Dawson Garcia enters transfer portal

Really? That’s all you’ve got? Illinois hasn’t had a violation in over 30 years and 5 coaches ago. Dear lord, you had a Pitino. Lol
That just means, bag of cash, Lou Doo never got caught. It was heavily rumored by friends from Chicago...
 

I'd say that you are more likely to be right than wrong but playing here for losing teams didn't hurt Oturu's or Kris Humphries' professional chances.
Depends. They may have become much better players playing for far better coaches and practicing against far better players.
 

If Ben can close the deal... I will take back 20-25% of all the negitivie recruiting talk I've posted... We need this... Not just from a talent standpoint.. but from a positive vibe.. getting the ball rolling standpoint

And we'll all be able to sleep easy.
 

It’s Baylor. He has connections with coaches and players.
 




David Sisk reporting that Garcia is on campus at UNC, seems like he may join his former D1 MN teammate Walton.
 

Im sure excuses will be bounding in, but again we are going to lose a MN kid to a coach who has 0 HC experience and had no past with. So now it will be "well yah but its UNC so obviously hes going there over the U" When you are hired because you are going to recruit like crazy and lock down the borders, and then lose to someone in the EXACT same boat as you far as coaching exp I dont really want to hear more excuses. We are losing kids to coaches with no exp, we are losing kids to teams that went 2-22 last year (with a new coach), and we are losing to out of state teams in our conf we need to be beating. I know some might not like being negative, I get it, but man when is the good news going to start?
 

Im sure excuses will be bounding in, but again we are going to lose a MN kid to a coach who has 0 HC experience and had no past with. So now it will be "well yah but its UNC so obviously hes going there over the U" When you are hired because you are going to recruit like crazy and lock down the borders, and then lose to someone in the EXACT same boat as you far as coaching exp I dont really want to hear more excuses. We are losing kids to coaches with no exp, we are losing kids to teams that went 2-22 last year (with a new coach), and we are losing to out of state teams in our conf we need to be beating. I know some might not like being negative, I get it, but man when is the good news going to start?
Wow. Just because Garcia from MN doesn’t mean Ben has any relationship with him from his HS recruiting. UNC staff does. Relax.
 





Im sure excuses will be bounding in, but again we are going to lose a MN kid to a coach who has 0 HC experience and had no past with. So now it will be "well yah but its UNC so obviously hes going there over the U" When you are hired because you are going to recruit like crazy and lock down the borders, and then lose to someone in the EXACT same boat as you far as coaching exp I dont really want to hear more excuses. We are losing kids to coaches with no exp, we are losing kids to teams that went 2-22 last year (with a new coach), and we are losing to out of state teams in our conf we need to be beating. I know some might not like being negative, I get it, but man when is the good news going to start?
Ben will contact if he hasn't already, but MN makes no sense for Garcia at this point unless he REALLY wants to come home.
 

Is losing a McDonald's All-American to one of the top programs in all of college basketball some sort of inexcusable recruiting failure?
 



Is losing a McDonald's All-American to one of the top programs in all of college basketball some sort of inexcusable recruiting failure?

It's not inexcusable but there does come a time (it's too early now) where some results are going to need to land. We were told Ben would improve local recruiting, it will be fair at some point to ask "when?" I don't think that point is no and maybe the improved recruiting will be fnding/landing/developing lesser known players who improve the program.

For now, it's the offseason and we have nothing else to go on. Ben Johnson doesn't need to be treated with kids' gloves. So when each high profile local kid chooses another school, the fanbase will react.
 

There are a couple signs I like so far: They have a lot of offers out there to kids- it appears they are very active and working it hard. The kids they offer seem to be good shooters, with good basketball skills and heady players from the video and commentary I have seen. Not just athletes.

So I like who they are identifying, now we need to land them.
 

Ben and staff have put their time in to the 2022 class recently and that’s where their time is better spent anyhow. Start your judgements there. Any type of evaluation on this staff is premature and pointless until you see what we have a full roster and you see who’s committed this fall. I get we are bored but man....
 

Ben and staff have put their time in to the 2022 class recently and that’s where their time is better spent anyhow. Start your judgements there. Any type of evaluation on this staff is premature and pointless until you see what we have a full roster and you see who’s committed this fall. I get we are bored but man....
I don’t think you should post until that point then. Or wait until signing day cause a commitment means nothing. I get we are bored...

Anyone is allowed to speculate. They can criticize misses and celebrate wins. It’s a message board. We’re not carving the 10 commandments into Plymouth Rock
 

Ben and staff have put their time in to the 2022 class recently and that’s where their time is better spent anyhow. Start your judgements there. Any type of evaluation on this staff is premature and pointless until you see what we have a full roster and you see who’s committed this fall. I get we are bored but man....
Honest question, then why are you here?
 

Honest question, then why are you here?
If you are regarding the message board it’s cause I like to keep up on the tweets and news I may miss. I also enjoy the banter and hoops conversation in general. I made my comment because I think the local angle is always overblown and that criticism of Ben’s recruiting is premature.

