Who’s Got Next? NCAA Investigates Noel, Bennett Down To Two And More…

Posted by Josh Paunil on May 10th, 2012

Who’s Got Next? is a weekly column by Josh Paunil, the RTC recruiting guru. We encourage you to check out his website dedicated solely to college basketball recruiting, National Recruiting Spotlight, for more detailed recruiting information. Once a week he will bring you an overview of what’s going on in the complex world of recruiting, from who is signing where among the seniors to who the hot prospects are at the lower levels of the sport. If you have any suggestions as to areas we are missing or different things you would like to see, please let us know at rushthecourt@yahoo.com.

Lead Story: NCAA Investigating Top Big Man Nerlens Noel

Nerlens Noel Is Being Investigated By the NCAA.

Big Blue Nation Has Little To Worry About. According to a New York Times article yesterday, the NCAA sent two members of its enforcement staff to Massachusetts this week to inquire about Class of 2012 star center Nerlens Noel. The members went to Everett High School Tuesday, where Noel spent his first two years of high school before transferring to the Tilton School, to meet with school officials about Noel. According to Everett High School principal Louis Baldi, the meeting lasted an hour and 15 minutes and centered on “concerns we had as adults” for Noel. In case you missed Pete Thamel‘s earlier article on Noel in March, he wrote about all of the influences surrounding Noel, which may or may not have brought on this “inquiry.” Here’s the thing, even though Kentucky haters will latch on to this story as just another scandal linked to head coach John Calipari, this whole story really isn’t that big of a deal. It’s nothing new that the NCAA is investigating a top recruit with many people trying to influence his every decision and honestly, if it wasn’t Kentucky, the New York Times probably wouldn’t have even reported about it. Drawing on all of the information that has been published, neither Noel nor Kentucky has done anything wrong and I doubt anything will result from this. Kentucky fans should just be happy about their National Championship and look forward to making flat top t-shirts next year in honor of the top big man in the Class of 2012.

What They’re Saying

Junior star Troy Williams on a timetable, adding schools to his list and his favorite coaching staff: “We’ll probably let two more schools back in, just to see what else is out there… it will probably be Georgetown and Florida. That’s the deciding factor, which head coach I like more. It (my favorite coaching staff) would be the Kentucky coaches because before the dead period I stayed in touch with [Kentucky assistant] coach Orlando [Antigua] the most.”

Troy Williams Revealed A Lot Of New Information About His Recruitment.

Junior stud Allerik Freeman on his final five schools: “My final five is Kansas, Ohio State, Duke, Villanova and UCLA,” Freeman said. “They’ve been recruiting me the hardest, all of them are good programs, I can see myself fitting in at all of those schools and those are the five schools that I can see myself playing at for all four years.”

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Morning Five: 05.09.12 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on May 9th, 2012

