Just got off the phone with Jakeenan Gant. Told me he committed to Missouri moments ago while on an official visit. Big get for Tigers.Now we are are getting out recruited in state by second year SEC programs that are 900 miles away from home. Yes, they have had more successes than Georgia in recent years, but do they have that much more to offer in facilities, etc?
— Jeff Goodman (@GoodmanESPN) August 18, 2013
Or is their brand of basketball and how it is taught/present to these players that much better?
Missouri's coach is facing NCAA sanctions over the Miami thing. That isn't to say he's going to get a show cause or anything, but it still is just really unbelievable when you think about a kid from Springfield deciding on the spot to go to Columbia.
Frank Haith is a very good recruiter. That is why Missouri nabbed him from Miami. He routinely gets guys from fertile recruiting grounds. However, UGA should never lose an instate recruit without an official visit to Athens unless it is to the reigning national champion or a program like UNC, Duke, or UK. Yet, it happens time and again. That is a failure of the coaching staff to effectively sell a vision of future success to get them to come on campus.
And that is happening too much to just shrug your shoulders and say 'well, we are Georgia' or 'Stegeman sucks' or whatever.
TD
9 comments:
Stegeman does suck. But it is merely a symptom of the underlying diesease. UGA has NEVER put the effort into basketball that it takes to be successful. The longer UGA waits, the harder it will be - the more effort, money, facilities and coaching-awesomeness it will take. The results speak for themselves.
Hank, it's a open debate (to me) if Stegeman really sucks or just isn't the very best, but you hit on the main thing that just sticks in my craw: as an athletic program, we've tolerated ok in basketball for too long. We made a substantial push in the mid-90s to improve. That died with the Harrick scandal.
It seems after the Harrick thing, we've taken a let's just not be the bottom of the conference approach instead of a let's push to be the very best in the country. Paul has been on this train, pointing out Baylor's turnaround after they had one player murder another and had the coach cover it up.
I don't care how you look at it, that is far worse from a program health stand point than bogus tests, cash for a TV, or Tony Cole.
Supporting one sport over another isn't a binary decision. Yes, there are finite resources. However, working to become great at men's hoops doesn't require us to say football doesn't matter. Especially at a place like UGA with the resources we have.
I know you get this. I just don't understand why our fellow Dawgs fans or the powers that be don't.
Hank - Stegeman isn't the problem. Facilities haven't been the issue since 2004 or so, and they certainly aren't now. We've spent $55-60 million on basketball facilities over the past 10 years. That's more than any in the SEC has spent over that 10 year period other than Auburn.
The practice facility is state of the art,and Stegeman is comparable to most of our peers. Auburn and South Carolina are outliers among our peers, but their fans did not and have not supported their program following their facility improvements.
With worse facilities including a barn out back smelling of animal feces, prior coaches have recruited at a higher, more consistent level. With worse administrative support and probation hanging over him Felton recruited better.
The issue is entirely Mark Fox.
Paul and I are just on different sides of the Stegeman issue. It doesn't suck as bad as it used to, but it's not great. I agree it's not the only thing, or even the main thing, but it's a thing. I agree the practice facility is great. The main thing, to me, is just a complete lack of care and feeding of the program for decades. My point is that it's going to take a hurculean effort to turn it around after so much decay.
Or a Herculean effort, perhaps.
Totally agree. Sad part is that the rest of the conference is in such a state that this has been the best time to make that sort of move, as far as moving relative to our conference peers, as we've seen since the Kentucky probation days around 1990.
When we are winning, Stegeman is rockin'.
I love Fox as a coach, but he can't recruit. If we can get someone in here who recruit and coach, things will turn around rather quickly.
We won't hire Bruce Pearl, but I will tell you that he would have Steg rocking and a Top 25 program in 3 years. After that, we would be fighting to be the #2 program in the SEC year in and year out behind UK.
The question is....who can we get that isn't named Bruce Pearl that would do the same? It's going to take charisma and a salesman. Mark Fox has neither attribute.
We're not going to fix this mess by X and Oing out of it.
Definitely going to take a very lucky hire or someone who is at a last chance situation. Is Norman Dale still around?
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