Ryan Mutombo 2021 commits to Georgetown

[HeartAttackHoya]

not trying to splash any pessimism rather lack of insight: How are we so certain Tyler will be part of '21 class and not look elsewhere specially if his game continue to shine as it has been to date? Appreciate the insight.

[jwp91]

Sept 17, 2020 10:53:48 GMT -5 HeartAttackHoya said:

not trying to splash any pessimism rather lack of insight: How are we so certain Tyler will be part of '21 class and not look elsewhere specially if his game continue to shine as it has been to date? Appreciate the insight.

Not certain...but there have been several purposeful signals sent by his camp that nothing has changed.

[FrazierFanatic]

Sept 16, 2020 20:20:00 GMT -5 jwp91 said:

Sept 16, 2020 20:05:01 GMT -5 FrazierFanatic said:

Let's not become personally offended because a high school kid is uncertain exactly what he wants to do, and is taking his time to consider all of his options. Baldwin hasn't decided, Mohammed hasn't decided. We don't excoriate them because they have not jumped at the Hoya offer yet. If Ryan ends up a Hoya, welcome to him. If not, have a good career (unless he plays against the Hoyas of course).

Those guys aren’t legacies at Georgetown or centers with the opportunity to learn from Ewing. If Ryan wanted to be at Georgetown, we would know by now. He has moved on. So should we.

But why should we know by now? Because his father is a Hoya legend he is not allowed to take time and consider his options like the others are?

[Deleted]

Sept 16, 2020 19:37:15 GMT -5 njhoya78 said:

We need to concentrate on recruiting scholar/athletes who want to come to Georgetown and play for this coaching staff. If this coaching staff cannot successfully recruit those student/athletes, maybe there's a big problem with the staff. And in either case, it's apparent that HoyaTalk is far more enamored with the idea of a legacy recruit (i.e., Ryan Mutombo) playing at "Big Man U" than that student/athlete is enamored with the idea of playing here; that being the case, I think I'll go get the student/athlete who really wants to be here instead of going to a school that (a) is not the academic equal of Georgetown, and (b) has no history of sustained success in the NCAA.

Asking because I honestly don't know but I see the same theme on a number of posts when Georgetown is competing against Big State School X for a recruit ... "much better academics" ... I understand that large state schools have a much broader/diverse (in some senses of the word anyway) student population, meaning that the overall common denominator is probably lower, but I assume that most if not all at least have some academic programs that can hold their own?  I know GU alums tend to have an air of elitism (don't @ me, I'm an alum) and US News and World Report blah blah ... but do we really think a kid like Ryan Mutombo, if he desired, couldn't carve out a fairly top-tier academic schedule at school like Tennessee?

[jwp91]

Sept 17, 2020 11:21:52 GMT -5 FrazierFanatic said:

Sept 16, 2020 20:20:00 GMT -5 jwp91 said:

Those guys aren’t legacies at Georgetown or centers with the opportunity to learn from Ewing. If Ryan wanted to be at Georgetown, we would know by now. He has moved on. So should we.

But why should we know by now? Because his father is a Hoya legend he is not allowed to take time and consider his options like the others are?

Maybe a different analysis from your youth will help you understand.

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and sounds like a duck...it is a duck.

From his actions, does Ryan (a legacy who plays the position of center) look like a player who wants to play at Georgetown?

[bigelephant]

To answer your third point - what does a player look like who wants to play at Georgetown?

[hoyalove4ever]

6'10" with great athletic ability

Handles like a guard but can and will bang inside

Nails threes

Dunks from the foul like with ease

Blocks five or more shots every game, along with a few steals

That provides a decent start...

[jwp91]

Sept 17, 2020 15:52:34 GMT -5 bigelephant said:

To answer your third point - what does a player look like who wants to play at Georgetown?

Commits in a reasonable period of time once presented with his options (Gtown, Stanford, Tennessee, etc) especially when a very strong class of Georgetown commitments emerges.

[LCPolo18]

Sept 17, 2020 19:55:19 GMT -5 jwp91 said:

Sept 17, 2020 15:52:34 GMT -5 bigelephant said:

To answer your third point - what does a player look like who wants to play at Georgetown?

Commits in a reasonable period of time once presented with his options (Gtown, Stanford, Tennessee, etc) especially when a very strong class of Georgetown commitments emerges.