  1. Most national college basketball writers are aware of the sensitivity of Kentucky fans so you would think that a local newspaper would be cognizant of the sensibilities of their readers. Apparently The Lexington Herald-Ledger was not aware of that (or didn’t care) as it published an editorial cartoon making fun of John Calipari and some of the accusation that follow him. Outside of being unoriginal it seems like a rather idiotic decision to alienate your subscriber base (if the paper has a substantial one even before this). We would have expected something like this out of The Indianapolis Star, but for the local newspaper to do it to poke at their always irritable fan base seems to be a poor move all around.
  2. With the NBA Draft a little over seven weeks away, fans of both NBA and college basketball are beginning to focus in one how their favorite teams and players will get paired. By now we know who the top picks will be regardless of what order teams select them in, but the real intrigue is who the “value picks” will be. For that, NBADraft.net takes a look at this year’s NBA Draft and some recent NBA Drafts to find a poor man’s version of more highly rated players. Of course, as the NBA Draft approaches every year you can count on at least one column bemoaning the current age limit. The latest version of this article comes from Steve Kerr and speaks in favor of a 20-year-old age limit. We agree with Kerr on some of the points he makes, but picking 20, which is an arbitrary number seems a little capricious. Personally we would prefer an age limit of 22 years-old out of personal greed (3 more years of Anthony Davis? Sign us up!), but it will be hard to make the case as long as NBA owners and GMs continue to draft talented freshmen. Even if you disagree with Kerr’s premise it is a worthwhile and relatively short read.
  3. As we have seen several times in the barely one month old offseason, coaching changes very often lead to player transfers. The latest such case is Dorian Finney-Smith, who is transferring from Virginia Tech. Finney-Smith did not provide new coach James Johnson with a reason for his decision except to say that it was not due to the firing of Seth Greenberg, which may or may not be the case. Finney-Smith, one of the most highly sought-after recruits that the Hokies ever brought to campus, had a decent if not great freshman year averaging 6.3 points and 7 rebounds per game. The move, which was a shock to Johnson and the Hokie program, is a pretty big blow as they try to regroup under new leadership. Finney-Smith has not announced what schools he is looking at, but there should be no shortage of schools chasing after him.
  4. The North Carolina athletic department has no shortage of scandals recently and now it appears that there is a brewing academic scandal involving classes that are made up of largely basketball and football players. The classes being investigated are in African and Afro-American Studies and are said to involve unauthorized grade changes in classes without the instruction of professors. To be fair to the athletes the investigation has not shown that the players were shown any favoritism in the grade changes although the high percentage of athletes from the two sports in the classes (39%) will lead many to infer that they were put there to maintain their eligibility. Obviously, there are quite a few other potential explanation for the high prevalence of these athletes in these classes like the race of the athletes or that they were often held in summer sessions when athletes are a relatively larger percentage of the student body. While some may think this matter needs further investigation the school does not appear to think so as UNC System President Tom Ross stated that he felt it was “an isolated situation” (the famous words of many administrators before the walls came crumbling down).
  5. We know what you were probably expecting us to lead with the Nerlens Noel piece in The New York Times, but honestly it isn’t even worth mentioning at this point except to say that it is not a story. The NCAA tends to investigate a lot of situations like this and invariably nothing ever comes of it. This only becomes a story now because it is Kentucky and it is Pete Thamel, which will inevitably spiral into another ridiculous Internet feud given the history between the two with Thamel’s penchant for hunting down stories regarding Kentucky. If something is found, then it would be a big story, but for right now our response is “meh”.
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SEC Weekly Five: 04.27.12 Edition

Posted by Brian Joyce on April 27th, 2012

 

  1. Surely you heard that number one recruit and flat top fashionista Nerlens Noel committed to the University of Kentucky, but what you may not know is that Noel and his fellow incoming freshmen are helping to recruit other top talent to Lexington. Noel has led the charge, via Twitter of all places, to recruit Anthony Bennett, another top player in the class of 2012, to join him in the front line in the 2012-13 version of the defending national champions. Bennett is deciding among Kentucky, UNLV and Florida, with many experts believing it is down to the Gators and the Wildcats. Kentucky saw a lot of scoring walk out the proverbial door to the NBA, and another stockpile of freshmen talent is a must for the Wildcats to consider defending its current title.
  2. Noel isn’t the only one recruiting for Kentucky. Wildcat coach John Calipari has hit the recruiting trail and he has been forced to be slightly more creative than he has been in the past. Cal is looking to add depth to the backcourt  with 6’5″ shooting guard Mislav Brzoja. Never heard of Brzoja? I told you Calipari was getting creative. Brzoja is a shooting extraordinaire who helped Croatia defeat the USA in the U-19 FIBA World Championships.
  3. While Kentucky is completely overhauling its roster after losing seven players, Vanderbilt is undergoing a similar process with far from the same results. The Commodores lost their top six scorers, three of whom expect to be drafted, but they haven’t replaced their big three with top talent.  The biggest disappointment for Vanderbilt and coach Kevin Stallings has to be when in-state talent Alex Poythress chose to play at Kentucky after Vanderbilt recruited him for almost four years. “The staff invested an enormous amount of time and effort into recruiting (Poythress)… that was the watershed event,” Nashville-based recruiting analyst Jerry Meyer said. “It’s safe to say it hasn’t been a good recruiting year for Vandy. Exactly why, I don’t know. Sometimes you get unlucky.” Like the Wildcats in Lexington, a lot of scoring leaves Vandy this spring, and it seems to be a much more difficult challenge to envision who will put the ball in the bucket in Nashville with John Jenkins, Jeffery Taylor and Festus Ezeli no longer on campus.
  4. New South Carolina coach Frank Martin insists he didn’t come to the Gamecocks simply to run away from his troubles at Kansas State, but rather because of his excitement to be part of the USC program. “I’m just telling you, (Gamecocks AD) Eric Hyman put his arms around me and it was hard for me not to feel the passion that he had for building the men’s basketball program,” Martin said. “I’ve never been through this before.” Martin inherits a team that finished last in the SEC, but he has taken little talent and done something with it before. Martin took over the Kansas State job on the heels of an NIT appearance and had the Wildcats in the Elite Eight within three years.
  5. Scheduling is always one of the joys of the college basketball offseason, and Indiana coach Tom Crean claims that Kentucky no longer wants to play the Hoosiers in a home-and-home series. Kentucky is pushing to move the series to neutral court sites again, possibly in Indianapolis and Louisville. After the heartbreaker suffered in Bloomington this past December, who can blame the Cats for wanting to change things? But one has to wonder how long top-tier programs can continue to avoid playing difficult games (or really any games) on the road? Kentucky is slowly limiting any true road games from its schedule, joining the likes of arch-nemesis Duke as teams that don’t typically play in hostile environments until conference play. That hasn’t exactly been a recipe for success for the Blue Devils. With Kentucky’s propensity for freshman-heavy rosters, doesn’t it make sense that Calipari would want to challenge his team on a rival’s home court to prepare for the rigors of March rather than take a guaranteed paycheck from an inferior opponent in a blowout win at Rupp?
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Who’s Got Next? Parker Will Decide Monday, Upshaw to Fresno State

