Local Recruiting

[Hoop Fan]

Hoop Fan,

I'm not up on BBall.

Sounds like you definitely are and should send your resume to Orsini and / or Doh.

Don't waste all of your knowledge enlightening us.

Enlighten Doh and the team.

Ok sure. And you can go back to thinking up questions for Compliance Trivia now.

[papawasamustang]

A great topic to debate.

Who has the most pull in the local AAU or DISD ranks? Hire him as an asst & recruiter.

What is Doh doing with the local coaches other than inviting them to watch practice? Reach out to the coaches. Go see them @ their schools.
Have SMU days @ the schools.
Go to each school that SMU has had former players @ & see if they will allow a poster or something recognizing his SMU tenure. Bhop recognition @ Lincoln in SMU uni like we see around Moody. Promote the school & the local players that attended.

Improved scheduling-play the big boys Kansas, UNC on the road.
What the hell is TT playing Stanford @ the AAC right in SMUs backyard?
Why didn't SMU have a game before or after that game?


Improved Radio coverage- need new station


Improved fans- nobody wants to play in front of 1000 fans against Paul Quinn.

Play local schools UNT, Baylor, UTA, UT, Texas Tech, OU, OSU annually.

Have local schools play before SMU games on Saturday.
The game with Duncanville & Oak Hill should have been played before a SMU game.

Get Avery Johnson, Cuban & the Mavs to help. Do some type of combo promotions. Dallas NBA team & Dallas College Team.

Just a few ideas, I have many more.

Very frustrating. I remember the Fresno games too & how much fun they were. I remember Gene Phillips, Ira Terrell & all the great games @ Moody.

[gregkinzer]

How do you "improve fans". Your fan base it dictated by two things....winning and culture...

Winning -- hasn't happened in awhile
Culture -- SMU students are apathetic to the basketball team -- the intermural championship gets just as many people to watch as a varsity game, much less a varsity game vs. SC Upstate.

Back to the DISD pipeline -- someone mentioned the list of recruits we had from the DISD and I admit I forgot some of those names were local products. I would like to see the percentage of top 25 area recruits that comes to SMU, or even has SMU on their unofficial consideration list on a yearly basis. It can't be a good percentage, at least in my estimation.

[gregkinzer]

And the schedule is a joke now. Paul Quinn, SC Upstate - we should be 8-1 right now. But the rub back in my day was that our schedule was too hard to build momentum for the conference games. We had Kansas, Notre Dame, Okla. St., and we stumbled into conference play below .500 each year.

Its a fine line between lining up quality opponents and creating a death march in the fall/winter....

Would be nice to see these games annually.....TCU, one of the UT system schools (TT, A&M, or UT), Tulane, Oral Roberts (they are good now)....regional schools that we could build up some sort of rivalry with (like what we have/had with TCU)

[papawasamustang]

Didn't you love the atmosphere of playing the big time opponents?
3 to 4 x's a year before conference play would be perfect.

Lets face it, when a recruit looks @ the schedule & can see you are going
to play @ UCLA or Arizona, Louisville, UNC, etc, it gets their attention.

When a recruit sees road games to UTSA, home games with USC Upstate, Paul Quinn, etc.

This is major college basketball isn't it?

[Stallion]

actually I think that's the point-under Dement/Tubbs SMU was always under consideration by a high percentage of quality Division 1A prospects from DFW-it has dropped off noticeably with Doherty.

[papawasamustang]

How do you improve the fan situation?

We have one of the finest business schools in America. Put them to work on Marketing/Advertising assignments to help generate fan interest.

The school is doing nothing to reach out & touch not just SMU fans but college basketball fans in the DFW area.
Have local talented kids on your team.
Schedule major college basketball opponents.
If you are having 2 tournaments per year, schedule attractive major college basketball teams. In conjunction, get the Mavs involved as co sponsors like the World Games etc. In conjunction with the tourney, host a 4 team HS & or 4 team JC tourney.
College basketball fans want to see quality opponents.
Bring the major teams to Dallas & the fans will come out.

Its just a damn shame to see TT & Stanford playing @ the ACC Saturday & no SMU. What a slap in the face. SMU should have been playing someone before or after that game.

[EastStang]

With Tubbs we were always, the second choice or the third choice of DISD players. Never the first choice of local recruits. And to put it mildly we probably have been blackballed by local HS coaches for firing him. Doherty is harvesting the fields where he is on equal footing and finding some good players. If the team gets better and starts seeing some post season action, local players will begin to pay attention to SMU. Until then, they'll give their love to the Big XII and the ACC.

[papawasamustang]

Maybe it all starts with the 2010 recruiting class.

The Texas top 10 for the 2009 class only have had 2 considering SMU.
Marshall Henderson from LD Bell. 6'1'' guard. He's also considering about 20 other schools. The other from the Houston area committed to Marquette.

