RBHoya
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Post by RBHoya on Jan 21, 2021 13:13:26 GMT -5
I'm not sure if this will be of any interest to anyone but me, but after looking it up I thought I'd share, especially since we're not playing games right now.
For anyone who doesn't know, the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference (WCAC) is the top high school sports conference in the area. The 11 team basketball league produces high major recruits every year. I wanted to see what it would look like if one college team could assemble a lot of that talent and become something of a WCAC all star team. Here's what it might look like:
First Team G- Chris Lykes, 15.5 ppg @ Miami (Gonzaga) G- Xavier Johnson, 15.1 ppg @ Pitt (O'Connell) G- Aaron Thompson, 14 ppg @ Butler (Paul VI) F- Justin Moore, 13.4 ppg @ Villanova (Dematha) C- Nate Watson, 18.3 ppg @ Providence (O'Connell)
Second Team G- Jeremy Roach, 11.1 ppg @ Duke (Paul VI) G- Wynston Tabbs, 13.3 ppg @ BC (St. Mary's Ryken) G- Prentiss Hubb, 13.7 ppg @ Notre Dame (Gonzaga) F- Earl Timberlake, 10.2 ppg @ Miami (Dematha) C- Hunter Dickinson, 16.8 ppg @ Michigan (Dematha)
Remaining Scholarships Chuck Harris, 11 ppg @ Butler (Gonzaga) Matt Lewis, 22.5 ppg @ JMU (O'Connell) Myles Stute, 8.7 ppg @ Vanderbilt (Gonzaga)
This does not include several other players who I think we'd happily take into our program, like Terrence Williams (Michigan/Gonzaga), Anthony Harris (UNC/Paul VI), Casey Morsell (UVA/St. Johns), Myles Dread (Penn State/Gonzaga), DJ Harvey (Vanderbilt/Dematha), and others.
Obviously this list is stacked with talent, and as a reminder, this is not "best college players from the DMV" or even "best players from the DC area". These guys all played in the same high school league. There's tons of talent in the area at other private schools outside of the WCAC, or public schools, or in Baltimore, etc. But even if you just focused on the WCAC--hell, even if you just focused on the 4 WCAC schools that produce the most high major recruits (Dematha, Gonzaga, Paul VI, O'Connell), you could amass a core of players that can be perennial contenders.
This is particularly frustrating to me because Georgetown is SUCH a logical college destination for these kids. They're coming from good Catholic schools in the area, and we are one of the elite Catholic schools in the world. Sure, some players want to go away, and to be clear, no one school would ever get them all. But many would surely like to play close to home and have their family at their games assuming they could play high major competition and get national tv exposure. And yet, the last player to graduate from a WCAC school and matriculate to Georgetown was Tre Campbell in 2014. The last player from a WCAC school to matriculate and stay 4 years was Mikael Hopkins in 2011. Roughly one player per decade. How are we doing so poorly at recruiting an elite Catholic basketball league right in our backyard?
I know that some may think it's a non-issue, since our recruiting in 2021 was good even without an emphasis on the area. But I'd counter that some problematic recruiting in previous years has led us to the current roster, with many suggesting that we're still at least another year away from the tournament. There are a lot of tweaks that I'd like to make to our program, but putting emphasis on recruiting the area--especially the WCAC--is near the top of the list. There's a network effect to it too--see Rodney Rice saying he likes Georgetown but wishing we'd recruit more area players, or Hunter Dickinson saying "Imagine if the two HM programs in the DMV actually recruited this area for basketball, they'd be top 5 in the country every year", or a number of our own alumni on Dawg Talk saying that they think we'd have better luck in the area if we just recruited more players in the area. When you prioritize recruiting the area, you'll start to land players from the area; and when you start to land players from the area, OTHER players from the area are more likely to join the party. Conversely, when the perception is that you don't really care much about recruiting the area (as Dickinson shows), then when you do recruit locals they tend to be lukewarm on you.
I recognize that even with a concerted effort, you wouldn't be able to keep everyone home, especially 5 star talents (ie. Jeremy Roach, Trevor Keels, etc.). But that's ok. The talent pool in the WCAC is so deep that even if you totally whiff on all the Top 50 kids coming through the league, there are still plenty of Chuck Harrises (ranked 167th in his class), Wynston Tabbs (288th in his class), or our own Terrell Allens (unranked in his class) to build a quality team out of.