Posted by Josh Paunil on April 19th, 2012

Who’s Got Next? is a weekly column by Josh Paunil, the RTC recruiting guru. We encourage you to check out his website dedicated solely to college basketball recruiting, National Recruiting Spotlight, for more detailed recruiting information. Once a week he will bring you an overview of what’s going on in the complex world of recruiting, from who is signing where among the seniors to who the hot prospects are at the lower levels of the sport. If you have any suggestions as to areas we are missing or different things you would like to see, please let us know at rushthecourt@yahoo.com.

Lead Story: Top-20 Power Forward Tony Parker To Announce His Decision Monday

Class of 2012 Power Forward Tony Parker Will Commit Monday.

Second-Best Undecided Senior Will Decide Between Five. Class of 2012 power forward Tony Parker has had one of the most secretive recruitments in the Class of 2012. The 6’9″, 273-pound big man has kept all of the recruiting analysts guessing since the beginning and many popular guesses have come and gone ranging from Ohio State and Duke to more recently UCLA and his hometown team, Georgia. But Monday at around 3:30 or 4 PM, according to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, Parker will finally announce his college intentions. His final five consists of Duke, Georgia, Kansas, Ohio State, and UCLA. I doubt he will go to Kansas or Georgia so that leaves Duke, Ohio State, and UCLA. It seems to me that the two schools with the best shot at him are Ohio State and UCLA and if I had to bet on where he goes I would pick UCLA, but honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if he choose any of the five schools except for Kansas. So, in order, I think the schools that have the best shot with him are UCLA, Ohio State, Duke, Georgia, and then Kansas. If he does indeed choose UCLA, that would give them arguably the best recruiting class in the country between their class of Parker, point guard Kyle Anderson, and small forwards Shabazz Muhammad and Jordan Adams.

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Won and Done… Kentucky Roster Undergoes Yearly Overhaul

Posted by EMoyer on April 18th, 2012

On Tuesday evening, the worst kept secret was revealed as Kentucky’s five heralded underclassmen, Anthony Davis, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Terrence Jones, Doron Lamb and Marquis Teague all declared for June’s NBA Draft. The five brings the total to 15 of John Calipari recruits to leave early since 2008.

It Was All Smiles For This Group in Lexington

Eight of the previous 10 went on to become first round picks and two (John Wall and Derrick Rose) went No. 1 overall. Both the mock drafts at NBADraft.net and on ESPN.com have all five Wildcats going in the first round. DraftExpress.com lists four Wildcats going in the first round with Lamb currently an early second-round choice. According to all three sites, Davis will join Wall and Rose as top overall picks. They also agree that Kidd-Gilchrist projects as a top three pick and two (ESPN.com and DraftExpress.com) put Jones in the lottery.

