Recruiting in 2012...

[JHHawk]

has become more sophisticated than the bad ole days when it was cash for players...at least according to one ''insider'' who posted on Rivals Recruiting website.

Now, this was an anonymous poster but he sounded pretty credible.
His observations as an insider on the AAU/College recruiting scene are as follows:

Back in the years before KG went straight to the pros,top players could command cash, from boosters or whoever.

Then the top HS players went right to the pros and that changed everything...as the pro and street agents started to gain power.
Now,as the NBA and NCAA has settled into the ''one and done'' college to NBA agreement, a coach like Calipari at Kentucky has established a great method of working that system.

1. The key is the pro agents. They want the top players to come out ASAP,and Cal is on board with that. So,they like Cal.

2. The top players know that Cal is a good coach for preparing them for the NBA,and that he will push the guys in the class above them out to the NBA immediately,which opens up immediate playing time to give them exposure for the NBA draft the following year. So, the recruits like Cal.

3. The agents are always worried about other agents raiding their stable,so the shortened time frame with one and done guys is great to ward off these raids. Also, they love a coach who will get their guys exposed for the NBA and will protect their interests with the players by keeping other agents away.

4. These agents can basically lock up these kids while still in high school with possible ''lines of credit'' so the schools and Cal are completely distanced from any favors that take place.

It is all very grey area stuff these days,where Cal has total deniability and probably does not know about any of the actual compensation changing hands...and breaks no rules per se.
Like the NYTimes article recently that was examining the recruitment of top HS center Nerlens Noel...they mentioned that an agent from Cal's agent's agency...a big agency that also has Lebron in their stable, was hanging around Noel in recent months. So, will that agent make an arrangement with Noel's working class parents to lock up Noel and then send him to Kentucky so Cal can protect their interests? Would not be surprised.

It is a beautiful setup for the players,who get drafted in the first round just 12 months after HS graduation,and for Cal,who gets top talent every year,and the agents who get their slice very quickly for their relatively small investment....but it sucks for the rest of the college bb world.

I think they need to cut out the middleman(Cal) and go back to letting kids go directly to the NBA, or commit to 3 years in college, like baseball.

 

[herbyhawk]

and football has the same setup as they cannot leave until the end of their class graduation has been out for 3 years, so if they rs they can leave after their rs sophamore season is done

 

[CPHAWK82]

Has to make you wonder if they'll eventually get into any problems with such a low graduation rate. Maybe even scrap senior night all together.

 

[ssckelley]

What Calipari is doing to college basketball is ruining it. You know something underhanded is happening when he somehow gets the top recruits to attend UMass, Memphis, and now Kentucky. These kids are not in his backyard either, he is getting them all over the country. You cannot even point to a certain area that he has had recruiting success other than if the recruit is in the top 5 for his position. This method of churning and burning the top basketball talent is why programs like Butler can make a run at the NC.

 

[SpiderRico]

One thing to keep in mind is that to get college players to not be able to jump to the NBA until after 3 years would require a re-working of the NBA CBA. NCAA can do nothing about this. Same as it is for football.....NFL rules dictate this, not NCAA rules.

 

[wundergrape]

Calipari is not ruining college basketball. If anything, he's making it better. Let me explain.

Calipari did not create the one-and-done rule, and he didn't create the high-schoolers to the pros phenomenon of the nineties. These two things are what has ruined college basketball. As long as this dynamic exists, the college game will suffer. And they don't seem to be going away any time soon.

What Calipari has done has taken lemons (the one and done rule) and made lemonade. He's fielding competitive teams with one-and-dones that are well-coached, well-behaved and balanced. What more do you want? This is a good thing.

Ask yourself: what would you rather have Eric Gordan at IU and OJ Mayo at USC....players who aren't invested on teams that aren't competitive? Or teams filled with one-and-dones who are focused, passionate and competitive? It's not even a question to me.

Programs that don't just recruit one-and-dones can still compete (Kansas, Michigan State, Iowa, natch)...and teams that do recruit one and dones are doing it right. What's the problem?

 

[JHHawk]

Calipari is not ruining college basketball. If anything, he's making it better. Let me explain.

Calipari did not create the one-and-done rule, and he didn't create the high-schoolers to the pros phenomenon of the nineties. These two things are what has ruined college basketball. As long as this dynamic exists, the college game will suffer. And they don't seem to be going away any time soon.

What Calipari has done has taken lemons (the one and done rule) and made lemonade. He's fielding competitive teams with one-and-dones that are well-coached, well-behaved and balanced. What more do you want? This is a good thing.

Ask yourself: what would you rather have Eric Gordan at IU and OJ Mayo at USC....players who aren't invested on teams that aren't competitive? Or teams filled with one-and-dones who are focused, passionate and competitive? It's not even a question to me.

