🏀 KuBuckets Archive

So Syracuse Basketball was on a self-imposed ban from March play. They also have suffered other penalties from the NCAA, including a 5-yr probation and loss of 3 scholarships for the next 4 years. Currently, they don't have a sports director.

Yet... Syracuse has the 6th best recruiting class coming in according to Rivals, plenty of bigs, too. Rivals Class of 2015 Team Rankings ↗ Of course... we didn't even make the Top 30 list. I know we have a lot of guys coming back... but still... we also have some serious needs.

I don't get it. Can someone enlighten me why we have only signed one player in this upcoming class? We spend more money than any other D1 program on recruiting, but we can't even compete against the Orangemen after they've been kicked in the testicles?

Is it that hard to recruit players to Kansas?

@drgnslayr Might have made a bigger difference if the post season ban was 2 or 3 years longer. But really, none of that affects the recruits.

@brooksmd

I believe losing 3 scholarships each year for the next 4 years should make an impact. I know we would all be crying the blues if we had to give up 3 scholarship players and trade for walk-ons. Many out there see Syracuse in the NIT this coming year. And what about the "black eye" stigma given their program?

@drgnslayr Couldn't be more simple. Syracuse isn't putting a whole lot of energy recruiting top guys from outside the area. At KU we have to. Sure, there's the occasional Ellis or Simien, but the amount of top talent coming out locally or even regionally is tiny. Plus lately we've been going for the best of the best, competing head to head with guys that usually have Duke, UNC, and, of course, UK on their lists, not to mention the odd UF, UCLA, or Zona. Boeheim has set his sites on more mid-tier guys lately, much the same as Rick Pitino. Whether or not you go for the top 10 vs the top 50 is a debate that's been rehashed a million times on our various forums, but as long as Self is competing head to head with Calipari and Consonants, we're going to be looking like this every year.

@drgnslayr How many kids did he lose this year and how many did he recruit. As the 6th best class he must have gotten a couple of good ones. Agreed, losing 3 scholarships is big, but as long as you got some to give to top tier recruits.... And it's Syracuse and Boeheim. Just a slight blemish, not a black eye.

@konkeyDong I don't know who makes up his recruiting class this year, but doubt you could have the 6th best class in the country with all mid-tier players.

@brooksmd

I had it on a screen and lost it. Just have a second here before an appointment.

I believe they recruited 1 5-star recruit and 3 4-star recruits. One guy is named "Melo"...

@konkeyDong

Your post makes sense... but I'd be thrilled to fill our remaining 3 spots with all 4-star guys including a super big! Oh.. these guys don't still exist because we squandered an entire year of recruiting on hold for top tier players... sorry.

@drgnslayr

The "spending more than any other D1 program" is a red herring. KU will always need to spend more just because of geography. While coaches of programs on the coasts or near big basketball meccas can drive to see recruits, Coach Self an staff invariably have to fly and this is where most of the cost is. In the last few years we have had Reed, Frankamp and Ellis as the only Kansas recruits and every other player came from much farther away. The expense is compounded because top recruits demand continuous pampering and Coach Self and Staff have to fly to the different games/tournaments to keep KU's bid alive or else someone else will get to them; Scott Drew has been accused of bad mouthing other programs and/or coaches, so it is essential to stay in touch and convince them to play in the small market Mid West instead of the big market in both coasts or near a big city...plus when your base is Lawrence, Kansas, the cost is much higher. You have to spend money to make money and the KU basketball programs has been very profitable and is rated the second mots valuable program in college basketball.

@konkeyDong Willie-Cauley-Stein 7' Olathe Ks

@KU-Flyer

The Cauley-Stein subject has been extensively discussed in various threads. He did not want to come to KU and he would not have been a good fit either...nothing else left to say.

@brooksmd I'm meaning not top 10 guys, but mostly the 80 - 15ish range that HEM prefers. So elite, but mid-tier elite. I was also referring to the amount of money expended on recruiting. The fertile recruiting grounds nearest to us are Chicago and central Texas. There just aren't any places in our vicinity where Self can hop in a car and drive 4 hrs to watch 5 or 6 top 100 guys. Boeheim can hit NYC, NJ, Philly, and DC all in a weekend road trip and still get home in time for Sunday dinner. The amount of flying required for our recruiting activities figures in heavily.

@KU-Flyer That's one of two blue chips in the entire state of KS for that class (the other being Perry Ellis, who we signed). Over the past 10 years how many McDonald's AAs has the state of Kansas produced vs NY? KU can't just recruit regionally and expect to compete nationally. For every WCS, there are a thousand Clayton Custers, and WCS wasn't a McD AA, Mr. Basketball, or 5 star guy. And his offense is still garbage :p.

