If Chris Wright signs...

[idhoya]

How important would his coming to GU be? IOW, rank his importance of coming to the hilltop versus past recruits (ex., Othella '92, AI'94).


Mod Request: While I understand the prospect of a touted recruit signing with the Hoyas is extremely exciting, could we possibly keep it to one thread instead of starting a new one every other day? ...prior threads locked...

[GIGAFAN99]

He's great but he might not even be the most important member of his class. That would be the first Dematha recruit in forever and almost certain Mcdonald's AA Austin Freeman.

Obviously, some recruits are more important than others: Patrick Ewing (the greatest), Reggie Williams (the next greatest), Jeff Green (along with Gay broke Maryland's back and started the rise), Vernon Macklin(dispels the myth of athletes not wanting to play in Princeton system, first big coup for JTIII).

Everyone in between is great but not necessarily as important as those four in my mind. Wright would fall under the "great" category but Freeman is probably more important.

[MCIGuy]

Othella and Zo were much bigger than Grteen and even Macklin. Zo was the #1 recruit in the nation. And so was O in many people's minds. Getting Othella showed that JT still had some magic.

Sleepy may have been a bigger recruit than Jeff Green.

[idhoya]

O was the #1 recruit when he came out. Zo was in some pubs, while Billy Owens was in others. I miss those BE basketball mags from back-in-the-day. The first one I got had a collage of BE players on the front including Hoya Jonathan Edwards.

[GIGAFAN99]

Sleepy I agree.

'Zo committed to the program close to its recruiting peak. Great? Sure but it wasn't exactly important. The same goes for Othella.

But Jeff Green committed to a mediocre team and bought into a turnaround. His class will be the one remembered years from now as the one that changed everything. I just think that means more to the program than good players that committed to a legendary coach in the wake of 6 Elite Eights in 10 years.

[Filo]

gigafan99 said:

Sleepy I agree.

'Zo committed to the program close to its recruiting peak. Great? Sure but it wasn't exactly important. The same goes for Othella.

But Jeff Green committed to a mediocre team and bought into a turnaround. His class will be the one remembered years from now as the one that changed everything. I just think that means more to the program than good players that committed to a legendary coach in the wake of 6 Elite Eights in 10 years.

On that basis, I would also include Craig Shelton (at least from what HoyaChris has written).

[MCIGuy]

gigafan99 said:

Sleepy I agree.

'Zo committed to the program close to its recruiting peak. Great? Sure but it wasn't exactly important. The same goes for Othella.

But Jeff Green committed to a mediocre team and bought into a turnaround. His class will be the one remembered years from now as the one that changed everything. I just think that means more to the program than good players that committed to a legendary coach in the wake of 6 Elite Eights in 10 years.

I'm sorry but anytime you recruit the consensus #1 recruit its an extremely big deal. Zo and O vault ahead of Gren for that. Plus Green was such a virtual unknown that, and I'm sorry if this offends, Esherick recruited him successfully. If Green had made a rep for himself earlier the Terps and Syracuse would have come around earlier and Gtown would have likely lost him. His late blowup and his verbal to Gtown quickly afterwards, along with his dad's appreciation of the Hoyas back in the day, secured his services to the Hoyas. Last of all we don't know if Green or III's hiring was the true reason for the turnaround.

[GIGAFAN99]

You're right that he would have committed to another school had he not comitted to Georgetown. But oddly, he committed to Georgetown and that's the question we're dealing with.

Ask Florida how important Noah's recruiting was. Think anyone is going to say "Not that important because we only got him by being on him early."

The most important recruit discussion is not a matter of being a rankings whore. If it were we could just list McDonald's AAs and call it a day. Some McDonald's guys are important to the program, sure, but it doesn't diminish the importance of landing Jeff.

Jeff Green was our first RoY since Iverson. And while the hype around him coming in was pretty much reserved for Hoya fans and people who had seen him play, his arrival will be important in Hoya history. 'Zo will be remembered as one of the greatest Hoyas and a "big deal" but not as someone who changed the course of a program.

[jerseyhoya34]

I think Giga makes some valid points on Green, but it is still too early to say how important he is in the context of GU hoops history. He was an 12 ppg scorer on a Sweet Sixteen team, but so was Kevin Braswell. I'm not trying to insinuate anything about Green by making that statement, just that I think we should revisit the historical analysis of Green/Roy in another year or, preferably, two.

That said, I tend to agree with Giga that we'll look back at the class favorably in another 5 years, and that is something to get excited about. Unfortunately, it is not 5 years down the road, so we need to wait for some hard facts.

[HoyaChris]

The Jeff Green comments are, at a minimum, massively premature.

Relative to his own recruiting class, it is not at all clear that he will be the most important member (might be Roy).

Relative to other Hoya careers through two seasons, he clearly falls short of Patrick, Sleepy, Zo, AI, Reggie, Duren and Sweetney.

There is another group of 10 or so players who have arguably had equivalent careers through their sophomore seasons.

There have been bigger surprises including Derrick Jackson, Sleepy Floyd, Dikembe Mutombo and Charles Smith.

There have been 60 or so players, many eminently forgettable, who have been more highly recruited than Jeff. For example, Al Dutch, a Parade All-American, was a much more important recruit at the time he came to the school.

That said, Jeff is a wonderful player, the most versatile big to ever play for the school. My personal belief is that had he not got a couple of bizarre foul calls in the second half against Florida that we would have won that game and then who knows. But he needs either two great seasons or an absolutely transcendant Junior year to even crack the Hoya top ten.