Programs that don't just recruit one-and-dones can still compete (Kansas, Michigan State, Iowa, natch)...and teams that do recruit one and dones are doing it right. What's the problem?

I contend that if Davis was at Iowa this year,and Kidd Gilchrist was at Seton Hall,and Teague was at Purdue, they all would have still played the same way....hard. I do not agree that they are playing unselfish and like good teammates because they are at Kentucky under Cal...I think it is because that is how they play,period. Last year Davis was with a horrible team,Perspectives HS, and he still played the same way. Cousins was not some kind of perfect teammate at Kentucky...he is now finally maturing with the Kings..somewhat.

And if those players were split between different teams,all the teams would be elevated. Iowa with Davis in the middle this year? In the tourny.
If Teague attends Purdue,like his brother? They beat KU in the second round,as LewJack needed help handling the ball.
Kidd-Gilchrist at Seton Hall...they make the tourny.
And Kentucky? They are a decent team with Miller,Lamb,Jones, leading the way. Consolidation of three of the top 8 picks on one team, is not good for competitive balance.

 

[HawkinGoferLand]

the good thing is Cal can only take like 3-5 kids per class, the bad thing is there are only 3-5 who could make the jump from HS to NBA

The officiating is attributing to the declining quality of CBB too IMO. They are the reason scoring is dropping off. Hand-checking and riding the PG is the norm. Bumping, banging and shoving is fine. Knocking a kid off balance to make a TO, no problem. Body contact to contest a shot, that's cool.

 

[ICHAWK]

I contend that if Davis was at Iowa this year,and Kidd Gilchrist was at Seton Hall,and Teague was at Purdue, they all would have still played the same way....hard. I do not agree that they are playing unselfish and like good teammates because they are at Kentucky under Cal...I think it is because that is how they play,period. Last year Davis was with a horrible team,Perspectives HS, and he still played the same way. Cousins was not some kind of perfect teammate at Kentucky...he is now finally maturing with the Kings..somewhat.

And if those players were split between different teams,all the teams would be elevated. Iowa with Davis in the middle this year? In the tourny.
If Teague attends Purdue,like his brother? They beat KU in the second round,as LewJack needed help handling the ball.
Kidd-Gilchrist at Seton Hall...they make the tourny.
And Kentucky? They are a decent team with Miller,Lamb,Jones, leading the way. Consolidation of three of the top 8 picks on one team, is not good for competitive balance.

I don't really follow you. If Kentucky's top players would not have have chosen to attend Kentucky they would have just gone to one of the other top programs so there is still no competative balance.

Kansas, Ohio St, Syracuse, North Carolina, Duke, UConn would have won out so how is that any better? All of those teams are still really good without any of the Kentucky players.

 

[thejumper5]

I know this isn't really what's being discussed here, but the one and done rule isn't going away anytime soon. The quality of players in the NBA draft, and especially in the lottery, has gone way up since that rule has been implemented. Take a guy like Josh Selby. Had he gone straight from HS to the NBA, he would have been a lottery pick. With one year in college, he fell all the way to the 49th pick, and that was in a "weak" draft. Just that one year out of HS gives NBA teams so much more good information about a player that they can't get from high school or AAU scouting. To contrast the Selby example, the last year before the one year rule was in place was 2005. That year, Martell Webster was the 6th pick in the draft and Monta Ellis was 40th. With a year in college, those two would probably have switched spots.

Now back to your regularly scheduled discussion.

 

[JHHawk]

My point is that due to the system set up by Cal, with pro agents in cahoots, the absolute cream of the crop tend to consolidate at one school, Kentucky,instead of being dispersed as normal. Tyreke Evans, DRose, John Wall, Cousins,Kidd-Gilchristl,Davis,were all top 5 players,and top 3 draft picks...no one can come close to matching that kind of talent accumulation at one school. Only the occasional top pick (Irving at Duke) slip thru his fingers now. I suspect that Noel,and Muhammad,the #1 and #1A players in this class will go to Kentucky and become 2013's top two draft picks also....you think this is healthy?

 

[wundergrape]

I contend that if Davis was at Iowa this year,and Kidd Gilchrist was at Seton Hall,and Teague was at Purdue, they all would have still played the same way....hard. I do not agree that they are playing unselfish and like good teammates because they are at Kentucky under Cal...I think it is because that is how they play,period. Last year Davis was with a horrible team,Perspectives HS, and he still played the same way. Cousins was not some kind of perfect teammate at Kentucky...he is now finally maturing with the Kings..somewhat.

And if those players were split between different teams,all the teams would be elevated. Iowa with Davis in the middle this year? In the tourny.
If Teague attends Purdue,like his brother? They beat KU in the second round,as LewJack needed help handling the ball.
Kidd-Gilchrist at Seton Hall...they make the tourny.
And Kentucky? They are a decent team with Miller,Lamb,Jones, leading the way. Consolidation of three of the top 8 picks on one team, is not good for competitive balance.