I love Georgetown’s 2021 class, but Tennessee’s 2021 class is better. Not to mention that Tennessee has much more recent on court success.

Ryan has a lot of great options, and he has a tough decision to make. If I were him, I would want as much time as I needed to make that decision.

[DFW HOYA]

Sept 17, 2020 19:55:19 GMT -5 jwp91 said:

Commits in a reasonable period of time once presented with his options (Gtown, Stanford, Tennessee, etc) especially when a very strong class of Georgetown commitments emerges.

What is a "very strong class of Georgetown commitments"? The last Top 30 recruit was six years ago, the last top 50 in 2015. In that same time period, Villanova signed six top 30 players. Given the environment and what is an aging recruiting staff, there may be a class of overachievers in future years but "very strong" doesn't compare to where it was, and more importantly, where it needs to be to get out of the growing inevitability of playing Wednesday nights at the Garden with DePaul and St. John's for the forseeable future. And for what it's worth, an 11 team Big East tournament now means that only the top five, not six, escape the first round, where just two teams in 40 years have made it all the way to a Saturday night. And Georgetown is nowhere close to the top five.

Take Ryan Mutombo or Patrick Ewing's names out of the equation, if this was Tom Crean or Jamion Christian or even Shaka Smart sitting at 19-35 (.351) in the Big East after three seasons and early predictions for another lower-tier finish, would it all still be OK? Because when I come across fan bait like this, I can get angry, but I can't tell them otherwise--that's what it looks outside the Beltway:

thebrokenanchor.com/categorizing-each-big-east-fanbase/

[MCIGuy]

Sept 17, 2020 10:53:48 GMT -5 HeartAttackHoya said:

not trying to splash any pessimism rather lack of insight: How are we so certain Tyler will be part of '21 class and not look elsewhere specially if his game continue to shine as it has been to date? Appreciate the insight.

Why even bring that into this discussion in this thread?

[dchoya72]

Youre splashing plenty of pessismism. The guy is signed, he stated his plan. It works for the team; why spread unsubstantiated doubt and discord? Why begin the year with that?

[MCIGuy]

Sept 17, 2020 20:37:26 GMT -5 DFW HOYA said:

Sept 17, 2020 19:55:19 GMT -5 jwp91 said:

Commits in a reasonable period of time once presented with his options (Gtown, Stanford, Tennessee, etc) especially when a very strong class of Georgetown commitments emerges.

What is a "very strong class of Georgetown commitments"? The last Top 30 recruit was six years ago, the last top 50 in 2015. In that same time period, Villanova signed six top 30 players. Given the environment and what is an aging recruiting staff, there may be a class of overachievers in future years but "very strong" doesn't compare to where it was, and more importantly, where it needs to be to get out of the growing inevitability of playing Wednesday nights at the Garden with DePaul and St. John's for the forseeable future. And for what it's worth, an 11 team Big East tournament now means that only the top five, not six, escape the first round, where just two teams in 40 years have made it all the way to a Saturday night. And Georgetown is nowhere close to the top five.

Take Patrick Ewing's name out of the equation, if this was Tom Crean or Jamion Christian or even Shaka Smart sitting at 19-35 (.351) in the Big East after three seasons and early predictions for another lower-tier finish, would it all still be OK? Because when I come across fan bait like this, I can get angry, but I can't tell them otherwise--that's what it looks outside the Beltway:

I do not disagree that Ewing has been a disappointment overall in terms of recruiting. The guys he goes after the hardest at the earlier stage of the recruiting process almost always go elsewhere. That is something that unquestionably needs to change. What I do give him credit for though is having a nice Plan B or Plan C or Plan Whatever. He and his old men staff are quick on their feet when they see an opening for a recruit that wasn't a top priority or even on their radar at first. To be honest missing out on their top one or two targets have sometimes been a blessing though. Would you rather have Will Baker or Qudus Wahab who was ranked at least 100 spots below Baker?


I'm less tolerant however to the criticism of his overall record as a coach at this stage. Why do some people act as if in year three the team did not lose four players before the meat of the season, four guys expected to be in the rotation including one who was BE Freshman of the Year the previous go-round and another who was made the All-Freshmen Team that same season? And then to make matters worse the team went on to lose its two remaining best guys for much of the BE conference play as a result on injuries. That's a total of six guys who weren't around to compete in a large portion of the heaviest part of the schedule and four of those six mentioned players would have likely been the four BEST players on the team all season long if they had stayed or were able to play.