I guess my ultimate point is that I think we've made mistakes in our recruiting strategy, and I hope we adjust moving forward. Hire an assistant that has strong connections to the WCAC in general or to one of the biggest schools and have him build the absolute strongest relationships possible with the schools that produce the most recruits (Dematha, Gonzaga, Paul VI, O'Connell). If he can build strong relationships with other schools in the area too, all the better. But even if he just lives in those 4 gyms and starts building relationships with players in those 4 programs from an early age, we'll be alright. Take in as many WCAC games as possible--as long as our team isn't playing or on the road to its next game, you can make it to tons of games throughout the season. Send a message to players, parents and coaches that recruiting the top players in the DC area is a top priority for Georgetown. Stop flying around trying to build relationships at Knoxville Catholic or Lake Minnehaha Academy or Orangeville Prep, and focus all of that attention on building relationships with the handful of programs in your backyard that crank out high major recruits year in and year out.
Hoping for a change in 2022 with guys like McDaniel, Ward, Rice et. al, but also hoping for some fresh blood on the coaching staff who can help us make these connections and change our reputation in local basketball circles.
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CTHoya08
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Post by CTHoya08 on Jan 21, 2021 13:21:14 GMT -5
I can't help but think that it should be possible, at the very least, to fill out the end of our bench with local kids who would otherwise end up in the A-10 or CAA, instead of a bunch of SRDs from random locations throughout the country. Even if we're not landing the top recruits from the WCAC overnight, recruiting their teammates seems like a good way to build relationships with the programs that will help us with the next round of recruits.
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Post by wponds on Jan 21, 2021 14:08:56 GMT -5
I can't help but think that it should be possible, at the very leasst, to fill out the end of our bench with local kids who would otherwise end up in the A-10 or CAA, instead of a bunch of SRDs from random locations throughout the country. Even if we're not landing the top recruits from the WCAC overnight, recruiting their teammates seems like a good way to build relationships with the programs that will help us with the next round of recruits. Agree. I like the guys from the 2020 and 2021 classes, but in an ideal world (and when we have 10 open spots between the two years), I'd rather take an unheralded kid from the area than one from out of town
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LCPolo18
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Post by LCPolo18 on Jan 21, 2021 14:15:54 GMT -5
A whole bunch of points came to mind while reading this.
1. Assistant Coach Akbar Waheed played at Gonzaga and I believe he graduated from there in 1995. Granted that was a while ago, but it's surprising he hasn't had more success recruiting the WCAC and Gonzaga more specifically. When he was an assistant at Niagara he recruited a few Gonzaga players.
2. Waheed seems like the kind of coach that "lives in the gyms" when recruiting players (as evidenced by his recruitment efforts for RJ Davis, Terrence Williams, and Matthew Alexander Moncrieffe), but effort and presence doesn't always lead to a recruiting win.
3. Terrence Williams was a real gut punch. Getting a top 100 WCAC player to commit was huge at the time and our recruiting conversation would be about building on WCAC recruiting instead of jump starting it.
4. While I agree that it's not just about the top 100 recruits, and Georgetown should be also looking to add top 200 recruits from the WCAC, I don't blame the coaching staff for not getting any in the 2020 class. If you think back, when Jamari Sibley committed in November 2019, Georgetown had a full 2020-2021 roster, with a class of Williams, Harris, and Sibley. Five spots on the roster opened in December due to transfers and the decommitment. I haven't gone back and looked at all of the WCAC rosters, but I'm pretty sure most of the seniors had committed by then, and if not they were likely already deep into their recruitments.
5. As a caveat to the last point, Paul Smith was a name that intrigued me last Spring. He played at DeMatha and was the only 2020 commitment to stick with ETSU after Forbes left. As a 6'8" PF from the DMV, would he have been interested in Georgetown? He hasn't played for ETSU yet this season, so I'm not sure how good he is, but could it have been good from a relationship development perspective?