[SFHoya99]

Where Giga is going, Chris, I think, is the difference between two POV on this thread.

Some people view recruiting as a game in itself. Therefore getting the highest ranked player is "winning" whether it be Chris Wright or Othella Harrington or any of the All-Americans who have failed at Georgetown. In some ways they be more right here, as top recruits signing often create snowball effects.

Giga is taking a view I would take -- the "importance" of a signing has more to do with the player's impact and the context of the program. While maybe his view of Jeff is premature, there's a lot of potential for the initial signing and retention of Jeff to be one of the more important in Hoya history. The current wave of Hoya momentum has a lot to do with him, and while Roy has contributed, Jeff was there from Day One.

What his ranking was is immaterial. When we look back, we never think of Al Dutch as an important recruit.

P.S. Wasn't Sleepy a tip-off from Dean Smith? I thought I remembered that.

[2ndRyan]

I think Craig Shelton was big also.

the legend I'd heard was Al Mcguire, who late in his Marquette carreer seldom left his haunts in Milwaukee, came to DC to see Craig play.

[theEDGEfactor]

i think it would be HUGE because hes one of the best points in the nation and we havent got one of those since ai

[EasyEd]

Don't know why I can't post this to the Scottie Reynolds thread so I'll post it here. ESPN's latest on Scottie:
sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=2432446

[MCIGuy]

Lets go back to the original question. The poster asked where would the signing of Chris Wright rank amongst other Gtown recruiting success stories. The question wasn't where would Wright rank at the end of his Hoya career after he was finished at Gtown; it was instead more of an immediate question: how would his signing with the Hoyas stack up amongst other Hoya signings. In other words it comes across to me as if the poster was asking about how the INITIAL perception of such a coup by III would be viewed compared to some of the previous recruiting victories. At least that's how it comes across to me.

[SFHoya99]

No, the question was, verbatim, "How important would his coming to GU be? IOW, rank his importance of coming to the hilltop versus past recruits (ex., Othella '92, AI'94)."

Not where it would rank amongst Hoya recruiting success stories, as you say. Interpret it as you will, but let me ask you -- why is Patrick Ewing considered the most important recruit? Would he be as important had he come to GU and had the career of Turner or Tate?

Viewing the initial perception is silly; it is Othella or Zo. More importantly, the instant the player steps on campus, that initial perception is no longer important.

[nychoya3]

Freeman is and will remain bigger than Wright. He's going to be more highly rated, he goes to Dematha, and (most importantly) he was absolutely born to play in our offense. I cannot wait to get him on campus - with his innate scoring ability and gorgeous shot, we're talking about a guy who's going score many, many points for Georgetown.

I would love to get Chris Wright, but he's not the slam dunk that Freeman is in terms of fitting into our system immediately.

I also don't have much of a sense of who's really chasing Wright at the moment. I know Nova wants him, as will a bunch of other very good schools. But it's not like we're taking him out of the hands of UNC and Duke. Guess we'll have to do that with Chris Braswell.

[Filo]

sfhoya99 said:

No, the question was, verbatim, "How important would his coming to GU be? IOW, rank his importance of coming to the hilltop versus past recruits (ex., Othella '92, AI'94)."

Not where it would rank amongst Hoya recruiting success stories, as you say. Interpret it as you will, but let me ask you -- why is Patrick Ewing considered the most important recruit? Would he be as important had he come to GU and had the career of Turner or Tate?

Viewing the initial perception is silly; it is Othella or Zo. More importantly, the instant the player steps on campus, that initial perception is no longer important.

I agree with MCI on this one -- the issue is how important his coming to GU is. That would mean recruiting success -- the initial perception. It's silly to talk about how important he is based upon his performance and impact on the program since you can't do that until after he leaves (and we don't even know if he is goint to GU yet). And under that interpretation, ihis signing would be more significant than Green's, since Green was not as highly regarded coming out of high school. But I agree that when all is said and done, Freeman's signing might be bigger (at the rate he is going).

[MCIGuy]

sfhoya99 said:

No, the question was, verbatim, "How important would his coming to GU be? IOW, rank his importance of coming to the hilltop versus past recruits (ex., Othella '92, AI'94)."

Not where it would rank amongst Hoya recruiting success stories, as you say. Interpret it as you will, but let me ask you -- why is Patrick Ewing considered the most important recruit? Would he be as important had he come to GU and had the career of Turner or Tate?

Viewing the initial perception is silly; it is Othella or Zo. More importantly, the instant the player steps on campus, that initial perception is no longer important.

Its silly? If he meant the impact the recruiting had on the program do you think he would ever consider using Othella as an example? Come on. Its more likely he meant what the signing of the player at the time of the signing meant to the program. It doesn't make as much sense otherwise. In fact if all he meant was the impact the player's career meant to the program then that most likely would have been the question he would have asked. Instead the question was what his recruitment/signing would mean and how would it compare to the signing of high profile recruits from the past.

Patrick Ewing's signing was huge AT THE TIME it occurred. So was Reggie's, Zo's, Othella's, Iverson's, etc. We have no idea what type of player Chris Wright will turn out to be but we do know how well regarded he is as of now as a recruit. And if he signed to play for GU that would be a pretty impressive get for Gtown ranking with one of the all time best for the program. We are not, however , looking down the road at his impact on the court. It would be ridiculous to ask such a question; that question would come years later.

If the original poster wants to settle this debate that would be great. But until then I'm sticking to my theory.

[jerseyhoya34]

Yeesh... It must be off-season.