other teams?  Are we in the top 50? Top 75?  How can we possibly compete for transfers, especially high level ones. against programs with budgets 2-3 times our size for impact transfers?  The only ways to be successful is to 1.  Load all our budget on 1 player and hope we outbid the big boys, or 2. Constantly search the scrap heap for also rans, underachievers, injury prone, and headcases and hope we can improve them.  I don't think either of these are a plan for sustained success.

Recruit freshman, keep the ones we like, fill in a gap with a transfer or two, and repeat. Develop players, put them in a system where they will succeed and they will stay, then we pay them.  If they leave, we bring in more guys.

A lot of the CBB pundits are exposing the myth about how much talent is actually in the transfer portal.  There just isn't.  Much more talent among incoming freshman.  Transfers get undue attention because the media hypes it, its something new and exciting and it fills a normally dead space in reporting.  Nothing more nothing less.  The top 250 transfers vs the top 250 incoming freshman, you take the freshman every time.

[VeniceMenace]

9 hours ago, thetorch said:

I can't spell it out for people much more.

How high is SLU's NIL budget in comparison to other teams?  Are we in the top 50? Top 75?  How can we possibly compete for transfers, especially high level ones. against programs with budgets 2-3 times our size for impact transfers?  The only ways to be successful is to 1.  Load all our budget on 1 player and hope we outbid the big boys, or 2. Constantly search the scrap heap for also rans, underachievers, injury prone, and headcases and hope we can improve them.  I don't think either of these are a plan for sustained success.

Recruit freshman, keep the ones we like, fill in a gap with a transfer or two, and repeat. Develop players, put them in a system where they will succeed and they will stay, then we pay them.  If they leave, we bring in more guys.

A lot of the CBB pundits are exposing the myth about how much talent is actually in the transfer portal.  There just isn't.  Much more talent among incoming freshman.  Transfers get undue attention because the media hypes it, its something new and exciting and it fills a normally dead space in reporting.  Nothing more nothing less.  The top 250 transfers vs the top 250 incoming freshman, you take the freshman every time.

Schertz didn't take the freshman every time, he just recruited 5 transfers...

[Crewsorlose]

The fatal flaw in The Torch's argument is "keep the freshman that you like." Would that it were so simple. The freshman SLU likes are the same freshman, generally, that the rest of the country likes, and is offering bags of cash to. 

In this landscape, you essentially re-recruit all 13 scholarship players every spring. 

[cgeldmacher]

12 hours ago, thetorch said:

Recruit freshman, keep the ones we like, fill in a gap with a transfer or two, and repeat. Develop players, put them in a system where they will succeed and they will stay, then we pay them.  If they leave, we bring in more guys.

 

The bolded section is the problem with your take.  There is no guarantee that we keep a freshman that has a breakout freshman season.  We can, and probably will be, outbid by big schools on any freshman we have that looks like a star.  The transfers we bring in are coming here because they know where they are in the big picture of the basketball world and they chose SLU and the compensation package we offered.

I don't think we should be all transfers either.  I think that there is a proper balance that the staff should develop.

[cgeldmacher]

3 hours ago, Crewsorlose said:

The fatal flaw in The Torch's argument is "keep the freshman that you like." Would that it were so simple. The freshman SLU likes are the same freshman, generally, that the rest of the country likes, and is offering bags of cash to. 

In this landscape, you essentially re-recruit all 13 scholarship players every spring. 

Sorry, just saw your reply after I made mine and realized I made the same point you did.

[ACE]

3 hours ago, Crewsorlose said:

The fatal flaw in The Torch's argument is "keep the freshman that you like." Would that it were so simple. The freshman SLU likes are the same freshman, generally, that the rest of the country likes, and is offering bags of cash to. 

In this landscape, you essentially re-recruit all 13 scholarship players every spring. 

Correct. Schertz just had a Top 30 team that had 3 transfers in the starting 5, and this year he brought in 7 transfers. Understand that this year was an unusual one-time situation to build a roster, but clearly Schertz has shown he will go after transfers and will continue to do so. You have to in this day and age. To think otherwise is just silly. I'm not sure why anyone would even try to turn this into a debate.

[HoosierPal]

Anyone who believes they have the answer to how and what to recruit, they are blowing smoke.  There is no right answer. 

"What, if you don't agree with me you are wrong."  That is the theme of too many people these days.

By my count there are 40 incoming scholarship freshman in the A10.  That is about 20%.  The fifth year class is still around, so that is about where it should be.  And there are 65 transfers coming into the A10.  That's about a third.  So who has the right approach? 

The consensus top 5 teams in the A10 have the following:  Dayton, 3 Transfers, 2 Recruits; Loyola 4 Transfers and 4 Recruits, SLU 7 Transfers, 3 Recruits, STJ 2 Transfers, 4 Recruits, and VCU 2 Transfers, 4 Recruits.  Get back to me at the end of the season and tell me which approach produced the best results.  And get back to me before the 25 season and tell me how many of the Recruits returned.