6. Hopefully having Austin Freeman on staff at DeMatha helps a little bit.
7. Shoutout to Ra'Mond Hines who was a manager and then walk on from late in the 15-16 season through his graduation in 17-18. He played at Gonzaga in high school.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 21, 2021 14:23:49 GMT -5
I'm not sure if this will be of any interest to anyone but me, but after looking it up I thought I'd share, especially since we're not playing games right now. For anyone who doesn't know, the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference (WCAC) is the top high school sports conference in the area. The 11 team basketball league produces high major recruits every year. I wanted to see what it would look like if one college team could assemble a lot of that talent and become something of a WCAC all star team. Here's what it might look like: First TeamG- Chris Lykes, 15.5 ppg @ Miami (Gonzaga) G- Xavier Johnson, 15.1 ppg @ Pitt (O'Connell) G- Aaron Thompson, 14 ppg @ Butler (Paul VI) F- Justin Moore, 13.4 ppg @ Villanova (Dematha) C- Nate Watson, 18.3 ppg @ Providence (O'Connell) Second TeamG- Jeremy Roach, 11.1 ppg @ Duke (Paul VI) G- Wynston Tabbs, 13.3 ppg @ BC (St. Mary's Ryken) G- Prentiss Hubb, 13.7 ppg @ Notre Dame (Gonzaga) F- Earl Timberlake, 10.2 ppg @ Miami (Dematha) C- Hunter Dickinson, 16.8 ppg @ Michigan (Dematha) Remaining ScholarshipsChuck Harris, 11 ppg @ Butler (Gonzaga) Matt Lewis, 22.5 ppg @ JMU (O'Connell) Myles Stute, 8.7 ppg @ Vanderbilt (Gonzaga) This does not include several other players who I think we'd happily take into our program, like Terrence Williams (Michigan/Gonzaga), Anthony Harris (UNC/Paul VI), Casey Morsell (UVA/St. Johns), Myles Dread (Penn State/Gonzaga), DJ Harvey (Vanderbilt/Dematha), and others. Obviously this list is stacked with talent, and as a reminder, this is not "best college players from the DMV" or even "best players from the DC area". These guys all played in the same high school league. There's tons of talent in the area at other private schools outside of the WCAC, or public schools, or in Baltimore, etc. But even if you just focused on the WCAC--hell, even if you just focused on the 4 WCAC schools that produce the most high major recruits (Dematha, Gonzaga, Paul VI, O'Connell), you could amass a core of players that can be perennial contenders. This is particularly frustrating to me because Georgetown is SUCH a logical college destination for these kids. They're coming from good Catholic schools in the area, and we are one of the elite Catholic schools in the world. Sure, some players want to go away, and to be clear, no one school would ever get them all. But many would surely like to play close to home and have their family at their games assuming they could play high major competition and get national tv exposure. And yet, the last player to graduate from a WCAC school and matriculate to Georgetown was Tre Campbell in 2014. The last player from a WCAC school to matriculate and stay 4 years was Mikael Hopkins in 2011. Roughly one player per decade. How are we doing so poorly at recruiting an elite Catholic basketball league right in our backyard? I know that some may think it's a non-issue, since our recruiting in 2021 was good even without an emphasis on the area. But I'd counter that some problematic recruiting in previous years has led us to the current roster, with many suggesting that we're still at least another year away from the tournament. There are a lot of tweaks that I'd like to make to our program, but putting emphasis on recruiting the area--especially the WCAC--is near the top of the list. There's a network effect to it too--see Rodney Rice saying he likes Georgetown but wishing we'd recruit more area players, or Hunter Dickinson saying "Imagine if the two HM programs in the DMV actually recruited this area for basketball, they'd be top 5 in the country every year", or a number of our own alumni on Dawg Talk saying that they think we'd have better luck in the area if we just recruited more players in the area. When you prioritize recruiting the area, you'll start to land players from the area; and when you start to land players from the area, OTHER players from the area are more likely to join the party. Conversely, when the perception is that you don't really care much about recruiting the area (as Dickinson shows), then when you do recruit locals they tend to be lukewarm on you. I recognize that even with a concerted effort, you wouldn't be able to keep everyone home, especially 5 star talents (ie. Jeremy Roach, Trevor Keels, etc.). But that's ok. The talent pool in the WCAC is so deep that even if you totally whiff on all the Top 50 kids coming through the league, there are still plenty of Chuck Harrises (ranked 167th in his class), Wynston Tabbs (288th in his class), or our own Terrell Allens (unranked in his class) to build a quality team out of. I guess my ultimate point is that I think we've made mistakes in our recruiting strategy, and I hope we adjust moving forward. Hire an assistant that has strong connections to the WCAC in general or to one of the biggest schools and have him build the absolute strongest relationships possible with the schools that produce the most recruits (Dematha, Gonzaga, Paul VI, O'Connell). If he can build strong relationships with other schools in the area too, all the better. But even if he just lives in those 4 gyms and starts building