All Things Tre Holloman Recruitment Thread (Class of 2022)

[oak_street1981]

The AD tried to sell the hire of Johnson on his ability to keep the highest rated and most sought after recruits at home. Until Ben Johnson actually proves he can land the most highly regarded in-state recruits there will be criticism and rightfully so.

I am not sure what the AD hoped to sell after "his hire", but I think we all can admit now that Mark Coil did not have Ben Johnson on his super secret list of top prospects to go after if he was able to part ways with little Ricky.

Ben may prove us all wrong and be great in year 4 or 5,, but this was 100 percent a scripted from above diversity hire. There is no way in hell Coyle would have picked someone with this resume for his second most important hire on the big stage.

We always hear about he so called black book of names any AD (other than worthless clown Maturi) carries around for next hires, and no way Ben Johnson was in that book.

On a semi-related matter, I have heard from very connected sources close to a former high scoring player, that the CDH Girls BB coach Crystal Flint is incompetent, classless and very unprofessional, former Gopher or not.

 

[Gophs24]

Imagine this place without the Carrington verbal.

It shut you up….for a short time anyway….

If it don’t fit your narrative lay low for awhile until something that does shows up

 

[Gophs24]

Anyway….this was a huge miss. It would have sent this rebuild into another gear.

but I guess the silver lining is that he decided in early august and the staff can now focus on other recruits

either way a big punch to the gut after hearing the news

 

[Gopherfan84]

Anyway….this was a huge miss. It would have sent this rebuild into another gear.

but I guess the silver lining is that he decided in early august and the staff can now focus on other recruits

either way a big punch to the gut after hearing the news

Yeah definitely a miss, but the ship hasn’t sailed. We won’t get a higher ranked 2022 point guard, but we still have some nice options plus the transfer portal. Not time to give up hope yet

 

[oak_street1981]

Anyway….this was a huge miss. It would have sent this rebuild into another gear.

but I guess the silver lining is that he decided in early august and the staff can now focus on other recruits

either way a big punch to the gut after hearing the news

I question whether Izzo is going to be there much longer, he is starting to look a little stressed, and unhealthy, but who knows.

 

[UpAndUnder43]

The AD tried to sell the hire of Johnson on his ability to keep the highest rated and most sought after recruits at home. Until Ben Johnson actually proves he can land the most highly regarded in-state recruits there will be criticism and rightfully so.

I agree. I said that. I just don’t personally care where kids are born. It’s a terrible look that he was hired to keep kids home. Seems like that superseded winning

 

[howeda7]

This is not surprising. But we're now like 1/5 when we hope to go 4/8.

 

[BarnBurner]

I’m sure he was selling himself and Xavier, but was Tre even remotely interested in Xavier as a destination? Besides, the discussions of “Come to Xavier where I’m an assistant coach where we follow the head coach’s philosophy” vs “Come to MN where I’m the HC following my philosophy” are different things. Or do you not believe that? Be honest.

His goal of becoming a hc and selling himself to kids fits well. Whether you want it to or not. I’m old enough to remember gh telling all of us it takes years to develop relationships. Especially a hometown kid.

Asst coach at X? Yup, relationships required.

 

[BarnBurner]

Yeah definitely a miss, but the ship hasn’t sailed. We won’t get a higher ranked 2022 point guard, but we still have some nice options plus the transfer portal. Not time to give up hope yet

Just a miss; not a huge miss. Rationalization at its finest.

 

[BarnBurner]

You’re a grown-ass man, act like it.
You post like a petulant 15 year-old.

Yes, my patience for talk and buzzwords is thin. Win. Win now. Johnson was hired to keep minnesota s best at home, directly from his boss. Thus far, a solid D minus.

 

[Spaulding!No!]

It shut you up….for a short time anyway….

If it don’t fit your narrative lay low for awhile until something that does shows up

Sounds like you are taking out your Ben rage on me. Easy does it.

 

[Marooned]

His goal of becoming a hc and selling himself to kids fits well. Whether you want it to or not. I’m old enough to remember gh telling all of us it takes years to develop relationships. Especially a hometown kid.

Asst coach at X? Yup, relationships required.

I already addressed this in an earlier post. Keep up.

 

[TheBarnyard]

BarnBurner and Spaulding have to be part of some secret anti-Gopher movement. They both just derail every thread with negativity and ridiculous troll comments. Their dedication is pretty impressive. It’s one thing to state your point and opinion but another to drag everyone else down with you. Just toxic. Needless to say, I have gone with the ignore button for each. Hopefully my experience improves or I may just delete this account and stick with GI.

 

[alchemy2u]

Guys, this tugboat has sailed. Time to move on.