If you are blaming Ewing for guys who transferred and guys who quit on the team and guys whose character he may have misjudged then so be it. Instead of having the back of the program and the coach for that one crazy year some of you saw it as a perfect opportunity to remind us how much you hated the hire of Ewing in the first place. But lets be clear here despite all the whining about Ewing in game coaching or game preparation, the only thing Ewing can be harshly criticized for last year is the type of offcourt management that has little to do with basketball. Because he kept that team together DESPITE all the pieces that fell apart. That team remained much more competitive than it had any right to be. The players never gave up because the coaching staff never gave up or made excuses of absences. The players continued to play hard as possible for Ewing which is a positive sign and yet instead of begrudgingly acknowledging that reality a good number of you remain apparently indignant that the Hoyas ruined your lives by losing close games against teams it should have realistically never been in position to beat in the first place.

Good Lord. He inherited a mess his first season but one thing I found encouraging that initial year was how the team closed the gap the second time around it faced BE opponents it got clobbered by the first time out (ala Villanova). Second year the team made a lot more progress than the college basketball analysts and most of the people on this site expected. Ewing had even turned around his record in overtime outings by his team winning the majority of them in his second year. Certain people here grilled him for not leading his very flawed first year squad to victorious outcomes in overtime that first season but were quiet over his flipping the script the following year. But that was a predictable lack of acknowledgement by the fine people of Hoya Talk because that would have been admitting that Ewing had a brain and could make adjustments, right? Point is that second year team were a few bounces from making the NCAA tourney much faster than almost anyone expected. The third season was an absolute aberration for reasons that were mostly out of Ewing's hands. I am of the opinion that if the squad had stayed together they would have been good enough to finish in the top half of the Big East. But arguing over counterfactuals won't get us anywhere in this debate.

We cannot say with any certainty that Ewing will completely right the ship and lead the program to calmer and smoother waters from here on out. But from all I can tell he isn't wallowing in self-pity and pulling a Mullin by being blase about what is happening. He continues to grind on that recruiting trail to put together a roster that can be more competitive. Dealing with a disappointing season, players abandoning him and his coming down with COVID, he could have mailed it in these past six months. But enough indications suggest a coach who is still working hard to build the type of successful program his former coach and mentor used to have. And by the way that hasn't gone totally unnoticed. A number of non-Georgetown people "outside the beltway" have been much more complimentary about what he is doing as a coach, especially during last season, than those of us within the Hoyas fanbase.

[rockhoya]

Sept 17, 2020 22:20:03 GMT -5 MCIGuy said:

Sept 17, 2020 20:37:26 GMT -5 DFW HOYA said:

What is a "very strong class of Georgetown commitments"? The last Top 30 recruit was six years ago, the last top 50 in 2015. In that same time period, Villanova signed six top 30 players. Given the environment and what is an aging recruiting staff, there may be a class of overachievers in future years but "very strong" doesn't compare to where it was, and more importantly, where it needs to be to get out of the growing inevitability of playing Wednesday nights at the Garden with DePaul and St. John's for the forseeable future. And for what it's worth, an 11 team Big East tournament now means that only the top five, not six, escape the first round, where just two teams in 40 years have made it all the way to a Saturday night. And Georgetown is nowhere close to the top five.

Take Patrick Ewing's name out of the equation, if this was Tom Crean or Jamion Christian or even Shaka Smart sitting at 19-35 (.351) in the Big East after three seasons and early predictions for another lower-tier finish, would it all still be OK? Because when I come across fan bait like this, I can get angry, but I can't tell them otherwise--that's what it looks outside the Beltway:

I do not disagree that Ewing has been a disappointment overall in terms of recruiting. The guys he goes after the hardest at the earlier stage of the recruiting process almost always go elsewhere. That is something that unquestionably needs to change. What I do give him credit for though is having a nice Plan B or Plan C or Plan Whatever. He and his old men staff are quick on their feet when they see an opening for a recruit that wasn't a top priority or even on their radar at first. To be honest missing out on their top one or two targets have sometimes been a blessing though. Would you rather have Will Baker or Qudus Wahab who was ranked at least 100 spots behind Baker?