If you mean the Dawson thread specifically; it’s because I am bored.
 

I don’t think you should post until that point then. Or wait until signing day cause a commitment means nothing. I get we are bored...

Anyone is allowed to speculate. They can criticize misses and celebrate wins. It’s a message board. We’re not carving the 10 commandments into Plymouth Rock
Great post. Still amazed though that fans of every flagship state school complain as state kids go to out of state schools. As some of you know i follow UVA closely. They rarely get Virginia kids and that is with elite success,elite coaching and elite school. Just recently, Justin Taylor,a local Charlottesville kid that played with Bennett's son in high school chose Syracuse. The relationship was strong. UVA had already taken a kid at his position who they think is better but the offer still stood. They pulled kids from all over the nation and internationally even before success and built a winner. Sometimes those kids get along better, build strong bonds, grow as people meeting new people from many places. Kids pick schools for many reasons. Coaches,girlfriends, community, school, teammates, climate, brands and on and on.
 

It's not inexcusable but there does come a time (it's too early now) where some results are going to need to land. We were told Ben would improve local recruiting, it will be fair at some point to ask "when?" I don't think that point is no and maybe the improved recruiting will be fnding/landing/developing lesser known players who improve the program.

For now, it's the offseason and we have nothing else to go on. Ben Johnson doesn't need to be treated with kids' gloves. So when each high profile local kid chooses another school, the fanbase will react.
I think your parenthetical statement that it's too early is the lynchpin to my entire perspective on this. Ben Johnson has been here about 3 and a half months, and in that time has had to cobble together almost an entire 2021-22 roster, before being able to concentrate on the 2022 class. Even in a normal year, with a non first year coach, we usually don't get our first commit until at least July or August, if not September, and there were people freaking out about not having gotten a commitment yet in mid-June.

Johnson had the misfortune of having a couple of desired recruits with, I believe, years-long pre-existing relationships with coaches at other schools (Eli King with Otzelberger and Camden Heide with Painter), then committing to those schools relatively early in the recruiting cycle, creating, in my opinion, an incorrect perception that Ben Johnson is blowing it on the recruiting trail right now, and that our prospective 2022 recruiting class is on the brink of disaster. There was Joe Hurlburt too, who is from the midwest, had interest in Minnesota, and had a connection with his brother having gone to school here, but he doesn't actually live in Minnesota, so he seems to have been forgotten about by now.

I also don't really care about in-state recruiting. If you can get a comparable player from out of state instead, fine by me. If we get Jameel Brown instead of Eli King, I think that's completely okay. Getting Isaiah Ihnen instead of Tyler Wahl was fine with me. Getting Jordan Murphy instead of Alex Illikainen was very fine with me. If we miss out on in-state targets and get some solid out of state targets instead, that's perfectly acceptable to me. I am going to wait until September or October when 2022 fall/summer recruiting really starts to wrap up to decide if our 2022 recruiting class is worth hand wringing over. Early commitments from King and Heide to other schools, as well as the fact that we do not currently have a commitment, do not worry me a great deal as of July 1st. Other people are going to be concerned about this, but I'm just not. I know Ben Johnson was basically hired to be the ace in-state recruiter, but if he gets good players from other places too, great.

I also just don't expect our coaches to land like top 30/5 star/McDonald's All-American recruits. We don't get those players most of the time that we offer them, just as I would imagine most low- to mid-tier power conference basketball programs don't get commitments from players like that, and I'm not under the impression that it's mostly because our coaching staffs for the past 15 years have just been extremely incompetent. A top recruit committing to a top basketball program just seems like the expected result to me (assuming it happens). I don't consider it a show of poor recruiting if Dawson Garcia chooses North Carolina over us, just as I didn't think Pitino losing Tyus Jones or Gary Trent or Matthew Hurt to Duke meant he was bad at recruiting. Other people believe that any recruit, even the 5 stars and All-Americans, who grows up in Minnesota should be leaning heavily toward staying home, and that just assigning a half-decent recruiter to the job will make it happen, and I disagree.

We're 3 months and change into the Ben Johnson era and there will be plenty of opportunities to get good players. I'm not going to worry about whether I can afford to eat next week if I don't win the lottery today.
 

I don’t think you should post until that point then. Or wait until signing day cause a commitment means nothing. I get we are bored...

Anyone is allowed to speculate. They can criticize misses and celebrate wins. It’s a message board. We’re not carving the 10 commandments into Plymouth Rock
Lol it’s just laughable that some criticize this staffs recruiting over guys like Garcia or Theo John choosing UNC or Duke, but yes people can and should post if they want to. Just like it’s ok to criticize the staff, it’s equally fair to stick up for them.
 

Ben Johnson is not a Scott Frost thing although they are both native sons coming home. At least Frost had head coaching experience whose HC talent was masked by an abundance of talent in Florida.