All of the anti-Ben posters will just use this tread to circle jerk bash the team

All of the fans can move to other threads and discuss the players that want to represent Minnesota!

 

[MplsGopher]

Penny Hardaway signs the best kids. How’s it been going at Memphis? How good was Duke last year? Do you need to get talented players? Of course, but being old and developing those kids win more in ncaa basketball. Baylor is a great example. Drew used to signed McDonalds all Americans and didn’t win a ton. Switched to getting 3-4 year kids and preached defending hard and they won the championship. Go look at Virginia, Wisconsin, Purdue, and other programs that we can realistically emulate.

We can't realistically emulate the physical distance to the number of recruits that Baylor, Virginia, and Purdue can.

But as I've said forever, and will always: there's no reason that we can't do whatever Wisconsin can do.

 

[MplsGopher]

I’m not excuse making here, Ben prioritized Tre since he’s been hired and missed. Missed on Heide too.

I'm willing to grant Ben a couple years -- in the sense of "you need to establish relationships with these kids early, and maintain them". Supposedly that was the reason for missing on the out-state kid who went to Iowa State.

 

[MplsGopher]

I’m not really sure why people expected Johnson to land Holloman.

Why would he come here? Lesser program with a new coach. I think they put in a lot of effort knowing it was unlikely. Gotta aim high.

Hopefully Payne and some others hop on board. Start with a nice class and build with it. It will take time to win here but Johnson’s approach is different which may be good—it’s been a while since there was a consistent winner

Agree with this

 

[MplsGopher]

I don’t care where kids come from but when a coach is brought in to recruit locally and is lauded for that ability and misses top kids...it’s a bad look. Either for the coach or the AD or both

AD, all day.

But so long as football does well, he won't be fired if Ben turns out to be a big miss.


I think Coyle thinks of himself as being able to find diamonds in the rough with coaches, and he convinced himself that he found someone like a Fleck. Didn't care if he hadn't been a head coach elsewhere, he was willing to take that chance.

Also think there was another factor in play there too ... but no need to rehash that, everyone knows.

 

[MplsGopher]

And we haven't won enough

This is the simple bottom line

 

[MplsGopher]

Mark Coyle hired a guy with no resume specifically because of his alleged ability to land Minnesota kids.

This always has smelled funny to me.

Why would an AD care if the players come from MN, if the team wins? Did he say any such thing when he hired Fleck?


I say this was just a flimsy excuse they invented to deflect from the fact that they were going to take a chance on a guy who had never been a head coach before, because: 1) Coyle thinks he "saw something" that perhaps no one else has seen in Ben, and 2) the other reason (not going to rehash).

 

[MplsGopher]

We're already to the point though where we need to hope that Ben Johnson is an above average B1G bench coach immediately or it's hard to see how this ever gets off the ground with below average B1G recruiting.

Short of a "Hoosiers" style miracle ... I can't imagine that the 2021-22 season is going to inspire any 2023 kids to commit to the Gophers, simply based on play? I could easily be wrong, hope so.

I think Ben is going to have to go for the long play, and hope it works out over the next 2-3 years: establish those relationships with 2023 and 2024 kids, and hope they pay off with some nice recruiting wins, and then parlay those wins into wins on the court.

Seems Captain Obvious to say, but that's what it is.

 

[Gopherfan84]

We can't realistically emulate the physical distance to the number of recruits that Baylor, Virginia, and Purdue can.

But as I've said forever, and will always: there's no reason that we can't do whatever Wisconsin can do.

Madison is closer to talent than us by a long shot. They have a pipeline with Illinois and Michigan while we have the Dakotas. Purdue is also has significant regional competition that we don’t have. Go look at Purdue’s recruiting rankings sometime. We can match that just like Wisconsin. It requires early identification and fits to a system.

 

[skiumah1]

First of all, let me start by saying we all wanted Tre to play for the U. From all accounts that you hear, Tre is a well respected young man and a great kid. I haven’t followed any of his play, but earlier today I watched the video of him in the game that Ola-Joseph made the monster dunk. It sure looked like he has an attitude that Izo will need to work on. He complained to a referee on a call, looked very cocky. Not trying to come off as attacking him, but it just jumped out at me. This was way before he announced where he was going.

Yeah I thought that same attitude was there in the state tournament championship when they were getting beat up pretty good by Wayzata. I guess we'll see

 

[MplsGopher]

Madison is closer to talent than us by a long shot.

4hrs driving time. That's not enough to matter in a statistically significant way.

No Chicago (or Detroit for that matter) kid with matching offers is going to turn down the Gophers for Wisc simply because it was another 4hr drive, as the sole reason.

Another 10hr drive - then yes, it will start to factor in.