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Top Recruiting Classes Produce Mixed Results: An Analysis of Recent Recruiting History

Posted by EJacoby on April 13th, 2012

Evan Jacoby is a regular contributor for RTC. You can find him @evanjacoby on Twitter.

On the heels of Nerlens Noel and Shabazz Muhammad’s signings as the top two high school recruits, everyone is looking forward to next season. There’s especially great hype surrounding Kentucky, UCLA, and Arizona, the prize winners of 2012’s recruiting trail. While those fan bases should certainly be excited, we decided to conduct some research as a reminder that a top incoming recruiting class doesn’t necessarily guarantee future success. The incredible success of Kentucky’s one-and-done recruiting strategy over the past couple of years (two Final Fours, one National Championship) has helped foster the idea that top recruiting classes will result in immediate hardware. But let’s not forget that winning titles with youngsters has been more of an anomaly than the norm. A review of recent history shows that top recruiting classes have resulted in failure nearly as much as sustained winning.

Top Player Nerlens Noel is Headed to Kentucky, But That Doesn't Guarantee Success for UK (SI Photo)

It takes more than one top incoming recruiting class for a program to achieve top-level success. Kentucky’s 2012 National Championship will be synonymous with the “one-and-done” strategy, but it wasn’t like the Wildcats employed all freshmen to win the title. Of their top six players, three were freshmen. Sure, Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist were their best two players, and Marquis Teague was crucial as well, but UK would not have won the championship based on that recruiting class alone. Doron Lamb, Terrence Jones, and Darius Miller were massive contributors as well, meaning that the team’s success was a culmination of several years of top recruits, not just one haul that came in and won it all. This is the thesis that is established when reviewing recent history.

Let’s take a look at the past 10 years of recruiting history, analyzing a team’s success after it brings in a top-three recruiting class. We get our recruiting class rankings from Rivals.com. In 2003, it was Florida State, Oklahoma, and Maryland that took in the top high school recruits. The result? Just one of these three teams qualified for the NCAA Tournament the following season, with Maryland advancing to the round of 32. The Terrapins’ four years after this top class resulted in just two NCAA Tournaments and zero Sweet Sixteens. Oklahoma also qualified for just two NCAA Tourneys in four years with one postseason win. And Florida State, the owners of the top recruiting class of 2003, did not qualify for a single NCAA Tournament in the following four seasons.

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Who’s Got Next? Muhammad & Noel Commit, Updates On Elite Recruits…

Posted by Josh Paunil on April 12th, 2012

Who’s Got Next? is a weekly column by Josh Paunil, the RTC recruiting guru. We encourage you to check out his website dedicated solely to college basketball recruiting, National Recruiting Spotlight, for more detailed recruiting information. Once a week he will bring you an overview of what’s going on in the complex world of recruiting, from who is signing where among the seniors to who the hot prospects are at the lower levels of the sport. If you have any suggestions as to areas we are missing or different things you would like to see, please let us know at rushthecourt@yahoo.com.

Lead Story: Top Recruit In the Country Chooses Kentucky

Noel's Commitment Gives UK the Number One Recruiting Class. (Sports Illustrated)

Noel’s Commitment Gives Wildcats Top Recruiting Class. Class of 2012 center Nerlens Noel, the best player in the high school ranks, committed to Kentucky yesterday over Georgetown and Syracuse. Noel joins shooting guard Archie Goodwin, small forward Alex Poythress and center Willie Cauley-Stein to give head coach John Calipari the best recruiting class in the country again. Goodwin and Poythress are both top-15 guys whereas Cauley-Stein is a top-50 recruit. Noel, a 6’11”, 216-pound big man, is the only person on this planet capable of filling Anthony Davis’ shoes at Kentucky and will provide an even better defensive presence and a great target in transition. The Massachusetts native is an excellent finisher and has good explosiveness and athleticism all over the court. He also has done a great job developing his offensive game and has shown an improved 15-foot jumper as well as better interior scoring moves. His rate of development is an extremely good sign for Kentucky fans since he’s already very talented. The good news for Wildcat fans doesn’t stop there since Coach Cal isn’t done yet in the Class of 2012. They’re still after power forward Anthony Bennett, a top-10 recruit, and have a very realistic shot at landing him too. The addition of Bennett would put this Kentucky recruiting class in the conversation of one of the greatest recruiting classes of all-time.