Ben Johnson has a bigger challenge. He has to learn on the job without a seasoned Gopher BB team after almost everyone bailed out. On the other hand, starting from scratch may accelerate the learning. He may be better after going through this at the start of his coaching career. Who knows.
 

Lol it’s just laughable that some criticize this staffs recruiting over guys like Garcia or Theo John choosing UNC or Duke, but yes people can and should post if they want to. Just like it’s ok to criticize the staff, it’s equally fair to stick up for them.
Agreed. I just feel like so far he is being stuck up for without accomplishing anything and any criticism is met with a wait and see approach. Not unfair to expect results from a coach.
 

Agreed. I just feel like so far he is being stuck up for without accomplishing anything and any criticism is met with a wait and see approach. Not unfair to expect results from a coach.
It’s too early to have to “stick up” for him. People shouldn’t be overly critical yet. Let him get through a cycle of recruiting, coach a game… it’s ridiculous how people are panicking.
 

It’s too early to have to “stick up” for him. People shouldn’t be overly critical yet. Let him get through a cycle of recruiting, coach a game… it’s ridiculous how people are panicking.
Nobody has any clue what ben Johnson's relationship is with anybody. Everybody just guesses on here and thinks they know what's going on, but in reality they have no clue. Hopefully ben johnson gets a good 2022 recruiting class. All indications are they are working hard.
 

I think your parenthetical statement that it's too early is the lynchpin to my entire perspective on this. Ben Johnson has been here about 3 and a half months, and in that time has had to cobble together almost an entire 2021-22 roster, before being able to concentrate on the 2022 class. Even in a normal year, with a non first year coach, we usually don't get our first commit until at least July or August, if not September, and there were people freaking out about not having gotten a commitment yet in mid-June.

Johnson had the misfortune of having a couple of desired recruits with, I believe, years-long pre-existing relationships with coaches at other schools (Eli King with Otzelberger and Camden Heide with Painter), then committing to those schools relatively early in the recruiting cycle, creating, in my opinion, an incorrect perception that Ben Johnson is blowing it on the recruiting trail right now, and that our prospective 2022 recruiting class is on the brink of disaster. There was Joe Hurlburt too, who is from the midwest, had interest in Minnesota, and had a connection with his brother having gone to school here, but he doesn't actually live in Minnesota, so he seems to have been forgotten about by now.

I also don't really care about in-state recruiting. If you can get a comparable player from out of state instead, fine by me. If we get Jameel Brown instead of Eli King, I think that's completely okay. Getting Isaiah Ihnen instead of Tyler Wahl was fine with me. Getting Jordan Murphy instead of Alex Illikainen was very fine with me. If we miss out on in-state targets and get some solid out of state targets instead, that's perfectly acceptable to me. I am going to wait until September or October when 2022 fall/summer recruiting really starts to wrap up to decide if our 2022 recruiting class is worth hand wringing over. Early commitments from King and Heide to other schools, as well as the fact that we do not currently have a commitment, do not worry me a great deal as of July 1st. Other people are going to be concerned about this, but I'm just not. I know Ben Johnson was basically hired to be the ace in-state recruiter, but if he gets good players from other places too, great.

I also just don't expect our coaches to land like top 30/5 star/McDonald's All-American recruits. We don't get those players most of the time that we offer them, just as I would imagine most low- to mid-tier power conference basketball programs don't get commitments from players like that, and I'm not under the impression that it's mostly because our coaching staffs for the past 15 years have just been extremely incompetent. A top recruit committing to a top basketball program just seems like the expected result to me (assuming it happens). I don't consider it a show of poor recruiting if Dawson Garcia chooses North Carolina over us, just as I didn't think Pitino losing Tyus Jones or Gary Trent or Matthew Hurt to Duke meant he was bad at recruiting. Other people believe that any recruit, even the 5 stars and All-Americans, who grows up in Minnesota should be leaning heavily toward staying home, and that just assigning a half-decent recruiter to the job will make it happen, and I disagree.

We're 3 months and change into the Ben Johnson era and there will be plenty of opportunities to get good players. I'm not going to worry about whether I can afford to eat next week if I don't win the lottery today.
You kind of lost me at getting Isaiah Ihnen instead of Tyler Wahl. That's just cray.
 

It’s too early to have to “stick up” for him. People shouldn’t be overly critical yet. Let him get through a cycle of recruiting, coach a game… it’s ridiculous how people are panicking.
Not sure where you see any panic. Fans are anxious, based on the very real need to recruit great players. Until MN signs some great players, anxiety will remain.
 

It’s too early to have to “stick up” for him. People shouldn’t be overly critical yet. Let him get through a cycle of recruiting, coach a game… it’s ridiculous how people are panicking.
Panicking or reacting? I see mostly the latter
 

You kind of lost me at getting Isaiah Ihnen instead of Tyler Wahl. That's just cray.

After two years.....I'd still take Ihnen over Wahl. Much higher ceiling.
 




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