And then input the following information into the calculus.  Next season, 25-26, the number of scholarships a basketball team can award will increase to 15.  Schools don't have to offer 15, but they can.  Who do you want to sit on the bench in spots 14-15?  Freshmen or transfers?  Schools likely will also be able to pay players directly from revenue. (That is TBD but is coming.) How schools handle that distribution.  Pay upperclassmen more than freshman?  Do you find the cheapest route or the right route.

The college athletic scene is spinning, some say, out of control.  Next year won't look anything like this year.  There is no right or wrong answer.  You need both Transfers and new Recruits.

[billikenfan05]

The truth is somewhere in the middle. Approach every year and every roster construction with nuance based on roster needs. Some years you rely on the portal, some years you rely on high school recruiting. Ain't nothing changed but the name on the mail. There, I solved this argument. 

[thetorch]

5 hours ago, Crewsorlose said:

The fatal flaw in The Torch's argument is "keep the freshman that you like." Would that it were so simple. The freshman SLU likes are the same freshman, generally, that the rest of the country likes, and is offering bags of cash to. 

In this landscape, you essentially re-recruit all 13 scholarship players every spring. 

The fatal flaw in your argument is you think every breakout freshman will leave.  Most will stay, especially after we start paying them higher their 2nd year.  Again the transfer market has been terribly overhyped.  Even most lower level programs keep their young players.  Smaller and smaller percentages of eligible players are leaving programs and they usually aren't the stars.

[kshoe]

1 hour ago, cgeldmacher said:

The bolded section is the problem with your take.  There is no guarantee that we keep a freshman that has a breakout freshman season.  We can, and probably will be, outbid by big schools on any freshman we have that looks like a star.  The transfers we bring in are coming here because they know where they are in the big picture of the basketball world and they chose SLU and the compensation package we offered.

I don't think we should be all transfers either.  I think that there is a proper balance that the staff should develop.

There are no guarantees in anything, but I do like the hard cap on NIL that we are willing to offer an incoming freshman because I think it fits in well with the goal of keeping the freshmen that you like down the road.

If $ are all that matters to a kid coming out of high school he probably won't end up at SLU given the NIL cap we are offering. So the freshmen that do come likely aren't complete mercenaries which will lead to you have a better opportunity to retain him than the average player.

Put differently, by putting a cap on the NIL you are willing to pay a player as a freshman you've self selected a group that worries more about fit than $. It's a good approach.

[ACE]

1 hour ago, thetorch said:

The fatal flaw in your argument is you think every breakout freshman will leave.  Most will stay, especially after we start paying them higher their 2nd year.  Again the transfer market has been terribly overhyped.  Even most lower level programs keep their young players.  Smaller and smaller percentages of eligible players are leaving programs and they usually aren't the stars.

Tell that to St. Mary's. They lost Mahaney to UConn - even though he was playing on a good team and grew up near the St. Mary's campus.

[willie]

40 minutes ago, ACE said:

Tell that to St. Mary's. They lost Mahaney to UConn - even though he was playing on a good team and grew up near the St. Mary's campus.

Not trying to support Torch’s argument because I don’t agree with him but a chance to play for UConn would be hard to pass on. 

[ACE]

23 minutes ago, willie said:

Not trying to support Torch’s argument because I don’t agree with him but a chance to play for UConn would be hard to pass on. 

Of course. Not blaming the kid. Just pointing out the reality of college hoops in 2024. 

[SLURadioBoy]

 

[cgeldmacher]

On 8/31/2024 at 8:06 PM, SLURadioBoy said:

 

I don't know much about this kid, but I love that he thanked our program for its "hospitality this weekend" and that his parents are in one of his posted pictures.

[SLURadioBoy]

Looks like the staff is making Sealy a priority.

 

[SLURadioBoy]

 

[thetorch]

Staff is very confident about this class.  We should have 3 commitments, maybe 4 by the end of the month.

[SLURadioBoy]

 

[Pistol]

Trey Williams is off the board to Missouri State and Vincent Chaudhri is headed to GW. Both had SLU offers originally from Ford's staff; only Williams had his refreshed when Schertz took over.

[SLURadioBoy]

Looks like the staff will visit Jaylen Lawal and were out there last week as well, according to his school’s Twitter page.

[Pistol]

1 hour ago, SLURadioBoy said:

Looks like the staff will visit Jaylen Lawal and were out there last week as well, according to his school’s Twitter page.

David Iweze also attends school there. Originally a Ford offer but this staff refreshed it over the summer.

[SLURadioBoy]

Here is an article about Sealy’s recruitment, which touches on his visit to SLU this weekend.

https://www.zagsblog.com/2024/09/12/top-70-prospect-isaiah-sealy-previews-st-louis-visit-updates-overall-recruitment/

Here’s what he had to say about SLU:

SLU: “Coach Brett [Putz], he definitely wants me to get my game up to the next level. He wants to kind of — he said he’s recruiting three or four other guys to try and build a team with that freshman class around us. And I feel like coach Brett is a great coach. He’s been recruiting me since kind of like the beginning of the summer. So I feel like they are on me hard and they really want me. So I’m interested in them too. I think it was like two weeks ago, but I had a Zoom meeting with coach Brett and my dad. He kind of just showed us the campus and how they work, how the practice works and all of that. I feel like it’s a great program for sure.” SLU was recently at Sealy’s practice as well.