Not named John Calipari since 1985. It could be an assistant or head coach at Pitt. Who is your Top 5?
Name the Top Recruiters We Ever Had
- Thread starter TheSpecialSauce
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Slice (although overrated), BK, Lombardi (great evaluator), I’d say Rice bringing in Tray and Brad in a short period of time was a good haul, not really old enough to remember the Evans or Willard days but I guess I’ll say Ralph?
The general thought I always heard is that Evans didn't really like to recruit. Willard must have been able to do something really well on the recruiting trail bringing in Top 50 players in Cummings, Blount and Mike Gill. Add in Hawkins, Kelly Taylor and Ricky Greer who were top 75, although I think Troy Weaver had a hand in some of that. Chris Seabrooks, Jarrett Lockhart and Attila Cosby were also top 150, and even Andre Howard was ranked #57 by one service. That's quite a number of quality players for a relatively short period of time. Willard couldn't get it to work, but he surely brought in some players. Willard also recruited Brandin and Jaron Brown.
Slice brought Taft and Fields and that was about it. You might also give Slice credit for Benjamin and Ramon, but I was told that wasn't really Slice at all but mostly Dixon. Lombardi brought Sam Young and he and Dixon got Tyrell Biggs and Gil Brown. I think Dixon (with Herrion) worked mostly on Nasir, and Lamar Patterson, Blair, Taylor, Durand Johnson, Malcolm Gilbert, Talib Zanna and Gary McGhee. Dixon got Adams, Cam Wright and James Robinson. Herrion got Jermaine Dixon, but I can't remember who got Mike Cook.
I honestly can't recall anyone that Orlando Antigua got to come here.
Rice was very responsible for Brad, but he was gone by the time Tray came on board. Knight and Dixon worked on him and Gibbs and Mike Young.
Bill Barton got Jamel Artis.
I'm forgetting some, but these are most of the big ones.
Also, I wasn't as familiar with who did what under Howland, but Page, Troutman, Krauser and Gray were all top 150 recruits he got and Dixon was generally his top recruiter. Dixon got Ontario Lett.
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I’ll throw out a few names that were not mentioned yet - Tom Crean, Bobby Jones, and John Sarandrea
I think Ralph has to be up there. Brought in two stellar classes in a short time here (I realize almost everyone flamed out, but the Blount-Cummings class, and the Greer-Cosby classes were really good).
I think Capel probably should be up there too. In 3 classes, he’s done pretty well. Year 1 just salvaging anything with X-Toney-Trey, year 2 doesn’t look so great but Drumgoole was a good recruiting win, Year 3 getting Jeffress, Hughley were good recruiting wins too.
Herrion was a pretty good recruiter too if I recall.
Primus must have been top 150 as well, right?
Ralph really only had 4 classes here, and one was all world, and another two were pretty good. You can’t ask for much more than that from a recruiting standpoint, but just almost everything went wrong.
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Yeah -- forgot about Primus who was actually at least top 75 and in some cases higher.
I can only remember Sarandrea for the guys from his high school, Brian Reese and Adrian Autry, both of whom he did NOT get.
Fair enough ... I'll assume the NYC connection was his and like I said, I understand Evans didn't like recruiting all that much.
He recruited well at new castle though
Yeah I have to go with Williard and his staff. Aside from the Cal days here, he killed it even though most of the players busted out or just busted. But alot of talent went through Pitt in those mediocre mid 90's.
Not mediocre. Much, much less than that.
Willard had 5 seasons and only made the NIT in season three. Including the last season of Evans and the first two of Howland, we went eight years without an NCAA tournament. (and just two NIT's). Additionally, we went 10 full years without winning a single NCAA tournament game. Like I said, that's not even close to mediocre.
As a comparison, in the last five seasons of Dixon, we made 3 NCAA's tournaments and one NIT, won one NCAA tournament game, and many thought that wasn't very good, or mediocre at best.
Currently, we have not made an NCAA tournament in five years, and have not won an NCAA tournament game in seven years. So these are some trends to end pretty soon.
Which is amazing considering the talent that Williard recruited. But also, what was the hit/miss rate on Williards recruits actually playing here. What a mess that was.
Willard was pretty good on getting recruits to play here ... it was getting them to STAY here that was sometimes the issue.
Willards Top 150 recruits ...
Cummings ... stayed 4 years
Lockhart ... stayed 4 years
Greer ... stayed 4 years
Hawkins ... stayed 4 years
Knight ... stayed 4 years
Taylor ... stayed 4 years (but it was sporadic)
Cosby ... 2 years
Howard ... 2 years
Blount ... 2 years
Seabrooks ... less than 2 years
Gill ... 1 year
Primus ... less than 1 years
what a weird 5 years.
Year 1 - The Jaime/Antigua group. Overachieved without McCullough. Won a BET game I think. Ralph brings in the mega class..
Year 2 - Injuries. The young guys never really meshed with McCullough and the vets. Disappointing.
Year 3 - We lose some really bad games early, get it turned around in Hawaii, and become a pretty good team by year end. But then Blount, Howard leave.
Year 4 - Pretty good group of new recruits but just a bad year. Only thing memorable from this year was Vonteego really becoming a star.
