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Interesting comments from the Memphis paper in regards to John Calipari's inability to recruit Memphis. Didn't seem to matter there. What about Coach Doh and Dallas?

Mike DeCourcy of The Sporting News, a former UofM beat writer for The Commercial Appeal, said Calipari did an "extraordinary job, no surprise because he did it at UMass."

DeCourcy said his only disappointment was Calipari's failure to recruit Memphis-area players, not connecting with Memphis high school and AAU coaches.

"I remember writing a column very early in John's tenure when Earnest Shelton of White Station went to Alabama, so John just went and signed a kid named Anthony Rice from Atlanta," DeCourcy said.

"When John took him, it was like a sign (to the Memphis high school and AAU coaches), 'You're not going to push me around. I'm going to get this done with or without you. I'd love to have you on-board, but if you're not going to come, I'm going to go ahead and move forward.' They said, 'Go ahead and do it, I bet you you can't.' And he went ahead and did it anyway."

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2009/apr/01/tiger-blue-to-bluegrass/

Memphis does have 2 players on their roster from Memphis. Allen was a good player on their team last year & he was from Memphis.

SMU has 0 recruits from Dallas. Also, if you look @ who Doh is recruiting right now with the available rides its obvious he isn't spending his time around here.

This is a long standing argument around here but I still believe we need local players for many obvious reasons. It would be interesting to see if someone like Billy Clyde could penetrate the local force field surrounding our campus & start landing some of the kids from Duncanville, Cedar Hill, Lancaster, Kimball, Carter, etc ..

Doh's poor W-L record is very disappointing to me. The poor execution on the court is also very surprising to me. But the most disappointing thing to me is the poor recruiting that we have seen from someone that had a reputation of being one of the best recruiters in the country.

when you can bring in 3 of the top 10 players in your sport, it doesnt matter if you cant win your state recruits...

how bout when you bring 3 of the top 3 in your sport....at least according to Rivals.......

http://rivalshoops.rivals.com/viewrank. ... a_key=1642

LA_Mustang wrote:how bout when you bring 3 of the top 3 in your sport....at least according to Rivals....... :)

http://rivalshoops.rivals.com/viewrank. ... a_key=1642

now thats impressive. ive been going off the ESPNU150 list

Look Dallas has some good players but there are deeper ponds to fish in around DC, Chicago and LA. Doh isn't going to land a Top 10 player from Dallas and after the top 10 its a big drop off: Big XII, SEC and ACC sweep in and take care of them. So why not go looking in markets where the Top 50 players are bunched together and try and land a few here and a few there and then when the program starts winning, you have a better chance of landing those Top 10 players. Otherwise, the kids want to go to the ACC, SEC or the Big XII where they're on TV every week. Doh is recruiting where he has his best contacts and hoping to put together a winning team and program. Calipiri lost his first three seasons at Memphis and got successful by recruiting where he had the best contacts. Digger Phelps recruited DC, and NY heavily for ND. Why do we insist on swimming up stream and focus our recruiting solely on a City that has rarely sent us its basketball stars when there is a lot more low hanging fruit in other places?

EastStang wrote:Look Dallas has some good players but there are deeper ponds to fish in around DC, Chicago and LA. Doh isn't going to land a Top 10 player from Dallas and after the top 10 its a big drop off: Big XII, SEC and ACC sweep in and take care of them.

I don't know I wouldn't mind having the kid from Plano who went to Centenary and torched us last year. Didnt Alabama St have someone from Dallas too?

there is way to much talent in the DFW area for all of them to go to the big 6 conference schools...

it is still unacceptable for SMU to not even go after the other ones even if they dont have the best grades/attitudes/etc

J.T.supporta wrote:there is way to much talent in the DFW area for all of them to go to the big 6 conference schools...

it is still unacceptable for SMU to not even go after the other ones even if they dont have the best grades/attitudes/etc

have to disagree with you on that one

MustangIcon wrote:

J.T.supporta wrote:there is way to much talent in the DFW area for all of them to go to the big 6 conference schools...

it is still unacceptable for SMU to not even go after the other ones even if they dont have the best grades/attitudes/etc

have to disagree with you on that one

then you sir do not want to have a winning basketball program at this school

I honestly don't know what the big deal is. If Doh can get it done, great. I think the jury is starting to get the votes it needs, though...going from 14 to 10 to 9 w's. So, when the time comes, why do we still give a sh$t what kind of guy we bring in here? We're kidding ourselves with this moral high ground b.s. Hell go spend a day in Austin around your elected leaders and see how much slime you have to wash off when you leave. When it comes to big business like college bball, politics or whatever, enough with the oooooh we better watch ourselves crap.

J.T.supporta wrote:

MustangIcon wrote:

J.T.supporta wrote:there is way to much talent in the DFW area for all of them to go to the big 6 conference schools...

it is still unacceptable for SMU to not even go after the other ones even if they dont have the best grades/attitudes/etc

have to disagree with you on that one

then you sir do not want to have a winning basketball program at this school

you can have a winning basketball program without catering to student athletes with bad attitudes.

MustangIcon wrote:

J.T.supporta wrote:

MustangIcon wrote:

J.T.supporta wrote:there is way to much talent in the DFW area for all of them to go to the big 6 conference schools...

it is still unacceptable for SMU to not even go after the other ones even if they dont have the best grades/attitudes/etc

have to disagree with you on that one

then you sir do not want to have a winning basketball program at this school

you can have a winning basketball program without catering to student athletes with bad attitudes.

SMU's best rendition of a "winning basketball program" came with some pretty crappy attitudes. Unless you go wayyyyy back, I suppose.

Is that the team we paid with Koncak and Wright, or is that the teams with Jerrald Sasser, and Ross that had players with bad attitudes? Personally, I think most coaches want good citizens, but will take a guy who has a checkered past if he looks like he's put that behind him. You don't want a locker room cancer. Again, I want great players who hate losing. They don't need to be the best players that ever put on NIKE's, but they need to be hard, ruthless and willing to put it all on the Court and they can come from any Burg in the world as far as I'm concerned. I'm just not hung up on Dallas as the only place to get ball players.

EastStang wrote:Is that the team we paid with Koncak and Wright, or is that the teams with Jerrald Sasser, and Ross that had players with bad attitudes? Personally, I think most coaches want good citizens, but will take a guy who has a checkered past if he looks like he's put that behind him. You don't want a locker room cancer. Again, I want great players who hate losing. They don't need to be the best players that ever put on NIKE's, but they need to be hard, ruthless and willing to put it all on the Court and they can come from any Burg in the world as far as I'm concerned. I'm just not hung up on Dallas as the only place to get ball players.

I was thinking of the former.