I'm less tolerant however to the criticism of his overall record as a coach at this stage. Why do some people act as if in year three the team did not lose four players before the meat of the season, four guys expected to be in the rotation including one who was BE Freshman of the Year the previous go-round and another who was made the All-Freshmen Team that same season? And then to make matters worse the team went on to lose its two remaining best guys for much of the BE conference play as a result on injuries. That's a total of six guys who weren't around to compete in a large portion of the heaviest part of the schedule and four of those six mentioned players would have likely been the four BEST players on the team all season long if they had stayed or were able to play.

If you are blaming Ewing for guys who transferred and guys who quit on the team and guys whose character he may have misjudged then so be it. Instead of having the back of the program and the coach for that one crazy year some of you saw it as a perfect opportunity to remind us how much you hated the hire of Ewing in the first place. But lets be clear here despite all the whining about Ewing in game coaching or game preparation, the only thing Ewing can be harshly criticized for last year is the type of offcourt management that has little to do with basketball. Because he kept that team together DESPITE all the pieces that fell apart. That team remained much more competitive than it had any right to be. The players never gave up because the coaching staff never gave up or made excuses of absences. The players continued to play hard as possible for Ewing which is a positive sign and yet instead of begrudgingly acknowledging that reality a good number of you remain apparently indignant that the Hoyas ruined your lives by losing close games against teams it should have realistically never been in position to beat in the first place.

Good Lord. He inherited a mess his first season but one thing I found encouraging that initial year was how the team closed the gap the second time around it faced BE opponents it got clobbered by the first time out (ala Villanova). Second year the team made a lot more progress than the college basketball analysts and most of the people on this site expected. Ewing had even turned around his record in overtime outings by his team winning the majority of them in his second year. Certain people here grilled him for not leading his very flawed first year squad to victorious outcomes in overtime that first season but were quiet over his flipping the script the following year. But that was a predictable lack of acknowledgement by the fine people of Hoya Talk because that would have been admitting that Ewing had a brain and could make adjustments, right? Point is that second year team were a few bounces from making the NCAA tourney much faster than almost anyone expected. The third season was an absolute aberration for reasons that were mostly out of Ewing's hands. I am of the opinion that if the squad had stayed together they would have been good enough to finish in the top half of the Big East. But arguing over counterfactuals won't get us anywhere in this debate.

We cannot say with any certainty that Ewing will completely right the ship and lead the program to calmer and smoother waters from here on out. But from all I can tell he isn't wallowing in self-pity and pulling a Mullin by being blase about what is happening. He continues to grind on that recruiting trail to put together a roster that can be more competitive. Dealing with a disappointing season, players abandoning him and his coming down with COVID, he could have mailed it in these past six months. But enough indications suggest a coach who is still working hard to build the type of successful program his former coach and mentor used to have. And by the way that hasn't gone totally unnoticed. A number of non-Georgetown people "outside the beltway" have been much more complimentary about what he is doing as a coach, especially during last season, than those of us within the Hoyas fanbase.

Don’t always agree with you but this is 10000000% spot on. Some people are just unable to contextualize around here 🤷🏽‍♂️

[hoyasaxa2003]

Sept 16, 2020 21:07:39 GMT -5 hoyazeke said:

Sept 16, 2020 18:32:20 GMT -5 bornhoya said:

I think in his heart he wants to be a Hoya but I think in his head that he wants to go somewhere different

I think he wants to be somewhere else in both his heart and his head but his love and respect for his father is causing the delay.... I believe if his father was a 5ft former soccer player Ryan would be a Vol now....

Of course, you could be right. But, we really have no idea. Sometimes I feel like it is easy to forget that these guys, especially when they are in high school choosing a college, are teenagers and kids. Most of us on here are looking at this from an adult perspective. We have the benefit of hindsight, having had to make a bunch of decisions in the past, and the perspective that comes with being older than a 16-18 year old.

I believe I have told this story in the past, but when I was either a junior or young senior in high school, I remember distinctly telling my mother (who wanted me to apply to Georgetown) that while I would apply to Georgetown, there was no way I would go there, as it was "too far" from where I lived (which in retrospect sounds incredibly silly). But, I applied, visited, got admitted, fell in love with the school, graduated from Georgetown, and would never want to have gone to college anywhere else. And, for what it's worth, I would have considered myself to have been a fairly level-headed teenager, too.

My point being, when you are that age, and you are making what seem to be (and are) huge decisions about the future of your life, making a decision like that is not easy. And, I think as a teenager, it's natural for a kid to have more variation/emotion with that decision than we may expect, being further removed from that age and that process.