relationships with players in those 4 programs from an early age, we'll be alright. Take in as many WCAC games as possible--as long as our team isn't playing or on the road to its next game, you can make it to tons of games throughout the season. Send a message to players, parents and coaches that recruiting the top players in the DC area is a top priority for Georgetown. Stop flying around trying to build relationships at Knoxville Catholic or Lake Minnehaha Academy or Orangeville Prep, and focus all of that attention on building relationships with the handful of programs in your backyard that crank out high major recruits year in and year out. Hoping for a change in 2022 with guys like McDaniel, Ward, Rice et. al, but also hoping for some fresh blood on the coaching staff who can help us make these connections and change our reputation in local basketball circles. Reading this just made me very very depressed.
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Post by hoyalove4ever on Jan 21, 2021 15:49:50 GMT -5
Great post. I would love to see Patrick at fifty WCAC games a year, even when we do not have a real target. Show your face, build relationships, and play the long game.
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hoya9797
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Post by hoya9797 on Jan 21, 2021 15:55:22 GMT -5
Great post. I would love to see Patrick at fifty WCAC games a year, even when we do not have a real target. Show your face, build relationships, and play the long game. Maybe he can learn something, too.
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hoyaduck
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Post by hoyaduck on Jan 21, 2021 16:03:25 GMT -5
Great post. I would love to see Patrick at fifty WCAC games a year, even when we do not have a real target. Show your face, build relationships, and play the long game. Maybe he can learn something, too. Wait... you don't think Ewing is a good coach?
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bostonfan
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Post by bostonfan on Jan 21, 2021 16:24:18 GMT -5
Finding a way to land a few of the good WCAC players is really key to the long term success of the program. I am not sure what the best way is to start that local pipeline, but seeing one or two of these local kids commit to Georgetown every year would build those relationships and then it should make the program a consistently competitive program. Geta few of those young kids into the program and make sure they have a great "experience" at Georgetown and then they may become your best recruiters as they talk to the other local kids. Your not going to get the best kid from that conference every year not matter what, some kids want to go away for college or have some other type of connection/relationship with another program, but getting a couple of the top ten players from the best high school conference in the country that is right in your backyard should be doable.
If it means changing the staff to some degree to add that local recruiting ace, then it is time to do that. I get the sense that Coach Ewing is loyal to his staff and I think that is admirable, but at this level it is a results based business and so far the results are not getting it done.
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dchoya72
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Post by dchoya72 on Jan 21, 2021 16:59:02 GMT -5
Yes, the WCAC is a great conference, maybe the premier basketball conference center in the country. It has been that way for decades. If Georgetown starts winning consistently maybe recruits will take a harder look at the Hoyas. I don't think Georgetown has had great success with the WCAC even at its best. The best of the WCAC have consistently had opportunities to play at major D-1 colleges across the US, especially UNC, Duke, Syracuse and Notre Dame. In short, until we revive our winning tradition, coming to Georgetown will, in my opinion, be a hard sell.
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bostonfan
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Post by bostonfan on Jan 21, 2021 17:12:21 GMT -5
Yes, the WCAC is a great conference, maybe the premier basketball conference center in the country. It has been that way for decades. If Georgetown starts winning consistently maybe recruits will take a harder look at the Hoyas. I don't think Georgetown has had great success with the WCAC even at its best. The best of the WCAC have consistently had opportunities to play at major D-1 colleges across the US, especially UNC, Duke, Syracuse and Notre Dame. In short, until we revive our winning tradition, coming to Georgetown will, in my opinion, be a hard sell. No doubt that wining more games on a consistent basis would make it easier to attract more kids from the WCAC, but some of these kids are going to other programs that are not really winning either. Looks at Xavier Johnson going to a Pitt program that has not had much success, or Tabbs going to BC who has not been good lately or the kids going to Vanderbilt. I agree that in order to get the best WCAC kids you need to win more, but I think you should be able to get the next level WCAC kids to come and if they have a great experience, and help the program win, then getting those really high level kids becomes much easier. You need to start somewhere to begin bringing these kids into the program.
