Orlando Sanchez
- Thread starter tom in salem
- Start date
Doesn't the St. Johns Administration have some culpability in this fiasco ? Wouldn't other university administrations have taken swifter action than ours to gather the necessary missing information let alone push the fools At the NCAA through whatever means necessary? the buck still stops at the top and thats the president of the university.
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F
SOME???
Please leave Father Harrington out of this fiasco!
He is not the one to decide to redshirt Gift without assurances that his compliance team did their due diligence with the eligibility issue of Sanchez. That group of Lavin yes men should have gotten on a plane to the Dominican in October and gathered all the documentation then instead of dragging this into the new year.
This is not on the President, it is on Lavin and his coaches who failed to coordinate this fiasco with the inept compliance office.
SOME???
Please leave Father Harrington out of this fiasco!
He is not the one to decide to redshirt Gift without assurances that his compliance team did their due diligence with the eligibility issue of Sanchez. That group of Lavin yes men should have gotten on a plane to the Dominican in October and gathered all the documentation then instead of dragging this into the new year.
This is not on the President, it is on Lavin and his coaches who failed to coordinate this fiasco with the inept compliance office.
tom in salem
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I will value your opinion...if you ever actually have one other than guest appearances with no thoughts.
As for the apologists and others:
Blaming the NCAA is very convenient but as a member school, you know what the eligibilty issues are when you "enroll" a student athlete. In August, when Sanchez registered, Fratto, the "mouthpiece" never indicated any eligibilty issues. Subsequent interviews with Lavin began the "we expect" all the players to be eligible. By October, it was clear that the NCAA had an age issue AND scholastic issue from the D.R. All you geniuses assume the NCAA was making stuff up as they went along. Had this "man" had a high school transcript from a US school, this would have been resolved in the Fall.
However, since the D.R has a history of falsifying records for athletes, the NCAA did its due diligence in asking for more documents than they would normally require. The NCAA may be an overbearing stick in the mud but I think they made clear what was required and the communication coordination obviously had deficiencies.
"Coordinating" all of this for the NCAA was our crackerjack compliance office, not the President of the university that some morons are eager to blame. He has 24,000 other students and 4 campuses to worry about. The AD, coaches, compliance staff had ONE effen player to focus on and they could not get it done. If I had a staff costing me $5 million per year and they could not handle ONE case file I ask a few questions.
When in doubt, blame a priest!
Yeah, get a life!
I agree completely, this had nothing to do with Fr Harrington. There's a time and place to discuss his failings, but he certainly has no blame for Orlando's situation.
And I also don't buy that this has nothing to do with Lavin. Here's a simple fact- we had one backup center last season, no starter, and our only power forward went to the NBA in March.
The staff then pursued 3 post players, all of whom had eligibility questions; Sanchez, Obekpa, and Michael Chandler.
I don't mind taking a chance on guys; in this day and age every team has guys who are ineligible for one reason or another. And that's why it was fine to recruit Amir and Jakarr in 2011, because you already had wings like Moe and Dom who were sure to be cleared.
I'll admit this is a little bit complaining about spilled milk at this point, but if we needed post players badly (and we did) then you have to pursue some recruits who are guaranteed to be eligible, even if it means they are slightly less talented.
It seems to me that it is not unreasonable to assume that if a kid is playing at an NJCAA junior colege, he should not have any major eligibility issues. But, I know it is up to the school top be sure. I just think the NCAA treats SJU as a dubious school, when in fact we have not had a history that should warrant that treatment.
No doubt you can fault the staff for not having a back-up plan (though they might have thought Christian Jones was) . . . again. Can't fault them for the failings of the NCAA.
Seems the staff is less willing to take on role players to fill needs than recruit the best available regardless of position. Of course having Gathers signed early then having him renege didn't help. But seems most teams have a raw 4 year center that should be able to play solid d and rebound every couple of classes just in case.