[dchoya72]

I have expressed harsh opinions about this young man's decision-making for selecting a college to attend. He obviously, now, has a lot of unknown variable factoring in his commitment. From comments I read, it appeared he had made a selection. Maybe he has, but I'm not so sure. Some twitter statements that pop up out of nowhere and then dissappear make it seem as though he is wrestling with this choice. I wish him the best. I still wonder what factor his choice is centering on.

[RockawayHoya]

Sept 17, 2020 22:20:03 GMT -5 MCIGuy said:

Sept 17, 2020 20:37:26 GMT -5 DFW HOYA said:

What is a "very strong class of Georgetown commitments"? The last Top 30 recruit was six years ago, the last top 50 in 2015. In that same time period, Villanova signed six top 30 players. Given the environment and what is an aging recruiting staff, there may be a class of overachievers in future years but "very strong" doesn't compare to where it was, and more importantly, where it needs to be to get out of the growing inevitability of playing Wednesday nights at the Garden with DePaul and St. John's for the forseeable future. And for what it's worth, an 11 team Big East tournament now means that only the top five, not six, escape the first round, where just two teams in 40 years have made it all the way to a Saturday night. And Georgetown is nowhere close to the top five.

Take Patrick Ewing's name out of the equation, if this was Tom Crean or Jamion Christian or even Shaka Smart sitting at 19-35 (.351) in the Big East after three seasons and early predictions for another lower-tier finish, would it all still be OK? Because when I come across fan bait like this, I can get angry, but I can't tell them otherwise--that's what it looks outside the Beltway:

I do not disagree that Ewing has been a disappointment overall in terms of recruiting. The guys he goes after the hardest at the earlier stage of the recruiting process almost always go elsewhere. That is something that unquestionably needs to change. What I do give him credit for though is having a nice Plan B or Plan C or Plan Whatever. He and his old men staff are quick on their feet when they see an opening for a recruit that wasn't a top priority or even on their radar at first. To be honest missing out on their top one or two targets have sometimes been a blessing though. Would you rather have Will Baker or Qudus Wahab who was ranked at least 100 spots below Baker?


I'm less tolerant however to the criticism of his overall record as a coach at this stage. Why do some people act as if in year three the team did not lose four players before the meat of the season, four guys expected to be in the rotation including one who was BE Freshman of the Year the previous go-round and another who was made the All-Freshmen Team that same season? And then to make matters worse the team went on to lose its two remaining best guys for much of the BE conference play as a result on injuries. That's a total of six guys who weren't around to compete in a large portion of the heaviest part of the schedule and four of those six mentioned players would have likely been the four BEST players on the team all season long if they had stayed or were able to play.

If you are blaming Ewing for guys who transferred and guys who quit on the team and guys whose character he may have misjudged then so be it. Instead of having the back of the program and the coach for that one crazy year some of you saw it as a perfect opportunity to remind us how much you hated the hire of Ewing in the first place. But lets be clear here despite all the whining about Ewing in game coaching or game preparation, the only thing Ewing can be harshly criticized for last year is the type of offcourt management that has little to do with basketball. Because he kept that team together DESPITE all the pieces that fell apart. That team remained much more competitive than it had any right to be. The players never gave up because the coaching staff never gave up or made excuses of absences. The players continued to play hard as possible for Ewing which is a positive sign and yet instead of begrudgingly acknowledging that reality a good number of you remain apparently indignant that the Hoyas ruined your lives by losing close games against teams it should have realistically never been in position to beat in the first place.

Good Lord. He inherited a mess his first season but one thing I found encouraging that initial year was how the team closed the gap the second time around it faced BE opponents it got clobbered by the first time out (ala Villanova). Second year the team made a lot more progress than the college basketball analysts and most of the people on this site expected. Ewing had even turned around his record in overtime outings by his team winning the majority of them in his second year. Certain people here grilled him for not leading his very flawed first year squad to victorious outcomes in overtime that first season but were quiet over his flipping the script the following year. But that was a predictable lack of acknowledgement by the fine people of Hoya Talk because that would have been admitting that Ewing had a brain and could make adjustments, right? Point is that second year team were a few bounces from making the NCAA tourney much faster than almost anyone expected. The third season was an absolute aberration for reasons that were mostly out of Ewing's hands. I am of the opinion that if the squad had stayed together they would have been good enough to finish in the top half of the Big East. But arguing over counterfactuals won't get us anywhere in this debate.

