All Things 2021 Gophers Basketball Recruiting Thread

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Does it not seem really odd that we have heard nothing publicly about or from the two signed recruits? In days past, they would have been the first to be contacted about whether they would still come or seek a release. Have seen nothing from either of them, not even a polite congratulations to Coach Johnson. I find that really strange, and easy to speculate that they won't be here either by their choice or Ben suggesting there are better situations for them elsewhere. Personally, I would like to see both come, especially Thompson as a link to Minnesota recruits.
 

Holy Man said:
Does it not seem really odd that we have heard nothing publicly about or from the two signed recruits? In days past, they would have been the first to be contacted about whether they would still come or seek a release. Have seen nothing from either of them, not even a polite congratulations to Coach Johnson. I find that really strange, and easy to speculate that they won't be here either by their choice or Ben suggesting there are better situations for them elsewhere. Personally, I would like to see both come, especially Thompson as a link to Minnesota recruits.
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Thompson is still coming here. Pohto is reassessing his commitment.
 





GopherNuts said:
Single players aren't winning you conference titles. We've watched the team to the East rarely leave the states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio to recruit in the last 30 years and they have three Final Four banners, a handful of conference titles and three conference tournament titles to show for it all the while saving money they didn't need in recruiting to put toward improving facilities. Meanwhile, we've spent the last 30 recruiting nationally and have one non-vacated Elite 8 appearance, a couple NIT championships and two round of 32 appearances while we struggle to come up with funding to pay off debt.

You can win with kids from anywhere but can you get them to come here on the way up? As we're reminded annually, not enough. The emphasis of recruiting within the region is an acknowledgement of where we are as a program. We don't have history to sell, we don't have a new arena to sell, we don't have NBA development to sell so what can we sell? Proximity to family and the conference. Scott Drew's first tournament team was made up almost entirely of kids from Texas and Louisiana, Jay Wright's PA, DC, NJ, New York and Virginia, Mark Few's Washington and a couple from Oregon and California.

Unless we have some shady boosters we don't know about, good national recruits aren't coming here.
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Regional is critical . National and international are possible if you excel at evaluation and are the best offer. You can do this on the way up, from day one. But you have to sell that your the best one to get the most out of them, shared vision and values. Family members accumulate the data on who has been great at evals on kids they saw as 4-5 star players for them and the services had as 3 stars.Plus, they fit what they wanted to get gone.
 






The good news is we'll know real soon how good the Gophers can be loading up on MN high school tier 2 recruits. There's been a lot of arguments over the years about us recruiting or not recruiting certain players and this will help clear that up some.
 

tmvander said:
The good news is we'll know real soon how good the Gophers can be loading up on MN high school tier 2 recruits. There's been a lot of arguments over the years about us recruiting or not recruiting certain players and this will help clear that up some.
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I wonder what the "hit" percentage is on these MN tier 2 recruits. It's easy to look at them with hindsight and just fixate on the ones that worked out, but what percentage is that? My concern is that we develop have this fixation on MN recruits and then we just start taking from this group that only hits on a, let's just say 25% rate for discussion purposes. In hoops you can't afford to clog up your roster with people that can't play, as we all have seen.
 

Gopher Teeth said:
I wonder what the "hit" percentage is on these MN tier 2 recruits. It's easy to look at them with hindsight and just fixate on the ones that worked out, but what percentage is that? My concern is that we develop have this fixation on MN recruits and then we just start taking from this group that only hits on a, let's just say 25% rate for discussion purposes. In hoops you can't afford to clog up your roster with people that can't play, as we all have seen.
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I mean it's been very easy to point at guys who went to smaller schools and played really well and say we missed on a guy while we had guys like Michael Hurt, Jarvis, Gabe, etc. that people just constantly bash.
 



tmvander said:
The good news is we'll know real soon how good the Gophers can be loading up on MN high school tier 2 recruits. There's been a lot of arguments over the years about us recruiting or not recruiting certain players and this will help clear that up some.
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I don't think many people are advocating for getting the players that have committed recently to MN out of high school. I'd consider McKinley Wright a tier 2 Minnesota recruit and I think those are the type of players MN should land out of High School.
 

Johnnyboy18 said:
I don't think many people are advocating for getting the players that have committed recently to MN out of high school. I'd consider McKinley Wright a tier 2 Minnesota recruit and I think those are the type of players MN should land out of High School.
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I think you get the top kid out of Minnesota every year that's not a 5*, the 5* you just aren't going to get, some may work out, some might not, that's only four of the thirteen scholarships, you can miss on one occasionally. I think Wright as a high school senior was the top basketball player in the state, others were ranked higher but I didn't see anyone with the skills he brought. Those guys have to be tier 1 guys as far as recruiting goes in my mind.
 


tmvander said:
The good news is we'll know real soon how good the Gophers can be loading up on MN high school tier 2 recruits. There's been a lot of arguments over the years about us recruiting or not recruiting certain players and this will help clear that up some.
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But now there's something better: let the tier 2's go to low and mid majors and prove themselves out for two years. If they're good, then offer them to come home, if they put themselves in the portal.