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hoya9797
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Post by hoya9797 on Jan 21, 2021 17:26:08 GMT -5
Maybe he can learn something, too. Wait... you don't think Ewing is a good coach? Even good coaches have things they can learn.
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hoya59er
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Post by hoya59er on Jan 21, 2021 17:58:11 GMT -5
This is shameful, that we have gotten so very few good local players, and yes, we should have a huge advantage. How about this? The last talented player we got from Gonzaga, a Jesuit high school in DC, is Robert Churchwell, who graduated in 1994, 27 years ago! Now, four years into Ewings tenure, the story seems to be the same. Why?
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dchoya72
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Post by dchoya72 on Jan 21, 2021 18:10:28 GMT -5
Yes, the WCAC is a great conference, maybe the premier basketball conference center in the country. It has been that way for decades. If Georgetown starts winning consistently maybe recruits will take a harder look at the Hoyas. I don't think Georgetown has had great success with the WCAC even at its best. The best of the WCAC have consistently had opportunities to play at major D-1 colleges across the US, especially UNC, Duke, Syracuse and Notre Dame. In short, until we revive our winning tradition, coming to Georgetown will, in my opinion, be a hard sell. No doubt that wining more games on a consistent basis would make it easier to attract more kids from the WCAC, but some of these kids are going to other programs that are not really winning either. Looks at Xavier Johnson going to a Pitt program that has not had much success, or Tabbs going to BC who has not been good lately or the kids going to Vanderbilt. I agree that in order to get the best WCAC kids you need to win more, but I think you should be able to get the next level WCAC kids to come and if they have a great experience, and help the program win, then getting those really high level kids becomes much easier. You need to start somewhere to begin bringing these kids into the program. Some kids want to get out of town and have a different experience. It's not the same for all, but consistency in winning helps. We dropped off the map at the end of JTIII's cycle. I love the man, but hated his style of play, just like I hated the Four Corners of Dean Smith. Just my opinion.
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hoya9797
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Post by hoya9797 on Jan 21, 2021 18:16:53 GMT -5
This is shameful, that we have gotten so very few good local players, and yes, we should have a huge advantage. How about this? The last talented player we got from Gonzaga, a Jesuit high school in DC, is Robert Churchwell, who graduated in 1994, 27 years ago! Now, four years into Ewings tenure, the story seems to be the same. Why? One problem that can’t be completely blamed on Ewing.
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DallasHoya
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Post by DallasHoya on Jan 21, 2021 19:44:12 GMT -5
I'm not sure if this will be of any interest to anyone but me, but after looking it up I thought I'd share, especially since we're not playing games right now. For anyone who doesn't know, the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference (WCAC) is the top high school sports conference in the area. The 11 team basketball league produces high major recruits every year. I wanted to see what it would look like if one college team could assemble a lot of that talent and become something of a WCAC all star team. Here's what it might look like: First TeamG- Chris Lykes, 15.5 ppg @ Miami (Gonzaga) G- Xavier Johnson, 15.1 ppg @ Pitt (O'Connell) G- Aaron Thompson, 14 ppg @ Butler (Paul VI) F- Justin Moore, 13.4 ppg @ Villanova (Dematha) C- Nate Watson, 18.3 ppg @ Providence (O'Connell) Second TeamG- Jeremy Roach, 11.1 ppg @ Duke (Paul VI) G- Wynston Tabbs, 13.3 ppg @ BC (St. Mary's Ryken) G- Prentiss Hubb, 13.7 ppg @ Notre Dame (Gonzaga) F- Earl Timberlake, 10.2 ppg @ Miami (Dematha) C- Hunter Dickinson, 16.8 ppg @ Michigan (Dematha) Remaining ScholarshipsChuck Harris, 11 ppg @ Butler (Gonzaga) Matt Lewis, 22.5 ppg @ JMU (O'Connell) Myles Stute, 8.7 ppg @ Vanderbilt (Gonzaga) This does not include several other players who I think we'd happily take into our program, like Terrence Williams (Michigan/Gonzaga), Anthony Harris (UNC/Paul VI), Casey Morsell (UVA/St. Johns), Myles Dread (Penn State/Gonzaga), DJ Harvey (Vanderbilt/Dematha), and others. Obviously this list is stacked with talent, and as a reminder, this is not "best college players from the DMV" or even "best players from the DC area". These guys all played in the same high school league. There's tons of talent in the area at other private schools outside of the WCAC, or public schools, or in