So it is not always just "Geography". It could be the type of character of a player that narrows our pool of available players. I would say it cost lots of money and lots of time to get the type of player BS wants. Stein could only play for one school and he did.

@KU-Flyer

You got it.

When recruiting the top 10-15 players in the country, you have to put a lot of time/ effort into them because they have 10-12 schools working hard to get them. Dropping down to the 40-75 range, if you're KU or Syracuse or whoever, those kids are going to take the first really strong offer they get because those top tier offers will start disappearing quickly once the top players start to sign.

Thus, if you target only second or third tier players (rankings 15-40 and 40-75) you are likely to fill up a class more quickly than targeting top tier guys because the top guys will almost always wait.

Agreed that we don't have enough talent in Kansas to supply us. Add to that the fact that we have to convince a lot of out of state kids that it's worth it to come to KU, which usually requires a campus visit. That adds to our costs to have 10+ guys come on visits every year, plus go and see them multiple times.

@JayHawkFanToo @KU-Flyer To be clear, there's more to the WCS story than just mutual disinterest. WCS played for Mokan Elite on the AAU circuit and the guys behind that have a beef with Self. Apparently Self snubbed them early on because they didn't have any recruits he was interested in even talking to. Since then, they've had a few come through (WCS and Semi Ojeleye, namely) who show some interest in KU and then just as quickly are turned off and end up committing out of state. They send a lot of guys to KSU, too.

Whatever grudge MoKan holds, it's so strong that even though WCS took an unofficial visit to KU as a junior, within days of him committing to UK, an amateur recruiting blogger posted an interview with him where he bad mouthed Kansas, our fans, and Self for not recruiting him. It was taken down shortly thereafter and I've not been able to come up with it since, but suffice it to say, there is a lot of bad blood there. I doubt we'll get anyone of significance out of JoCo as long as MoKan is the biggest AAU team in eastern KS.

@konkeyDong Other area guys: Alec Burks, Ron Baker, Travis Releford, Semi Ojeleye, Harrison Barnes, Ben McLemore, the kid from St. Louis that went to Florida, to name a few. I'm sure I've forgotten some, but there are a few more around. If not in Kansas, the bordering states. And it's not much a farther drive to Kansas City or St. Louis than it is to Wichita.

@Wigs2 Burks and Baker were both un-ranked or sub 100 rated 3-stars that turned out to be late bloomers. Generally, those aren't the kids any of us has on the top of our lists. Ojeleye I covered with the MoKan stuff. St Louis is close, but again, not a huge producer of top talent, and it's far enough east that East Coast schools will recruit there, so it's not that different from flying to Ohio or Virginia to get recruits. Releford was the last top 100 guy out of KC (and that was what, 7 years ago?) and we got him, so I'm not sure why you're listing him here. Colorado, Oklahoma, and Nebraska combined produce less than an average of 1 top 100 guy each year in the past decade. Missouri and Iowa do produce a good amount of talent, but again, it's nowhere near what you get in big population centers like the NY area, Florida, SoCal, and Texas. Iowa is the only near by state that I don't think we do a good job of recruiting. We still let Roy and Consonants go in there and pluck choice kids. I don't know why, but whatever the reason, Self has no ties there.

@konkeyDong baker walked on at WSU, was invited to try out to walk on at KU.

@Crimsonorblue22 said:

@konkeyDong baker walked on at WSU, was invited to try out to walk on at KU.

Not sure what you're getting at.

!BILL SELF.jpg ↗
I doubt Bill Self jumps in his car and drives to see any of the guys he is recruiting. This baby flys at 565 km/hr which is approximately 350 mph. Self can visit most of the guys he is recruiting in under 4 hrs too. It just costs a whole lot more than fueling up the Escalade.
!Carnegie.jpg ↗
Its fuel tank is 870 gal at $5.90 a gal is 5133 big ones each way lol. That's where all of the recruiting costs come in plus what ever the payment and upkeep is per year.

@konkeyDong

Coach Self has openly admitted that much like a lot of other coaches he missed on Baker. Baker was pretty much of an unknown and even WSU did not offer but simply asked him to walk on (like KU) and he did it at WSU because he figure that he had a better chance there than at KU. No one imagined he would develop the way he did.

@konkeyDong nothing, really.

It may be as simple as the East Sports Programming Network. They make boeheim out to be the 2nd coming of Wooden, when he'd still be title less if we hadn't missed a boatload of free throws. I can't stand the guy, probably dislike him more than Cal if that's possible.