Basically the same concept as JUCO.
 




jovs said:
I think you get the top kid out of Minnesota every year that's not a 5*, the 5* you just aren't going to get, some may work out, some might not, that's only four of the thirteen scholarships, you can miss on one occasionally. I think Wright as a high school senior was the top basketball player in the state, others were ranked higher but I didn't see anyone with the skills he brought. Those guys have to be tier 1 guys as far as recruiting goes in my mind.
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Why can't you get the 5 stars?

I agree, most won't come. But here is where I differ. You need to get one of them every once in while. This IMO is what has hurt our in state recruiting more than anything. Every 3 years, you should get the best player in your state to stay.

We have had probably 7-8 of these types of guys in the last 5-7 years and got ZERO of them. This has to change IMO.

On that note, I don't think it WILL change until this coach proves he can coach kids and win. And he will have to do it with lesser talent IMO. Just the way it is.
 

Go Gophs said:
Why can't you get the 5 stars?

I agree, most won't come. But here is where I differ. You need to get one of them every once in while. This IMO is what has hurt our in state recruiting more than anything. Every 3 years, you should get the best player in your state to stay.

We have had probably 7-8 of these types of guys in the last 5-7 years and got ZERO of them. This has to change IMO.

On that note, I don't think it WILL change until this coach proves he can coach kids and win. And he will have to do it with lesser talent IMO. Just the way it is.
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This has been said before but this isn't just a MN problem. The % of top kids playing for their home school is very very low. Even 1 in 3 years. Even guys with ties to the U like Hurt and likely Holmgren go elsewhere.

If we can just keep the majority of the 4* guys that are around 100th in the class home we could have success if Johnson knows what he's doing coaching and developing players.
 

tmvander said:
If we can just keep the majority of the 4* guys that are around 100th in the class home we could have success if Johnson knows what he's doing coaching and developing players.
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I like this, on paper. I'm sure Coyle (and Gable) were sold on something like this, as well.

Is there a good example of a P5 public school that has been able to do this, reasonably consistently? Even if just in recent history. Rutgers? Wild guess. But any P5 public.
 

MplsGopher said:
I like this, on paper. I'm sure Coyle (and Gable) were sold on something like this, as well.

Is there a good example of a P5 public school that has been able to do this, reasonably consistently? Even if just in recent history. Rutgers? Wild guess. But any P5 public.
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Keep local kids home? I'm sure you could find places, but you also have to remember that places like Rutgers have NY City which has like 4 times the population of the twin cities and almost 3 mil more people than MN altogether. States like Texas, California, Florida, Ohio, etc. have multiple population centers to recruit from so they likely will have a higher number of local guys.

Smaller states like us with only one real population center are going to have less chances to recruit D1 caliber talent.

The Twin Cities has been a hot spot for talent the last 10 years or so, but after those initial top 5 players the talent level drops. It would be super nice to get a few of those top 5 every year, but statistics don't add up on the odds of that happening, and I'm not sure how we're supposed to be the exception to that rule.
 

tmvander said:
Keep local kids home?

...

The Twin Cities has been a hot spot for talent the last 10 years or so, but after those initial top 5 players the talent level drops. It would be super nice to get a few of those top 5 every year, but statistics don't add up on the odds of that happening, and I'm not sure how we're supposed to be the exception to that rule.
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No, I'm talking about what you said: try to keep home the 100th ranked, 4* kids.

And asking: is there a P5 public that has consistently made this work?
 

tmvander said:
Keep local kids home? I'm sure you could find places, but you also have to remember that places like Rutgers have NY City which has like 4 times the population of the twin cities and almost 3 mil more people than MN altogether. States like Texas, California, Florida, Ohio, etc. have multiple population centers to recruit from so they likely will have a higher number of local guys.

Smaller states like us with only one real population center are going to have less chances to recruit D1 caliber talent.

The Twin Cities has been a hot spot for talent the last 10 years or so, but after those initial top 5 players the talent level drops. It would be super nice to get a few of those top 5 every year, but statistics don't add up on the odds of that happening, and I'm not sure how we're supposed to be the exception to that rule.
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Because we have one of us coaching now.
 

Holy Man said:
Because we have one of us coaching now.
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That's what scares me. If he can't get those guys to stay home essentially nobody can. 2022 will be a very telling task...otherwise like Mplsgopher said, we can get the guys who went to smaller schools to transfer back. We'll see how that works out this year.
 

tmvander said:
That's what scares me. If he can't get those guys to stay home essentially nobody can. 2022 will be a very telling task...otherwise like Mplsgopher said, we can get the guys who went to smaller schools to transfer back. We'll see how that works out this year.
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He is over 20 years their senior. Im not convinced that he can make it happen consistently. These kids have other influencers that hold a lot more sway.
 


And therein lies the other of Minnesota's two-headed monster in recruiting: we're isolated from other population centers.

Ohio is just across the border from Kentucky. Lex is 1.5hrs to Cincy, and around 3hrs to Indy and Columbus.
 
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