Recruiting Question

chucktownhawk

Well-Known Member
I'm down in Iowa City with my dad. He's got several appointments at the VA, but we were talking about the Chicagoland area and recruiting. Do Fran & Co hit this area? I know years ago we pulled some decent kids out of there.

Just curious
 
Ha, *everybody* hits the Chicago area - that's the problem! Hitting it and actually pulling decent players out of there are two different things, unfortunately.

In the Fran era...

- Cully Payne was from Schaumburg
- Charlie Rose was from Elmhurst
- Isaiah Moss was from Chicago (Simeon, one of the elite, if not THE elite, public school talent factories)
- Nicolas Hobbs is from Chicago
- Ahron Ulis is from Chicago (we also went hard after his brother, but lost out to Kentucky)

Of those players, the only one with solid name recognition is Moss. Ulis definitely has the potential to make a name for himself.

Chicago is a national recruiting ground for sure - a tough nut to crack and, in the Big Ten, you've got to deal with a several decent programs that are in close geographic proximity to Chicago (Illinois, Wisconsin, and Purdue).
 
If Illinois keeps having success that’s gonna be a real difficult situation to go in there and grab players.

That’s one problem with being in a low population area. It’s crazy how many in-state football players Penn State has, for example. I never really paid much attention to it until I went out to watch the Hawks a couple years ago. It’s like everybody is either from PA itself or the Jersey area. Nuts.
 
Iowa had a long drought in Chicagoland after the Bruce Pearl/Deon Thomas/Jimmy Collins fiasco because the public league and the Catholic league basically shit all over Iowa for decades. I think Pierre Pierce was our first really good recruit out of the area after that incident. It's 35 years in the past at this point, but now we have to deal with the problem of never making it out of the first weekend of the tournament during the lifetime of the kids we are recruiting, which basically puts us in the tier with DePaul and Chicago State for recruits.

Moss was a nice get and the jury is still out on some other guys, but at the end of the day, Pierce and Moss are the only really good D-1 guys we have gotten out of the region in 30+ years. It sucks. I recall we had Ben Brust in the bag, but then Bo Ryan scooped him up when Lick got discharged.
 
If Illinois keeps having success that’s gonna be a real difficult situation to go in there and grab players.

That’s one problem with being in a low population area. It’s crazy how many in-state football players Penn State has, for example. I never really paid much attention to it until I went out to watch the Hawks a couple years ago. It’s like everybody is either from PA itself or the Jersey area. Nuts.
Yup, well said.

To be competitive in the Big Ten (basketball or football) based in the state of Iowa (which has TWO P5 programs) is an incredible achievement. I mean, just getting to .500 takes one hell of a coaching job.

Based on 20+ years of hanging out around various Hawkeye message boards, I feel safe in saying the vast majority of this fanbase doesn't really get that. Most top HS recruits nationwide can't even find Iowa on a map (really) and, although I think we are nationally respected by those in the know (especially on the football side) for consistently punching above our weight, your average top HS recruit could really not give a shit. On the national stage, our achievements in either sport are basically nil for the past 60 years or so.

Sorry, I don't mean to sound so negative - I love the Hawks, watch every game, live and die with every win or loss...I just think a large portion of our fanbase is, in general, somewhat untethered from reality.
 
I would agree that recruiting Chicagoland is a tough task because so many programs recruit there. I think about some of the best Illini teams from the past and some of the best player are from Peoria and downstate. Champaign isn't a big magnet. Juwan Howard would be a good example of a Chicago player that went off to Michigan. Ayo Du is a talent that did make to Champaign from Chicago and made a splash.
 
It's hard sometimes for me to understand when we play nobody teams, they always seem to have athletic players. It's hard to believe playing on a Big 10 level team isn't incentive enough for some of these guys. I'm just putting that out there. Honestly they seem a dime a dozen in the SEC and many conferences, even in the Missouri Valley. Is it really that hard to convince them to play for Iowa? I guess once in a while I'd like Iowa to have the most athletic team on the floor. Hasn't happened since Raveling. Won't ever happen with Fran, and I think Fran has been doing a really ok job spotting talent.
 

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