[quote="Class of 72" post=297729][quote="fordham96" post=297716][quote="panther2" post=297694]I wonder why some on here criticize without reading the responses. The young man stated in his interview that he chose Clemson because their guards are seniors and will be leaving. Dawes evidently felt his chances of playing as a freshman were better at Clemson. The wild card for us in all of this is Justin Simon and that is what was probably relayed to Dawes. I do not know if Dawes is better that Greg Williams. Mikey Dixon is a proven D1 player. Trimble is a shooter off the bench. Eli Wright just needs an opportunity. LJ can play the 2 if needed.
It might not be that we couldn't close, it might be that that young man was not willing to compete for minutes. His people may have told him that he he stood a better chance of playing at Clemson. In reality, none of us knows for sure. As another poster said, I am concerned about us landing a big man.
For the time being, I am looking forward to enjoying this season and making a run in the NCAA tourney.[/quote]
Or it actually might be that we can't close. Last year Muhammad, this year Gaffney, Bishop and Dawes. If SJU doesn't need guards why the hell do they keep recruiting them?
And this stuff about his words, really? So have you ever heard a kid say (regardless of the real reason why he chose the school) "I chose school A even though I know I will likely not play much early on" or "The other schools sucked." Everyone wants to play and thinks they can play early. My point is kids tend to say the same thing everytime.
Look Dawes isn't the end of the world, but Jesus this is class number 4. Seriously. And they are whiffing on everyone. It is hard to imagine that when he was hired in April 2015 that recruiting would be this poor at this point especially considering the reasons why the previous staff was replaced.[/quote]
While I agree with much of what you say we all have to put things in perspective.
While it is year 4, none of us expected 3 straight losing seasons to rival the mediocre Norm Roberts years. It is very hard to recruit top talent under those conditions. To our staff's credit we identified targets as good as the ones we lost except for a big man.
Losing Luther was a bummer but he still would have come off the bench behind Simon and Ponds. Hopefully we have talent equivalent to Gaffney, Dawes and Bishop coming up.
Finally, the recruiting process is not over and fluid. With the new transfers rules a team can recover quickly from losing out on a high school player. Mullin better keep Matt very happy because right now he is all we got.
Finally, if Mullin can't win with the current talent he never will so recruiting is the least of his problems.[/quote]
Muhammad would play significant minutes this year at SJU.
Secondly this is not an isolated incident, this is a pattern. Third the losing is his problem not mine. I have never heard someone use as an excuse for why they can't recruit because they have sucked so bad. It's a little like saying, "I couldn't have murder that guy because I was too busy murdering someone else."
And lastly many of these problems are self inflicted. That is the real issue.
On the transfer front, guys if the rules are changed and transfers become immediately eligible I don't see how that benefits SJU. Think about it. The Dukes, Kentucky's etc of the world will start to become much more involved in the recruiting of transfers if they feel they can get a stud transfer who is IMMEDIATELY eligible. Then in that case it may be worth it for them.