Baltimore, etc. But even if you just focused on the WCAC--hell, even if you just focused on the 4 WCAC schools that produce the most high major recruits (Dematha, Gonzaga, Paul VI, O'Connell), you could amass a core of players that can be perennial contenders. This is particularly frustrating to me because Georgetown is SUCH a logical college destination for these kids. They're coming from good Catholic schools in the area, and we are one of the elite Catholic schools in the world. Sure, some players want to go away, and to be clear, no one school would ever get them all. But many would surely like to play close to home and have their family at their games assuming they could play high major competition and get national tv exposure. And yet, the last player to graduate from a WCAC school and matriculate to Georgetown was Tre Campbell in 2014. The last player from a WCAC school to matriculate and stay 4 years was Mikael Hopkins in 2011. Roughly one player per decade. How are we doing so poorly at recruiting an elite Catholic basketball league right in our backyard? I know that some may think it's a non-issue, since our recruiting in 2021 was good even without an emphasis on the area. But I'd counter that some problematic recruiting in previous years has led us to the current roster, with many suggesting that we're still at least another year away from the tournament. There are a lot of tweaks that I'd like to make to our program, but putting emphasis on recruiting the area--especially the WCAC--is near the top of the list. There's a network effect to it too--see Rodney Rice saying he likes Georgetown but wishing we'd recruit more area players, or Hunter Dickinson saying "Imagine if the two HM programs in the DMV actually recruited this area for basketball, they'd be top 5 in the country every year", or a number of our own alumni on Dawg Talk saying that they think we'd have better luck in the area if we just recruited more players in the area. When you prioritize recruiting the area, you'll start to land players from the area; and when you start to land players from the area, OTHER players from the area are more likely to join the party. Conversely, when the perception is that you don't really care much about recruiting the area (as Dickinson shows), then when you do recruit locals they tend to be lukewarm on you. I recognize that even with a concerted effort, you wouldn't be able to keep everyone home, especially 5 star talents (ie. Jeremy Roach, Trevor Keels, etc.). But that's ok. The talent pool in the WCAC is so deep that even if you totally whiff on all the Top 50 kids coming through the league, there are still plenty of Chuck Harrises (ranked 167th in his class), Wynston Tabbs (288th in his class), or our own Terrell Allens (unranked in his class) to build a quality team out of. I guess my ultimate point is that I think we've made mistakes in our recruiting strategy, and I hope we adjust moving forward. Hire an assistant that has strong connections to the WCAC in general or to one of the biggest schools and have him build the absolute strongest relationships possible with the schools that produce the most recruits (Dematha, Gonzaga, Paul VI, O'Connell). If he can build strong relationships with other schools in the area too, all the better. But even if he just lives in those 4 gyms and starts building relationships with players in those 4 programs from an early age, we'll be alright. Take in as many WCAC games as possible--as long as our team isn't playing or on the road to its next game, you can make it to tons of games throughout the season. Send a message to players, parents and coaches that recruiting the top players in the DC area is a top priority for Georgetown. Stop flying around trying to build relationships at Knoxville Catholic or Lake Minnehaha Academy or Orangeville Prep, and focus all of that attention on building relationships with the handful of programs in your backyard that crank out high major recruits year in and year out. Hoping for a change in 2022 with guys like McDaniel, Ward, Rice et. al, but also hoping for some fresh blood on the coaching staff who can help us make these connections and change our reputation in local basketball circles. Reading this makes me think of Howard Schnellenberger when took over University of Miami football. At the time, UM had only two top-10 finishes in the previous 23 years and hadn’t won more than six games in any of the previous 11 years. Instead of trying recruit everywhere, he drew a line across Florida from Tampa eastward and called it the state of Miami. ''Eighty-five percent of our recruiting time is spent on kids in the state of Miami,'' Schnellenberger said. ''And 85 percent of the kids on our team are from the state of Miami.'' Miami became the dominant college football team for the next decade a few years after that. That’s exactly what Georgetown needs to do with the DMV. Unfortunately, we’ve known that for years but apparently don’t have the staff to do it.