@wissoxfan83 It's possible. At least Cal used to be at KU......

Konkey Dong, That's the way I remembered it as well. If I have a customer that for some reason does not want to do business with me I would need to swallow hard and try to find out what the problem is and try to get it resolved.

Back to the original issue: How hard is it to recruit kids to Kansas? If there is someone poisoning the water in Kansas then we need to know who it is and why so we can address it. Why let Wichita and KS latch on to kids while we are spending money all over the country. We used to not be able to go past the Mississippi River either but now we are there. Recruiting in your on state is a must to keep the competition from getting the good players. I don't like loosing to KS and Wichita.

@KU-Flyer

I could be wrong but I cannot think of a single recruit that KU pursued hard that ended up at KSU or WSU...maybe you can refresh my memory.

@JayHawkFanToo I haven't looked it up, and don't remember, but I would be very surprised if we hadn't hotly pursued Michael Beasley.

@nuleafjhawk I would be surprised if we recruited Michael Beasley heavily or at all. I think that he, Bill Walker and OJ Mayo were all supposed to go to Cincinnati when huggy was there and that is the only reason that K State got Beasley.

@JayHawkFanToo

I don't consider Ron Baker as a miss. As a junior, Baker wasn't the 6-3 he is currently listed at. He was a couple inches shorter than that if I recall correctly. Because of that, I can't see any way KU would recruit an unranked SG that is barely 6 feet tall. KU would love to have a guy like Baker now, but there is no way he was a legitimate scholarship player at Kansas even after he grew. Remember, he barely played at WSU leading up to the tournament as a freshman. There is 0 chance that he sees the floor at KU with McLemore, Releford, Johnson, White, etc. in front of him as a freshman, and Selden, Greene, Frankamp joining his second year. If anything, he would have ended up transferring after a year. I doubt he would have lasted at KU because he would have been good enough to play elsewhere, but would not have gotten that chance at KU. Going to WSU ultimately worked out best for him. For every kid that ends up like Baker, there are a dozen that turn into fairly average mid major players. That's not a miss.

Cauley Stein is a miss. He was a top notch recruit. Ojeleye may have been a miss. He was highly ranked. The issue between Self and MoKan Elite has to get solved because there will be some talent coming out of KC at some point and KU can't afford to just sit on the sidelines while other schools poach their backyard.

I also don't consider Alec Burks to be a miss. KU tried to get in on him very late, but Colorado was already in on him and he stayed with that. He was another guy that hit a late growth spurt (going from 6-1 or so to 6-5) that completely changed his level - he was considering UMKC as his top choice, with only Colorado giving interest from major conferences, before he hit the growth spurt and showed up on a lot of radars.

I think we can all make excuses but at the end of the day we have only nailed 1 guy. All that money, all those assistant recruiting coaches.. big brand school... and we've only convinced one recruit to commit.

It just ticks me off. I can't believe all those guys can keep their jobs. If my job was to recruit and I didn't nail a single recruit all year, I would expect to be fired. We expect our player kids to execute, what about all the assistants?

@approxinfinity Hmmm. Well, maybe we should have been going after someone who wound up being the #2 pick in the NBA draft. ?

@nuleafjhawk you mean Kevin Durant, Beasleys AAU teammate? :) I agree Beasley was a terrific talent but he also seemed like a headcase. That's with 20/20 hindsight. Maybe Mario would have gotten busted for pot with Beasley at KU instead of rookie orientation if Beasley came to KU eh?

@Statmachine The planes were donated so no payments. Maintence and fuel is very expensive though.

@approxinfinity I'm confused. Not a big NBA guy anyway, so that's not hard to believe, but I don't follow the Kevin Durant remark. I'm pretty sure Beasely was the #2 draft pick the year he was drafted. What am I missing?

@nuleafjhawk Beasley was toxic anyways. I have no idea how he was cleared. 5 high schools and I've heard from KSU fans (for what its worth) that his momma has made a living off of him since he was middle school.

@drgnslayr Patience grasshopper...We'll be fine.

@nuleafjhawk I'm just having some fun. You're absolutely right, Beasley was the #2 pick of the 2007 draft. Durant was the #2 pick of the 2008 draft. So I was saying that Durant was the #2 pick I would have liked to have recruited. The two were friends as kids and played on the same AAU team.

@approxinfinity Thanks for explaining! I'm not always a good in-between-the-lines kinda guy!