What They’re Saying

  • Anthony Bennett on how he would fit in at Kentucky: “I can see myself fitting in [with] all schools but Kentucky, they produce great players. Coach Cal produces them to the league and makes them better and also they win national championships on top of that so it’s a great fit.” Read the rest of this entry »
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Morning Five: 04.12.12 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on April 12th, 2012

  1. Last night the college basketball world was hijacked by announcements from Shabazz Muhammad and Nerlens Noel about where they would he headed next season. The news from Muhammad’s camp leaked before he could announce that he was headed to UCLA while the news out of the Noel camp was a little bit of misdirection as initial reports suggested he was headed to Georgetown when in fact he was headed to Kentucky. While the decision by Noel may help decide next year’s national championship, Muhammad’s arrival in Westwood could help save Ben Howland’s job as he should make the Bruins one of the best teams out west the moment he steps foot on campus. Of course, if they are not…
  2. Let’s give it up for Gary Parrish, a voice of supreme reason. When Muhammad announced for UCLA last night, many college basketball fans around the country had trouble understanding why a top prospect would choose a program coming off a rough season where fan support is lukewarm at best rather than one of the more rabidly supported programs located in Lexington or Durham. But, as Parrish notes (and notwithstanding that two of the top 10 or so players in the NBA are Howland guys), the answer at least partially lies in the powerful influence that the major shoe companies have on elite prospects behind the scenes. Muhammad is an adidas guy and UCLA is an adidas program. But before anyone starts singing sour notes about this obvious example of subtle coercion, Parrish notes that it happens every single year with a number of top prospects. There’s perhaps no greater an example than NPOY and Final Four MOP Anthony Davis — a Nike kid who ended up at a Nike school just one recruiting season ago. If Parrish is reading this, we’d love to see a list of these ‘coincidences,’ from say, the last decade or so.
  3. We wrote Tuesday that Baylor had successfully played a compelling game of risk/reward in building its men’s basketball program to an elite level. The assumption underlying that thesis was that the NCAA would accept Baylor’s self-imposed penalties for exceeding mandated limits on phone calls and text messages to recruits from 2007-10 — the standard “probation” of recruiting restrictions as to time/place, loss of scholarships, etc. Sure enough, the NCAA did just that on Wednesday, accepting Baylor’s penalties and tacitly agreeing with our contention that the ends (recruiting enough studs to achieve two Elite Eights in three seasons) more than justify the means.
  4. So let’s get this straight… Colorado State reportedly offered its open head coaching job to former Oregon head man Ernie Kent earlier this week, but it was nixed by an unknown high-ranking school administrator. So the back-up plan became to hire the guy who was once photographed partying with students while at Iowa State? We don’t know what the real story is here, and no disrespect at all is intended to Larry Eustachy (who has clearly turned his life around by doing well at Southern Miss), but goodness, something doesn’t smell right in Fort Collins. For what it’s worth, Kent says he was never offered the job by CSU and therefore it could not have been rescinded, but he also clearly wants to get back into coaching and it wouldn’t help his prospects to cause a ruckus over this situation.
  5. Not every Pac-12 schools got good news on Wednesday. Well, Arizona got both good and bad news, with Sean Miller’s program announcing that two players were transferring in and two others were leaving after the semester. The headliner is that Josiah Turner, a former top 10 recruit from the class of 2011, is leaving Tucson for a destination unknown — his freshman season was marred by suspensions and inconsistent play at the point guard slot. Junior center Kyryl Natyazhko is also leaving Arizona, choosing to head back to Europe to pursue professional opportunities there. The good news it that the Wildcats will welcome Duquesne transfer TJ McConnell, a rising junior who averaged 11 points, six assists and four rebounds per game last season, and Matt Corcheck, a junior college transfer who will have three years of eligibility remaining. With Turner, Alex Oriakhi, Trey Ziegler and several others transferring this offseason, it’s a good year to have an extra scholarship lying around unused.
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The Impact of Nerlens Noel and Shabazz Muhammad’s Signing Decisions

Posted by EJacoby on April 11th, 2012

Evan Jacoby is a regular contributor for RTC. You can find him @evanjacoby on Twitter.