Interesting note about Henderson & Nolan Dennis (#1 rated recruit for 2009 from Texas) They both are considering Stephen F. Austin.
Unfortunately, Dennis is not considering SMU.
What does that tell you about SMU recruiting?

[Hoop Fan]

With Tubbs we were always, the second choice or the third choice of DISD players. Never the first choice of local recruits. And to put it mildly we probably have been blackballed by local HS coaches for firing him. Doherty is harvesting the fields where he is on equal footing and finding some good players. If the team gets better and starts seeing some post season action, local players will begin to pay attention to SMU. Until then, they'll give their love to the Big XII and the ACC.

Please define "always". You mean that one high profile instance with Darrell Arthur? You're surprised we lost to Kansas? Or do you mean "always" during the ONE recruiting class Tubbs signed? By the way Dez was a local player who transferred to SMU from a Big 12 school. Sounds pretty good as a strategy to me no matter what you thought of Dez in the end. North Texas seems to like him pretty well though and they are far superior to us right now. Bamba played on Team Texas for AAU ball (a premier club no matter what you think of Wes) and would have been a local high school player had he not gone to Oak Hill. Or do you mean "always" as in during Tubbs tenure as an assistant, which is flatly wrong.

[mustangxc]

The best way to sell tickets while the team is not winning is to cater to groups. Specifically youth groups. I see it with professional sports, it really doesn't matter if teams are winning championships or losing games, the youth groups still want to come out and experience a healthy and fun family atmosphere. Season ticket sales are more dependent on the product on the field, but if you do build a sustained winning product you can have bad seasons here and there and maintain your fan base. What you can't expect is to have a big walk-up crowd during losing seasons. SMU really should try to lure one of the prominent youth sales representatives from the Rangers, Stars, Mavs, Burn, etc and give him the resources necessary to develop the fan base. Who knows, some of these kids may end up wanting to go to SMU, become fans, some may become great players which we can recruit and some may become lifetime fans that will want to buy season tickets. It really isn't rocket science. Just a lot of hard work and relationship-building.

[papawasamustang]

Speaking of youth groups, have you ever been the PSA (Plano Sports Authority) on a Saturday or Sunday. Kids all ages playing basketball.
Its an incredible sight.

What a resource. I'm telling u there must be 1000 kids there every weekend Hooping It Up !

[gostangs]

All of them playing on courts that are too small. Its a shame they cant get that right as much money as they spent up there.

[Pony_Fan]

A great topic to debate.

Who has the most pull in the local AAU or DISD ranks? Hire him as an asst & recruiter.

What is Doh doing with the local coaches other than inviting them to watch practice? Reach out to the coaches. Go see them @ their schools.
Have SMU days @ the schools.
Go to each school that SMU has had former players @ & see if they will allow a poster or something recognizing his SMU tenure. Bhop recognition @ Lincoln in SMU uni like we see around Moody. Promote the school & the local players that attended.

Improved scheduling-play the big boys Kansas, UNC on the road.
What the hell is TT playing Stanford @ the AAC right in SMUs backyard?
Why didn't SMU have a game before or after that game?


Improved Radio coverage- need new station


Improved fans- nobody wants to play in front of 1000 fans against Paul Quinn.

Play local schools UNT, Baylor, UTA, UT, Texas Tech, OU, OSU annually.

Have local schools play before SMU games on Saturday.
The game with Duncanville & Oak Hill should have been played before a SMU game.

Get Avery Johnson, Cuban & the Mavs to help. Do some type of combo promotions. Dallas NBA team & Dallas College Team.

Just a few ideas, I have many more.

Very frustrating. I remember the Fresno games too & how much fun they were. I remember Gene Phillips, Ira Terrell & all the great games @ Moody.

Agree on all fronts. We've been talking about this stuff for a while on the board. Doh has reached out to Cuban on at least 1 occassion which is why he started the blog. Last year the Mavs Maniacs came to TCU of all places to perform. It's the "Dallas Mavs" - kind of pissed me off.

He's done some great things with alums and such. He is obviously trying from a national perspective. Doh did mention going to south dallas to meet w/ some folks but that was a long time ago. He does have a local live radio presence on Monday nights. The radio station has to be better than what we have though. I am surprised we still have 1310 for football as bad as we have s*cked. I hope that contract isn't up soon. TCU seems to have taken over 103.3.

[goponies1]

Hoop Fan you are 100% wrong. Mike Dement most certainly coached in the Southwest Conference during his first year at SMU. Look it up...it is a fact. Conference instability is a factor in SMU's recruiting/success as we have played essentially in 4 different conferences sinces 1995...tenure of Dement, Tubbs, and Doherty. SWC, 16-team WAC, paired down WAC, and now this very poor version of CUSA.