@HighEliteMajor Hey HEM, you know, when you were floating the idea that maybe a project like Karviar Shephard would have been a better recruit than some of the OAD recruits 2 years ago, I think I was not in your camp. I wanted to agree with you now, but I looked at his stats and saw that he seems to have regressed a bit, instead of improving year over year. So a few questions... Is Trent Johnson doing it wrong with Karviar? Did something else happen that derailed his development? Do you still feel that way about Karviar in particular with 20/20 hindsight?

Again, I really came around on the idea of focusing more on project players after this year. Liked Oubre, but tired of our simplistic offense, blown defense, early outs, and the timebomb that is the massive rebuilding effort after next season, when we likely lose our whole roster yet again, so I'm not criticizing the idea.

Also, would it be fun in the off season for us to do a long standing game where we all get to choose 5 recruits from other universities, maybe one from each tier of 1-10, 11-20, 20-30, 30-50, and 51-100 or something like that, and then see how they pan out over the course of several seasons?

@approxinfinity I'm picking Simmons 1-10 Diallo 11-20 Bragg 20-30 Tyler Dorsey 30-40

Of course Bragg is a KU guy so I may have to adjust per your rules and hopefully Diallo will be too!

@dylans What do you think fair criteria are... Contributions to the success of their college program during the season and post season, and subsequent success in the NBA only in so much as it helps the college team succeed in the future?

@approxinfinity The easiest way to evaluate would be where the players get drafted, that would take our personal subjectivity out of the equation.

Otherwise I'd have to rate Perry Ellis as a better college player than Andrew Wiggins based on overall production and program impact. I'm pretty sure that would start a fight. :)

I'm not really sure how to properly rate the players impact.

@dylans I think we have to come up with something other than draft position, as the NBA drafts on potential too much. But... I'm not sure how you quantify it either.

@approxinfinity

Are you sure about that draft? Being a Bulls fan I thought the Bulls should have gone for Beasley instead of Derrick Rose! Shows how much I know.

@dylans you are crazy!😱

@Crimsonorblue22 Yes I am.

@approxinfinity How about 10 points for lottery pick 6 for 1st round 3 for second round. 1 for undrafted free agent pickup.

5 points for a conference championship, 10 points for a final four 15 points national championship.

10 points for top 10 national production in points, rebounds or assists. (This can be skewed by weaker competion)

8 points for leading the confernce in points, rebounds or assists.

5 points for leading the team in points, rebounds or assists.

3 points for 2nd on team in points, rebounds or assists.

20 points for 1st team All America
15 points for 2nd team
10 points for honorable mention

10 points for 1st team conference
5 points for 2nd team conference

10 points for national player of the week

5 points for each player or rookie of the week award in the conference.

Or something much simpler.

@wissoxfan83 Bulls #1 was Rose, Heat #2 was Beasley. I thought the same thing. Wanted the Bulls to draft Beasley. But that was as much due to the fact that I didn't want to like Rose. I just looked and was surprised to see he had 6 rebounds and 8 assists in that finals game ↗. I remember a prayer banked 3, and thinking that Mario outplayed him.

I always liked CDR, and came to appreciate Rose after the fact. Dorsey and a couple other of the kids on Memphis, not so much.

@dylans said:

Or something much simpler.

ha :) I like the formula. we should come up with some recent people and see how they shake out. Also, if you get multiple years out of a guy, do you add those years together? so a 4 year guy putting up good production almost certainly will beat all OADs right?

@approxinfinity A multi year player will generally have more of an impact on a program than a OAD (melo aside). Should it be weighted? Or just go with the players best season?

Wiggins

10 lotto pick

5 Conference Champs

5 led team in points

15 second team AA

10 1st team b12

5x2 B12 newcomer of week

10 National Freshman of week

65 total

This sucked to put together. I need to go gouge out my eyes now.

J. Okafor

20 Nat. Champs

10 Lotto pick (projected)

20 first team AA

10 Acc Player of year

35 7x Acc Player/Rookie of week

10 Led team in points

10 led team in rebounds

115 total points

@dylans I like this idea a lot. so first example seems about right for relative value between those two. I like doing year by year, then you can add the total value of all on team each year to see how the OAD carousel stacks up to 3 or 4 year equivalents by adding the early departures' seasons together.

I do wonder though, how someone like Releford or EJ would stack up. This system still seems to only favor those who are receiving media accolades more than points for the actual production.

@justanotherfan

My post with Coach Self's comments about missing on Baker were not at all related to recruiting him and not getting him; KU DID NOT recruit Baker at all. The comment Coach Self made was in relation to not seeing his potential at the time, no one really did and his only option was to walk on at WSU...who would have thought he would turn out the way he did.

