Welcome to the Friday Feedback, which transferred today’s plans to talk about stadium walls. Moving in? Bob Huggins losing another player.
The latest transaction sees promising, oft injured and apparently homesick freshman center Pat Forsythe packing his belongings for Akron. Yesterday’s brief news release doesn’t mention the Zips, but it is the Zips, per Huggins.
I spoke with him last night and it occurred to me he and I haven’t had a normal conversation in a while. No, “How’s your family?” or “Great job with the charity!” or “That wasn’t me with an Equinox full of people idling outside your mansion last night.”
Instead, it’s been Tommie McCune and Jerrod Calhoun and Elijah Macon and then more Elijah Macon and Kevin Jones and now Forsythe. Offseasons aren’t easy for coaches because more often than not bad things happen when people are out of sight and prone to be out of their minds, but this one seems especially … I don’t know … sad? Sad seems too strong, but it’s at least pulling me in that direction.
(Aside: We did talk about the Twitter expose of Denver Allen. Huggins enjoys it exactly as much as you think he does and has no plans of stopping, especially as strangers begin to recognize Mr. Allen as “The guy who’s always sleeping.” So I take back some of the aforementioned. Huggins and I have had a light moment. Actually, that one was great. I can’t get enough of that Twitter meme.)
Anyhow, if we’re being honest, I don’t think the Forsythe move is entirely shocking. The timing could be better, sure, but Huggins said he’d been talking with Forsythe’s high school coach recently and that makes me think this wasn’t sudden, and that makes me think there’s something to the whispers many heard last semester and then throughout this summer.
Nevertheless, he expressed a desire to be closer to home and whether you believe that or not, Forsythe has, at the very least, a close and unique relationship with his family.
And maybe you believe someone or something else, which leads me to this: There is and there will be more chatter about Huggins and recruiting. I’m still not sure how to embrace this, but I do think it’s open to discussion because I think it can be examined and explained.
Forsythe is the sixth Huggins recruit to leave the team in five seasons — Will Thomas, Dee Proby, Dan Jennings, Dalton Pepper, Tommie McCune and Forsythe. Add to that the entire 2010 recruiting class — Noah Cottrill, David Nyarsuk and Darrious Curry — that never played.
That’s nine of 16 recruits that either didn’t play or didn’t stay. That’s a big number — and yet WVU remains pretty safe with regard to the APR.
So what to think about this? Well, not to disregard a person, but you can kind of brush aside Thomas and Proby. Thomas was the first Huggins recruit and Huggins really needed a point guard and he knew and trusted the people who recommended Thomas. It still didn’t work and his most memorable contribution remains the bumbling conclusion to the 2009 game at Cincinnati.
Proby? WVU needed a big body and Proby, once a fairly well-liked prospect bound for Oklahoma State, he was available late in the process. He didn’t really detract all that much and, in fact, he really did help WVU win a road game once — no, really, I was there — but his exit was expected at the end of his one season. I don’t know, but when I listen to Huggins say he’s not going to just add someone now to fill Forsythe’s spot, I think you thank Proby.
Dan Jennings? A really nice kid, though one with some baggage he could not help, and for one-plus years he never got it together like he or his coaches wanted. And then he literally left the team in the middle of a game and posted a farewell message on a dry erase board in the locker room before deserting. Said Huggins afterward, “I don’t want to get into the history of things, but it’s time.”
Curry? Medical disqualification.
Nyarsuk? Never academically qualified. That one doesn’t look good, but he never enrolled, so he never dented the APR.
Cottrill? This one is complicated and divisive. Understand this: WVU was aware of things, if for no other reason than a long relationship with the player that preceded his commitment prior to his freshman year, and tried really, really hard. Sometimes it’s out of your hands. I guess my basic defense of the strategy of sticking with Cottrill as long as WVU did is that the rewards of getting Cottrill right as a person, but also as a player, far outweigh the risk involved. We’re in a weird and uncomfortable place when we’re angry about trying to help someone.
Pepper? This one reads like a whiff because he was seemingly never comfortable in his two seasons, but if that’s on WVU for not knowing or anticipating it, then doesn’t the kid himself have some burden of responsibility? I guess the jury is out on this one because if he fizzles at Temple, so, too, does the frustrations left behind at WVU.
McCune? Well, he had two legal issues and was suspended once in his time at WVU. Equal blame, I suppose, because WVU could have done a better job projecting the kid, but the kid could have done a better job, too. I always wondered if this one was as mutual as it seemed — I don’t think Huggins has any room for a thief on his team … and remember who was also involved in that credit card incident. Pat Forsythe.
To review, you can dismiss a few of those, you can understand, perhaps grudgingly, a few others and you can point a finger at a few more. The one thing I never fully grasp about this discussion is that rarely do we see a comparison to football recruiting.
I honestly don’t believe football recruiting is (dramatically) different from basketball recruiting. You’re dealing with the same adolescent issues, the same entitlement issues, the same entourage issues, the same issues all the way down the line. You’re even seeing 7-0n-7 football turning into a the same systemic issue AAU basketball was and is.
Football, though, has 85 scholarships and 25 in a year. Basketball has 13 and, maybe, four or five in a year. Clearly the net above which football works is far bigger and safer. Lose two football recruits — and when doesn’t that happen? — and you’re safe. Lose two basketball recruits and you’ve got a beat writer compelled to pen 1,300 words on the topic.
We’ve done this dance before: Huggins knows the score. He was a transfer in his days, he doesn’t like losing kids and he hates the suggestion he runs off kids.
Now, if you want to calibrate your gripes to target the lack of NBA players Huggins recruits, I surrender. Yes, he wants that talent and, yes, he tries and, yes, he loses some of those recruiting battles.
But then again, he did mold Joe Alexander, and it was out of his hands after that. He recruited Devin Ebanks, who just inked a nice deal with the Los Angeles Lakers — and don’t you think Ebanks rises to first-round status with another year or two?
He mentored Da’Sean Butler, who would have been drafted far higher if not for the ACL injury in his final college game. He did recruit Kevin Jones, who seems on the cusp. He recruited Aaric Murray (twice) and everyone tells me Murray is a pro. It’s not that bad. Is it?
Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, Ich bin kein Berliner.
Sheik Ybuti:
Don McLean might have started off writing “American Pie” about the Pillsbury Bake-Off (we’ll never know), but by the time it was all over, it was a lasting tribute to Buddy Holly and a wistful account of the sea changes to our society in the 1960s in general and popular music in particular. “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” in its finished form, is no less about West Virginia. When one considers the emotions and visions it evokes (melodically as much as lyrically), and the context in which the song is often performed, it seems merely a niggling detail that the Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah River are barely within the State’s borders. The song transcends its origins, much as the “Star-Spangled Banner” transcends that Key’s words were set to an English drinking tune.
And our fight song has not been forgotten. Except for maybe the rarely performed first verse, which serves to remind us that “others may be black or crimson, but for us it’s Gold and Blue.” No mention of gray.
And the defense, your honor, rests.
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