Say what you want about the signing day process, one that includes kids announcing their college intentions on live television specials, but the effect of the announcements certainly meets the hype. While most of the top recruits had already made their decisions earlier this year, Wednesday night showcased the top two players in high school basketball announcing their decisions on ESPNU. Nerlens Noel (6’10” center from Massachusetts) chose Kentucky while Shabazz Muhammad (6’6” wing from Nevada) chose UCLA, enormous gains for each of these programs. Let’s take a look at what it means for the Wildcats and Bruins to each add a star recruit, as well as breaking down how teams like Georgetown, Syracuse, and Duke that were in the mix are now negatively affected.

They've Announced: Shabazz Muhammed (Left) is Headed to UCLA; Nerlens Noel (Right) is Off to Kentucky (Photo Credit - BleacherReport.com)

The Winners

UCLA – Despite the disappointing season in Westwood and the shaky ground under head coach Ben Howland, the Bruins have now found a way to notch a top-two recruiting class with the addition of Muhammad. Muhammad joins Kyle Anderson, another top 10 player in this class, as two talented, versatile wing players. Anderson is closer to 6’7” yet excels as a distributor with excellent awareness and vision with the basketball. Muhammad is 6’6” and more of a scorer, one whose attacking mentality should mesh perfectly with Anderson’s game. These two immediately become a potent one-two duo in the Pac-12 to match the solid talent already on the roster (David Wear, Travis Wear, Josh Smith, Larry Drew), and the Bruins may not be done. Top unsigned big man Tony Parker is also considering UCLA. The Bruins are a surefire Top 25 team heading into next season and could easily have Top 10 upside. There is reason for great optimism in Westwood, and the Pac-12 as a whole should be on the rise with Arizona and UCLA now taking home two of the top three recruiting classes in the nation.

KentuckyThe 2012 National Champions already had a very strong recruiting class for next season, but continuing the theme of the past several years the Wildcats will now welcome the top player in high school basketball — Nerlens Noel. Muhammad and Noel both had UK on their short lists, and Big Blue Nation surely wanted both to commit, but adding Noel is still a massive gain. John Calipari’s team now has a player to build around in the 6’10” Noel, who is an Anthony Davis-like shot-blocker that can have a similar defensive impact next season. He’s less skilled on the perimeter and has work to do offensively, but Noel is the No. 1 player in this class for a reason. He can be a dominant big man to pair up with the other talented freshmen Alex Poythress, Archie Goodwin, Willie Cauley, and another likely one or two unsigned recruits. Kentucky once again has the top recruiting class in the country, and the Wildcats will be favorites to repeat as champions if any of the starters from last season decide to stick around for another year.

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John Calipari Comes Through Again With Nerlens Noel

Posted by nvr1983 on April 11th, 2012

With Big Blue Nation growing desperate as news leaked that Nerlens Noel, the top recruit in the class of 2012, appeared to be headed to Georgetown and their beloved Kentucky Wildcats about to go 0-for-2 on the the night when the top two prospects in this year’s class John Calipari pulled through once again as the flat-top phenom turned around to reveal that his destination this fall was Kentucky.

And The Winner Is Kentucky...Again (Credit: Mocksession / @bubbaprog)

The addition of Noel gives Kentucky the top recruiting class in the country for the fourth straight year and could give Calipari a claim to having the best four-year recruiting run in NCAA history (here is what we said before last year’s class took the court). With Anthony Davis on his way out and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Terrence Jones likely joining him the Wildcats will have need for Noel’s skills, which should help wean Wildcat fans off of Davis even if he will not make them forget Davis.

The next question is what this does for the Wildcats in the rankings. With the top player in the class to go along with several other highly coveted prospects the Wildcats should have the #1 spot in the recruiting rankings locked up and should remain in the top 2 or 3 when the next tidal wave of “way too early” preseason rankings come out.

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