We cannot say with any certainty that Ewing will completely right the ship and lead the program to calmer and smoother waters from here on out. But from all I can tell he isn't wallowing in self-pity and pulling a Mullin by being blase about what is happening. He continues to grind on that recruiting trail to put together a roster that can be more competitive. Dealing with a disappointing season, players abandoning him and his coming down with COVID, he could have mailed it in these past six months. But enough indications suggest a coach who is still working hard to build the type of successful program his former coach and mentor used to have. And by the way that hasn't gone totally unnoticed. A number of non-Georgetown people "outside the beltway" have been much more complimentary about what he is doing as a coach, especially during last season, than those of us within the Hoyas fanbase.

But this is a recruiting thread. Ewing has done some nice things outside of recruiting as MCI points out, but recruiting needs to improve. That top 20 class for '21 a month ago is now a top 30 class and dropping rapidly as other teams begin to secure commitments.

As for Ryan... I can't worry about him until he makes a final decision one way or another. Trying to read between the lines on other people's tweets, IG follows, etc., best thing this staff can do right now for recruiting is make sure this team is ready to go 11/25.

[DFW HOYA]

Sept 17, 2020 22:20:03 GMT -5 MCIGuy said:

I do not disagree that Ewing has been a disappointment overall in terms of recruiting. The guys he goes after the hardest at the earlier stage of the recruiting process almost always go elsewhere. That is something that unquestionably needs to change. What I do give him credit for though is having a nice Plan B or Plan C or Plan Whatever. He and his old men staff are quick on their feet when they see an opening for a recruit that wasn't a top priority or even on their radar at first. To be honest missing out on their top one or two targets have sometimes been a blessing though. Would you rather have Will Baker or Qudus Wahab who was ranked at least 100 spots behind Baker?

I'm less tolerant however to the criticism of his overall record as a coach at this stage. Why do some people act as if in year three the team did not lose four players before the meat of the season, four guys expected to be in the rotation including one who was BE Freshman of the Year the previous go-round and another who was made the All-Freshmen Team that same season? And then to make matters worse the team went on to lose its two remaining best guys for much of the BE conference play as a result on injuries. That's a total of six guys who weren't around to compete in a large portion of the heaviest part of the schedule and four of those six mentioned players would have likely been the four BEST players on the team all season long if they had stayed or were able to play.

If you are blaming Ewing for guys who transferred and guys who quit on the team and guys whose character he may have misjudged then so be it. Instead of having the back of the program and the coach for that one crazy year some of you saw it as a perfect opportunity to remind us how much you hated the hire of Ewing in the first place. But lets be clear here despite all the whining about Ewing in game coaching or game preparation, the only thing Ewing can be harshly criticized for last year is the type of offcourt management that has little to do with basketball. Because he kept that team together DESPITE all the pieces that fell apart. That team remained much more competitive than it had any right to be. The players never gave up because the coaching staff never gave up or made excuses of absences. The players continued to play hard as possible for Ewing which is a positive sign and yet instead of begrudgingly acknowledging that reality a good number of you remain apparently indignant that the Hoyas ruined your lives by losing close games against teams it should have realistically never been in position to beat in the first place.

Please note what I said above: "Take Ryan Mutombo or Patrick Ewing's names out of the equation" but the response was everything but.

The issue I am raising is that Georgetown as a whole is not recruiting at a level that is getting this team out of the bottom tier of the Big East. Georgetown looks a lot more like the Tim Welsh teams at Providence right now than as a team keeping Jay Wright up at night. And when I say recruiting, it's not volume of offers, it's about commitments, retention, and program development. To much of Georgetown today is past tense: "John Thompson was..", "Patrick Ewing was..", "Allen Iverson was.." and not enough future tense --tell us (and by extension, the recruiting community) where it will be. Georgetown funds this program like a Top 10 program and it has not met those expectations in nearly a decade. At some point this will be held to scrutiny.

Recruiting is the path to the future. But the downside risk is that recruits grow to see GU as a legacy program, the kind of place where its best days are behind them and that's not likely to change. Examples include the University of San Francisco in basketball, Rice in football, St. Louis in men's soccer. This harkens back to Frank Rienzo's three tiers of programs in Georgetown athletics: 1) those who compete for national championships, 2) those who are best suited to compete for conference championships but not above that; and 3) those to whom post-season play is a great achievement but not necessarily a program goal. What are the measures of success a basketball coach will be judged on at Georgetown and is recruiting meeting this measure?