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Jan 21, 2021 19:44:33 GMT -5
One problem that can’t be completely blamed on Ewing. It's not about blame, but there's enough of a sample size that Ewing is more than accountable for the players he signs. Since he took the job, there are 25 scholarship signees in the last four years, as follows: Grad Transfers: 5 Division I Transfers: 3 NCAA Eligibility-Focused Prep Schools: 10 Four Year High Schools: 7 Of the seven, number of signed recruits from the DC area? Zero. The last high school recruit signed from the DC area? Seven years ago: Tre Campbell (St. John's). Ewing and the staff have had four years to set up relationships in the local community and have not done so, leaving them to chase the Chudier Biles of the world to fill a roster. Local coaches take notice of this. So do recruits.
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IDenj
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Post by IDenj on Jan 21, 2021 20:44:24 GMT -5
Is it the staff won’t or can’t build the proper relationships in the area? Hope the staff is pounding the pavement for the 2022 class with a heavy lean on local.
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hoyas212
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Post by hoyas212 on Jan 21, 2021 20:46:17 GMT -5
This is a great topic. Thinking about GU's failure to gain any traction in the WCAC, I'm reminded of Pitt's ascension under Howland/Dixon on the strength of their NYC area pipeline. One of those years, Pitt was in the NY area playing SJU, SHU, or RU and Slice Rohrssen went to a CHSAA game between 2 traditionally strong programs, but at a time when neither had an uncommitted player that Pitt would be remotely interested in. He came in wearing a suit, sat in the front row, and interacted with fans. Gestures like that are appreciated. With the current product on the floor, resuscitating local recruiting probably won't be as simple as landing a blue chip guy like Roach or Timberlake, but dogged pursuit of Terrence Williams level recruits. Our staff as a whole should be at so many more WCAC games than they were pre-pandemic and should be engaged with the game/crowd (not wearing headphones). With as many fliers that have been taken on players with no other high major offers lately, it would have been beneficial to take at least one on a WCAC/IAC/MAC kid(s) who has mid major offers provided they are off-court fits. Maybe that player has a great experience and his high school and AAU teammates and coaches take notice. Slice Rohrssen went on to get the Manhattan College job, none of our assistants were mentioned anywhere as candidates for GW when that job opened in 2019.
Not to get off topic, but tangential to the WCAC discussion is the AAU discussion. The LA Clippers' G League team just hired a Team Takeover U16 coach, Doug Martin, as an assistant. That is the profile of someone who should've been hired initially by Ewing, and should definitely be hired now. Just as WCAC programs are a realistic pipeline unlike the IMG's and Prolific Preps of the world, the current DMV AAU landscape is manageable. This isn't a wild west DC Assault under Curtis Malone and Dalonte Hill era. Team Loaded VA might be a lost cause after Mac and Walker, but Team Takeover and Team Durant are Nike programs and don't seem to have nefarious recruitments of their players.
I think a successful local recruiting pipeline is still attainable under Ewing. Assuming spots are available, the '22 class has numerous local prospects at the 80+ level. McDaniel, Rice, Mintz, Ward are all high level prospects, for whom there shouldn't be overwhelming competition. Being able to get these kinds of players on campus for unofficial visits and attend their open gyms is much easier for Georgetown/Maryland than anyone else. GU is going to miss out on a ton of local kids, but they should never be outworked for them. I don't have faith in anyone on the staff outside of Ewing or Crouch to bring anything to the table in terms of local recruiting, but a couple of new faces could turn the tide. There are definitely options out there.
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Post by tribeninerhoya on Jan 21, 2021 21:10:23 GMT -5
This list is incomplete without Jahmir Young. Kid is a stud.
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