Seems the staff is less willing to take on role players to fill needs than recruit the best available regardless of position. Of course having Gathers signed early then having him renege didn't help. But seems most teams have a raw 4 year center that should be able to play solid d and rebound every couple of classes just in case.
Lavin tried to grab Nolan as well and he went to uconn, although he's quite raw. Bottom line thoughts that Gathers was plan A and screwed us after Lavin put a lot of time into getting a rebounder like that. Sanchez had some risk but I think that Lavin and Co. Thought he'd be eligible already. Point is that we did have backup plans after a few dominoes fell different directions. A bit of bad luck as well. I dont mind Lavin taking risks. We won't get ahead without doing that and will always be mired in mediocrity. The one thing I do fault Lavin for is redshirting Gift because we've needed him thus far, but I'm guessing he has some reasoning as to why it was done.
True but when STJ was looking at Nolan he was Class of '13 so wouldn't have affected this team. He reclassified after signing with UConn, no? And of course if Norvel was a basketball player and scholar more than an artiste that would have alleviated all of this discussion.
I don't mind taking chances on guys, you have to get some talent in here. My thing is just that our backup plans can't also be question marks. And in the spring there were questions about Orlando's age and amateurism right away, Chris O's school was being investigated, and Chandler was hoping and praying to be cleared.
We did look at Nolan, and we kicked the tires on that big JUCO from California, White? But I can't think of anyone else. And Nolan was a class behind at the time, that is true.
I just think if we're going to take chances, our backup options need to be near certainties to be qualified.
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Most coaches take risks but we do not have to become the UNLV of the Big East. To get "commitments" from 7 high risk players is rolling the dice one too many times. It is how we end up with an over-hyped Christian Jones not ready to play D1 ball, how we get 2 verbals from a Darrick Wood who still cannot qualify and how a Norvel Pelle (who is still out there for us to sign) floats from coast-to-coast.
All the gambling by Lavin has not payed dividends and I've not read one good report on our team to date by the national media and the local media has us behind Stony Brook. That is totally unacceptable with 7 top 100 sophs and frosh.
Let's hope Sanchez becomes eligible as rumored and Branch starts playing or things could get ugly on Union Turnpike. I think in year 3 the die-hard fans deserved more than the 12th best team in the Big East.
Given our history over the past decade and empty recruiting cupboard Lavin inherited, there was little option but to take some chances. And while not all of them worked out, we have a lot more talent now than we've seen in years.
Over-hyped Christian Jones? Nobody knew a thing about him until a couple of big games early in the season when this board got a little too excited about a freshman with a big body. Whose fault is that?
And the hollow rankings of the local media? Your posts suggest you know too much about basketball to seriously include that as a credible fact in the debate.
Yes, we need to see some improvement. I hope we see that tonight. But all things considered, I like where we are now better than I did two years ago.
indyredmen97
Member
Most coaches take risks but we do not have to become the UNLV of the Big East. To get "commitments" from 7 high risk players is rolling the dice one too many times. It is how we end up with an over-hyped Christian Jones not ready to play D1 ball, how we get 2 verbals from a Darrick Wood who still cannot qualify and how a Norvel Pelle (who is still out there for us to sign) floats from coast-to-coast.
All the gambling by Lavin has not payed dividends and I've not read one good report on our team to date by the national media and the local media has us behind Stony Brook. That is totally unacceptable with 7 top 100 sophs and frosh.
Let's hope Sanchez becomes eligible as rumored and Branch starts playing or things could get ugly on Union Turnpike. I think in year 3 the die-hard fans deserved more than the 12th best team in the Big East.[/quote
UNLV comparisons and a suggestion that things could get ugly in "year 3" of Lavin's tenure... I'm guessing we're not sharing the same list of New Year's resolutions
I guess to end this debate of right and wrong and who to blame it just seems that GG should have played this season and we would be better off while Coach would have had a year to find another transfer or juco wide body to come in and replace GG. That should not have been so very hard IMHO.