If GU wants a championship contending program, it's got to identify its recruiting position an era without John Thompson at its side. Either way, the future is the issue, not the past, regardless of coach or recruit.

[bearsandbulls]

Sept 17, 2020 15:06:44 GMT -5 @bobloblaw said:

Sept 16, 2020 19:37:15 GMT -5 njhoya78 said:

We need to concentrate on recruiting scholar/athletes who want to come to Georgetown and play for this coaching staff. If this coaching staff cannot successfully recruit those student/athletes, maybe there's a big problem with the staff. And in either case, it's apparent that HoyaTalk is far more enamored with the idea of a legacy recruit (i.e., Ryan Mutombo) playing at "Big Man U" than that student/athlete is enamored with the idea of playing here; that being the case, I think I'll go get the student/athlete who really wants to be here instead of going to a school that (a) is not the academic equal of Georgetown, and (b) has no history of sustained success in the NCAA.

Asking because I honestly don't know but I see the same theme on a number of posts when Georgetown is competing against Big State School X for a recruit ... "much better academics" ... I understand that large state schools have a much broader/diverse (in some senses of the word anyway) student population, meaning that the overall common denominator is probably lower, but I assume that most if not all at least have some academic programs that can hold their own?  I know GU alums tend to have an air of elitism (don't @ me, I'm an alum) and US News and World Report blah blah ... but do we really think a kid like Ryan Mutombo, if he desired, couldn't carve out a fairly top-tier academic schedule at school like Tennessee?

Be careful of your cynicism to "large state schools". I am enamored with G'town and what it offers both in education and athletics. We have had two family members there most recently and it is a great environment, great campus, and has great pride. But your comment smacks of hometown bias. There are a number of "large state schools" that are as good or better than G'town academically. You must realize that USNews and WR has judgment criteria that have a strong bias toward the privates---class size, alumni donorship, etc. that present privates in a higher light versus public schools that are more dog eat dog, large lectures with small sections, donor apathy when it comes to giving back, but are stronger academically than even Yale and Princeton when you look at international reputation. Top five in most international lists are Harvard, MIT, Stanfurd, Cal-Berkeley, and your choice of Oxford/Cambridge. Now USNews and WR would never see it that way with its East Coast, Ivy League bias. Not that any of what I point out really has much relevance and all are very good, but I think alums get a bit carried away with their schools ranking without examining the criteria.

[Deleted]

Sept 18, 2020 18:07:46 GMT -5 bearsandbulls said:

Sept 17, 2020 15:06:44 GMT -5 @bobloblaw said:

Asking because I honestly don't know but I see the same theme on a number of posts when Georgetown is competing against Big State School X for a recruit ... "much better academics" ... I understand that large state schools have a much broader/diverse (in some senses of the word anyway) student population, meaning that the overall common denominator is probably lower, but I assume that most if not all at least have some academic programs that can hold their own?  I know GU alums tend to have an air of elitism (don't @ me, I'm an alum) and US News and World Report blah blah ... but do we really think a kid like Ryan Mutombo, if he desired, couldn't carve out a fairly top-tier academic schedule at school like Tennessee?

Be careful of your cynicism to "large state schools". I am enamored with G'town and what it offers both in education and athletics. We have had two family members there most recently and it is a great environment, great campus, and has great pride. But your comment smacks of hometown bias. There are a number of "large state schools" that are as good or better than G'town academically. You must realize that USNews and WR has judgment criteria that have a strong bias toward the privates---class size, alumni donorship, etc. that present privates in a higher light versus public schools that are more dog eat dog, large lectures with small sections, donor apathy when it comes to giving back, but are stronger academically than even Yale and Princeton when you look at international reputation. Top five in most international lists are Harvard, MIT, Stanfurd, Cal-Berkeley, and your choice of Oxford/Cambridge. Now USNews and WR would never see it that way with its East Coast, Ivy League bias. Not that any of what I point out really has much relevance and all are very good, but I think alums get a bit carried away with their schools ranking without examining the criteria.

I think you misread my post. I’m a Georgetown alum. But I was disagreeing with what seems like a broad characterization by some posters that “large state schools” can’t match Georgetown academically.