When I brought up Baker, Burks, Ojeleye, etc., I wasn't meaning to imply that I thought Self should have recruited them. I was just responding to another comment about there not being any good talent in the area. There are a few that turned out to be pretty good. But it does seem this area is usually slim pickings.

@JayHawkFanToo self asked him to try out for a walk on and baker said he hadn't played In awhile and didn't want to look bad, headed to WSU and walked on there.

@approxinfinity I'm afraid my system will probably skew towards OADs since they are media darlings. I'll try to score out a few lower ranked guys to see how that goes. Or feel free to check it out yourself I've been finding most of the data at sprorts reference. I'm afraid I'll be busy today until late.

If the numbers don't add up we might give production (points reb assists) more points. I haven't looked at any of the advanced metric stuff as I normally don't, but that could be simpler way of grading the players. WAR or something similiar.

@approxinfinity I tried to take care most times to say a "Karviar Shepherd-like guy" or something like that just in case he flamed out. Just hedging.

But you are right, his stats aren't great. But this is where I have faith in Self. I think Shepherd would have been better here. More talent around him. A system that would be directly geared toward getting him the ball on the block.

So yes, right now, if I could go back and we would get Karviar Shepherd, and we would never have had Embiid, Cliff, or the next guy (Diallo/Thorne) this season, I'd do it.

On your tiers, I used Rivals ↗:

1. 1-10: I'll go Skal Labissiere.
2. 11-20: Here I'll be a homer and pick Bragg.
3. 21-30: Gotta go with my favorite recruit from this class for Self's system, Tyler Davis (meaning, a big guy that will be in college three seasons, high talent).
4. 31-50: Thomas Bryant, Indiana.
5. 50-100: Doral Moore, Wake Forest.

My last three guys, Davis, Bryant, and Moore, are all post players that I would have loved to see at Kansas (given what Self likes to do). And obviously, not OADs. Broken record stuff here, but I'd take any one of these guys now and skip the Diallo, etc. OAD drama.

By the way, on Baker, you can't fault Self for not recruiting Baker. I know we'd like to think that guys like him should be spotted -- that's for WSU to do. Self's focus on top 100 guys is his focus, as it should be.

@dylans since bb is a team sport, I don't know this could be fair? How far they go depends on who's around them too. Kevin durant and Texas for example. You aren't measuring defense or motor, you can't, so there's no way to gauge Releford or TRob. Wiggins was our best defender, how do you put that in your system?

@HighEliteMajor I don't want to berate Traylor, but was he recruited only because he went to IMG or was there something else the coaching staff was looking for?

@Statmachine

I bet we can land Diallo if we offer him Self's joy ride jet! It's all his for 5 months... the months he will be a Jayhawk!

@drgnslayr I don't think so!

@Wigs2 I think it was an attempt to get DeAndre Daniels

@Wigs2 He was recruited because we were stuck, but IMG was a nice link (and @DanR's recollection might be right). Here's what I recall: Self stated that he was surprised when both Morrises turned pro (really, it was Markieff that surprised him as I recall. He wasn't surprised when it happened in April, but he didn't think Kieff would be turning pro until late in the season). That was the spring/summer we scrambled and signed Traylor, B. Anderson, and KY. Only Anderson was on our radar before the Morris announcement. Traylor was likely to go to Ok. St. or Minnesota (or something like that). Self was in a tough spot because if the twins returned, and we had TRob, those were big roadblocks to top guys. But after the Morrises turned pro, we missed on DeAndre Daniels and Otto Porter. Can you imagine if Porter would have been on our 2011-12 team? Yikes.

@Crimsonorblue22

Spot on. I just posted something along the same line except comparing Wilt and Bill Russell. While Wilt dominated Russell at the position, Russel had a much better team and his teams won most of their games and history has been much kinder to him than Wilt.

@HighEliteMajor Otto Porter is on my short list of like-to-have-had players that we recruited. Along with Chris Douglas-Roberts (though we won without him), Greg Monroe, Trevor Lacey, Kaleb Tarczewski, Michael Snaer, and Julius Randle.

@Kip_McSmithers

DeAndre Daniels... the missing link that gave UCONN enough post presence to hang with one of Kentucky's tall teams and bring home the gold. Hard to believe... but the scoreboard doesn't lie.

@HighEliteMajor

Lots of talk out there that Skal Labissiere might not get cleared by the NCAA and might not be able to play for UK. If this happens and the squid does not pick up any of the available to players left, how much trouble is he in since his approach is to win with overwhelming superior talent?

@JayHawkFanToo I would be ecstatic if that happened! I had no idea that was going on.

@drgnslayr "Ball dont lie"