...and yet college basketball is remarkably balanced, with Butler making the final four two years' straight and John Calipari never even having won a national championship. Don't act as though the one-and-done strategy is creating this unbeatable behemoth. It isn't. Kentucky is approximately as good as they were in the 90s.

And to touch on your Kidd-Gilchrist to Seton Hall and Davis to Purdue scenario....that would suck. Why? Because then I would never get to see Kidd-Gilchrist play, and he'd go into the NBA unknown. This way, I can watch Calipari's teams and know who Derrick Rose, John Wall, Demarcus Cousins and Rudy Gay are...even if they don't win national championships, which heretofore, they haven't.

 

[okeefe4prez]

Calipari takes the term "willful ignorance" to the extreme. The D. Rose issue at Memphis. Please. Anthony Davis and the allegations the Sun-Times published about the $200k. Please.

The NCAA needs to get very, very serious about saying "We are not the NBA's minor league." The whole issue boils down to the NBA owners colluding (in a manner that I would argue is potentially violative of antitrust laws) to shift the risk of busts away from the owners and back to the players. The NCAA needs to say (i) if you have a player who enrolls in your school and who is drafted into the NBA after 1 year, you lose 4 scholarships the next three years (maybe that's too harsh - but something very harsh to make the schools not want the one and done kids) and (ii) if you get caught paying an AAU coach, your basketball program will lose all scholarships for 10 years. The NCAA is going to ruin its product if it does not take drastic action. The University of Iowa, the University of Kentucky, Kansas University, etc., their primary mission is education. If these kids are just in college because some billionaire is upset he drafted a bust player out of high school, I say jam that one and done kids and reserve the spot for someone who should actually be in college. The NCAA is now in the middle of an argument between billionaires and soon to be multi millionaires - extract itself. Get out of it. Enact draconian rules so that D. Rose and A. Davis are not even remotely sought after to be "student athletes."

 

[herbyhawk]

to add to that drop the one and done rule and change the rule regarding signing an agent. if a kid submitts his name for the draft that it he is done with college ball, tough if he did not sign with a agent, his entering the draft end his college eligibility. would make alot of kids think twice, and if kids decide to stay for another year, that means the next group has to look somewhere else.

 

[ssckelley]

There is no such thing as a "one and done rule". The NCAA cannot force kids to keep going to school. What they can do is regulate graduation rates, restrict the amount of scholarships they can offer per season, or even make freshman ineligible (which will never happen).

While this strategy is not winning coaches like Calipari championships every year it is lowering the quality of basketball we are seeing in college. With all the best talent leaving every year before they are developed is allowing schools like VCU and Butler being able to compete with lesser talent because they get kids that will play 4-5 years.

 

[BSpringsteen]

The NBA is the only employer in the world as far as I can tell who tells a legal adult that has the talent and ability that they are not allowed to participate because of their age.

It's a ******* farce.

They should let kids go straight to the NBA and the NBA should deal with the busts.

It should be two and done. Because I guarantee you all of these players stopped going to class the day fall semester ended.

 

[GoHawks24]

and football has the same setup as they cannot leave until the end of their class graduation has been out for 3 years, so if they rs they can leave after their rs sophamore season is done

How has nobody commented on this post yet!? You either have to be the biggest troll posting under an alt name ever or one the most clueless ******* people on this planet. What in the hell are you even talking about!? Football has the same setup!?! Yeah, cuz 1 and done is sooo similar to 3 and done. Do you even realize what you're posting half of the time? Jeebus Christ... your utter stupidity, if you're an actual legitimate poster and not a troll alt, is mind-boggling.

 

[thejumper5]

The NBA is the only employer in the world as far as I can tell who tells a legal adult that has the talent and ability that they are not allowed to participate because of their age.

The NFL does the same things. There are lots and lots of jobs that have "minimum requirements" as far as education is concerned. I'm not sure why basketball have a minimum requirement is that big of a deal.

 

[BSpringsteen]

The NFL does the same things. There are lots and lots of jobs that have "minimum requirements" as far as education is concerned. I'm not sure why basketball have a minimum requirement is that big of a deal.

Because it isn't an education requirement, it's an age requirement. They are legal adults, and there is absolutely nothing significant about the age of 19.

Make it 21, because you know they'll be drinking.

 

[herkyattack]

Because it isn't an education requirement, it's an age requirement. They are legal adults, and there is absolutely nothing significant about the age of 19.

Make it 21, because you know they'll be drinking.

It's not really an age requirement in the NFL. They just have to have been out of high school for three years. They could be 20 or 23, it doesn't matter.