Year 5 - We beat two ranked teams in Puerto Rico, get ranked, have #1 on the ropes at home, and then lose and the bottom falls out of the program.
And you look at your list of players, even without the top 150 kids all not staying, there was more than enough talent to win here, and I don’t think Ralph was a bad coach...it was just such a bad run.
Didn't Evans bring in Brian Shorter, Sean Miller, Bobby Martin, Darelle ?, and Jason ? Also, didn't he have another great class that just fell apart?
I don’t really remember it, but wasn’t there an entire class that didn’t qualify or something...
The general thought is that Calipari brought that class together for the most part (Shorter, Miller, Matthews, Martin and Porter).
Evans also had a class with Jamal Faulkner, Eric Mobley (both top 50) and Chris McNeal (top 100) plus Danny Griffin and Dominic Dumancic) and who all did not qualify because of Prop 48. What I was told was that Pitt was able to get all of them because other backed off because they knew they would not qualify.
McNeal was actually a really good student at Oak Hill and had solid grades, but couldn't make the test score. He was admitted to Pitt but had to sit out. Mobley went to Allegany CC for a year before coming to Pitt. Faulkner never had much of a chance coming to Pitt, nor did Griffin. Dumancic being from Europe, got a really bad score on his verbal part of his test, even though he had the grades. But he wasn't that good off a player, actually. More of a curiosity as a 6-10 shooter. But he wasn't THAT great of a shooter, and wasn't much of any kind of basketball player.
Those years were mostly a fog for me. It was then I moved to South Carolina, and the internet was just starting to be a thing, so I didn't follow much.
It is just amazing to me....
from our entry into the Big East (82-83) through the 99-2000 season, Pitt won as many Big East tourney games as they did 2000-01 and 2001-02 seasons.
Also, in the 90's, Pitt spent as many weeks ranked as they did those same two seasons.
Sarandrea got Omoh Moses and Gandhi Jordan and his quote, " if Moses and Ghandi cannot bring us to the promised land then nothing can", was the quote of the week in Sports Illustrated. Both ended up transferring so never brought us to the promised land!
The Willard thing always amazes me as someone who only had a cursory knowledge of Pitt basketball at the time. He was a legitimately good basketball coach at WKU and Holy Cross who won over 63% of his games and recruited very well here and went...31-59 in Big East play over 5 years. It almost defies logic.
Some coaches are great recruiters and players love them but the coaches don't know how or don't have it in them to then provide discipline to those players when it's needed. Willard fits into to that category and going way back to Tim Grgurich and on the football side, Foge was a perfect example of that.
Does that mean Williard had superior talent at holy cross snd wku to compensate and not so at Pitt ?
I think that’s the enigma part
Success before and after - albeit at lower level
The higher level a player is the more difficult it is to discipline them due to all the outside factors and baggage that higher level players bring.
I would hold off on the judgment until we have a winning year.
I think its pretty remarkable that both Evans and Williard left and said (in the NY Times directly and in SI more indirectly, respectively) that they had a hard time relating to young, black athletes. Basically two guys in a row who had that problem and then even said it out loud.
To be fair I think players are also from somewhat different class backgrounds *on average* today. Back them you could have a team with 10 scholarship players who entirely grow up poor during the crack epidemic et al. Sorry for the diversion but I think it helps explain Willard especially. Holy Cross didn't even have athletic scholarships when he got there.
To be fair I think players are also from somewhat different class backgrounds *on average* today. Back them you could have a team with 10 scholarship players who entirely grow up poor during the crack epidemic et al. Sorry for the diversion but I think it helps explain Willard especially. Holy Cross didn't even have athletic scholarships when he got there.
Well, that’s kind of a silly argument. If Capel recruits a bunch of no-stars and they win, is he a better recruiter than if he brings in 5 McDAAs and they are all busts?
If all we are asking is which coaches won the most, that easy. I thought this was a question of pure recruiting ability, which I think you measure by star rankings, teams you beat out players for etc
I'd say it shouldn't exclude coaches who have a history of finding hidden gems, the kid like Toney who Jeff saw as a talent. Ditto Champ. Neither close to 4-stars, both playing that way now.
Eh, poor examples. Toney and Champagnie were both four stars in the 247 composite. Champagnie just dropped a ton after the reclass into the 2019 class, but he was a four star for 2020 - same with Toney moving from 2019 to 2018. Both were in that top 100-130 range.
We show both as 3 Stars. Works for me.
I don't follow that mess. You end up with massive disappointments, like Epps & Dante Taylor.
Toney actually rose in the rankings after his reclass, going from 138 to 117, but he's the exception that proves the rule as the penalty for reclassification is typically anywhere between 25 and 50 spots.
Champagnie in particular suffered a massive drop of over 100 spots in the composite ranking when he reclassfied going from a top 100 player to outside of the top 200.
This is always funny to me because the crutch that the star dispensers rely on is "pro potential" which, while it should be different in between classes, really shouldn't be exactly 35 spots every year.
Champagnie in particular suffered a massive drop of over 100 spots in the composite ranking when he reclassfied going from a top 100 player to outside of the top 200.
This is always funny to me because the crutch that the star dispensers rely on is "pro potential" which, while it should be different in between classes, really shouldn't be exactly 35 spots every year.
