G Dwight Thorne Commits to Colorado

[Stallion]

SMU signed 5 players last year and Willingham is the only one who could be considered a consensus Top 150.

[Hoop Fan]

granted I forgot about Epps the JC transfer, but I never said each member of class was consensus top 150 nationally. I said some people consider Fall top 150, and they do. More to the point though, Dwight Thorne is not Top 150 either and he is the subject of the debate.

[jtstang]

jt, get off of the Stallion bandwagon as ALL he knows is what he reads on Rivals. He doesn't know anything about recruiting other than what anybody could read if they want to subscribe to Rivals for $9.95 per month.

Well if that means Rivals says we offered, it still sounds like we were recruiting him. What's your point?

[jtstang]

jt, I dont see the big difference in what he said.

Really? You don't see the difference between "we are not" and "we are"? Seems pretty clear to me.

Look I understand the logic of "we're after these other guys" but it's clear to me that if we offered this kid, which is what the original post says, we were also after him.

[Stallion]

hey I readily admit I'm not a talent evaluator-but I can read. And anyone that can read recruiting publications could have readily predicted SMU would not have gone to a bowl in the last 15 years-the correlation between SMU's poor ranking by these recruiting magazines and SMU's poor performance in the standings must really get under the skin of some of you that claim Rivals et al doesn't know what they are doing. For the record Rivals reports SMU has made 11 BB offers -not 4 and that Thorne was one of them. Don't have personal knowledge just reporting what I read. On the other hand I do know that guys like Stampede who are in the laps of SMU coaches are reporting what the SMU coaches want them to say and not information from an unbiased source. So there are credibility issues on both sides---BUT guess which ones has been repeatedly right and which ones have been repeatedly wrong over the years.

[Hoop Fan]

jt, I dont see the big difference in what he said.

Really? You don't see the difference between "we are not" and "we are"? Seems pretty clear to me.

Look I understand the logic of "we're after these other guys" but it's clear to me that if we offered this kid, which is what the original post says, we were also after him.

This aint my fight, but there is plenty of grey area in recruiting references. Maybe we offered him early on and then backed off if we thought we had a better chance at another player or a better player. Basketball scholarships are sparse. On the other hand, maybe we wanted Thorne badly all along and he just didnt want to come here. Either way, the recruitment of Dwight Thorne from Arlington Martin is not some sort of make or break for this program. In fact, Arlington is TCU's backyard, not ours. I'm more concerned about DISD kids from the power programs. But I will grant you that it seems clear we offered Thorne at some point.

[Stallion]

I'll buy that-and if you look at my original post I said something to the effect that this is a guy that I thought might fall to us-ie. not our top choice and not his top choice but one that probably made sense. SMU is really having trouble getting the Texas Top 20 types these days and this kid did get some nice offers.

[Hoop Fan]

Yep, I said from Day 1 that Tubbs gave us as good a chance as any to recruit with what we have: no recent success, a tired and cramped facility, and a mid major conference. Its his job to build the program and create some momentum, but its somebody else's to get the damn facility updated to minimum standards.

[jtstang]

This aint my fight, but there is plenty of grey area in recruiting references.

It really shouldn't be my fight either, but I just get tired of the folks that come on here after somebody we've been recruiting decides to go elsewhere and pronounces that all is well because we did not really want that guy. As if to say, if we really wanted that guy he would have come to SMU. I mean if we always get everybody we are after why do we still suck so bad? You folks know who you are: I'm not stupid (which is a point of contention, I know), so don't talk to me like I am.

Nobody should take any of this as an implication that I'm down on Tubbs, because I'm not. Hoop Fan is right--he gives us the best shot at good local kids that anybody could. But when he misses on one, don't pretend like he wasn't trying to get him.

[Pony Fan]

There is no question that, according to Rivals, we have not done well in recruiting in either basketball or football, and I for one am not arguing with that at all. The point I am making is that Rivals is not always correct on whether somebody was offered or not, or whether somebody was being recruited or not. For the most part, they know what the kids tell them and to some degree, what their coach tells them. Some kids will say they have been offered when they really haven't been, or a coach says something that may sound like an offer but really isn't. They may say they are being recruited by a school when all they got was a letter or a series of letters.