Purdue is also has significant regional competition that we don’t have.

I'm simply saying, the number of 3* and higher recruits they have access to within a __ (6,7, whatever) hour drive is probably like 10x what we have in that same distance.

We have TC - which has it's tough bias against us, simply from staying home - and we have Milwaukee/Chicago, maybe STL if you stretch out to 8hrs.

 

[BarnBurner]

This is a huge miss, there's no sugarcoating it. Remember when some people used the excuse on Camden that his parents were Purdue alums? Well Tre's mom is a Gopher and actually lives in Minnesota...still a miss. People preaching patience are going against what the plan was here. Mark Coyle hired a guy with no resume specifically because of his alleged ability to land Minnesota kids. Tre specifically is ranked around #70 and I was worried that peoples expectations of him were too high. He's a small guard and I have concerns about his outside shot. He's not Amir Coffey, much less Daniel Oturu (and certainly not Humphries or Royce or Rickert), but he would have been a very symbolic get for Johnson in addition to being a good player.

The excuse of doing things slow just doesn't work. This will be Gopher fan's FIFTH straight losing conference season. At what point is enough...ENOUGH? I can already read the excuses next year if Chatham goes elswehere: "Well how can you expect Ben to recruit him over established program X when he's coming off a 8-15 season?" And on and on the excuses will go. That's how we had Monson for 8 years and then Pitino for another 8. As long as you can come up with a reason to rationalize failure (and there will always be something at almost any program), you can continue in the same direction.

Fans need to stop expecting kids to stay home "because it's Minnesota". The first thing is always going to be trust in the coaching staff to help that kid reach his goals, regardless of where the kid is from. It's telling that much like Pitino, we don't appear to be in on any top 100 kids from out of state either. If there was a kid from Michigan rated around 70 to replace the "Tre" spot, I wouldn't care. We simply are not in the game for anyone at that level.

Things could work out. If you want to have hope, there are certainly places to look (I personally like a lot of what I've seen from some of the guys they have offered out of state). We're already to the point though where we need to hope that Ben Johnson is an above average B1G bench coach immediately or it's hard to see how this ever gets off the ground with below average B1G recruiting.

Not a huge miss. All is well.
You negative poster, you.

 

[BarnBurner]

BarnBurner and Spaulding have to be part of some secret anti-Gopher movement. They both just derail every thread with negativity and ridiculous troll comments. Their dedication is pretty impressive. It’s one thing to state your point and opinion but another to drag everyone else down with you. Just toxic. Needless to say, I have gone with the ignore button for each. Hopefully my experience improves or I may just delete this account and stick with GI.

No! Anything but deleting your account!!!!

 

[Spaulding!No!]

Ummm there is a certain type of player that is recruited by WI. The U is known within the Big Ten as a diverse school. It is time to do what MSU does and use our diversity as a strength. For a recent example of how this plays out on the court see Baylor vs Gonzaga.

 

[Gopherfan84]

4hrs driving time. That's not enough to matter in a statistically significant way.

No Chicago (or Detroit for that matter) kid with matching offers is going to turn down the Gophers for Wisc simply because it was another 4hr drive, as the sole reason.

Another 10hr drive - then yes, it will start to factor in.


I'm simply saying, the number of 3* and higher recruits they have access to within a __ (6,7, whatever) hour drive is probably like 10x what we have in that same distance.

We have TC - which has it's tough bias against us, simply from staying home - and we have Milwaukee/Chicago, maybe STL if you stretch out to 8hrs.

I actually think you’re overvaluing distance in general, but for arguments sake, sure Purdue has 10x more access to recruits but they also have that much more in direct completion from 3 high major conferences and one of the best mid majors in the country. I don’t think Purdue’s proximity to recruits is what makes them great. It’s Painters ability to recruit and implement a system. He’d win big here too.

 

[MplsGopher]

I actually think you’re overvaluing distance in general, but for arguments sake, sure Purdue has 10x more access to recruits but they also have that much more in direct completion from 3 high major conferences and one of the best mid majors in the country. I don’t think Purdue’s proximity to recruits is what makes them great. It’s Painters ability to recruit and implement a system.

Agree with all this. I was purely isolating proximity, just for the sake of discussion.

In the real world - of course - you can't just isolate one dimension of a complex system. All the factors are almost always mixed together.

He’d win big here too.

We'd all like to think such things.

I don't ever believe in foregone conclusions of this style, sadly. The settings of the two campuses are just nowhere near equivalent.


If the main campus of the U had been established down in Rochester, next to and always in great research partnership with Mayo ....... what could have been. We'll never know.

 

[Spaulding!No!]

For the hockey minded- The u or MSU will be the first all black hockey big ten team.