Welcome to the Friday Feedback, which would like to try to answer a suddenly common and significant question:
jtmountaineer said:
So, Mike, the elephant-sized question in the room is whether Huggins will try to fill that extra scholarship or save it for next year. I’ll throw this out there for no other reason than pleasant speculation: Calipari is offered the Bulls job, takes it, and Doron Lamb decommits to UK.
West is a surprise, but good for him for getting his MBA. My only regret for him is that he didn’t get a Senior Night salute befitting someone with his quirky personality and sense of humor.
When Jonnie West decided to step away from basketball and focus on business school it left WVU with 12 scholarships for next season. The NCAA allows 13. It doesn’t require 13. So my first answer would be, on May 7, that the Mountaineers do nothing with the available scholarship.
There just aren’t many unsigned players out there and I doubt WVU adds someone just to add someone. Things like Calipari-Lamb aren’t so easy, either. The school needs to release the player and, in some cases, grant permission to transfer to specific schools … and there’s nothing that says a school has to release a player.
That said, you have three possibilities that may not have materialized yet.
1) WVU might get in on a junior college transfer. This is a little risky this late. Schools like to follow a juco player for a while and get to know him and assess whether he’ll be able to make it at the Division I level. WVU spent a lot of time with Casey Mitchell and not so much on Dee Proby. There’s a risk attached to all this and while Huggins has a way above-average track record with jucos, it wasn’t built by rushing things.
2) WVU might get into the larger market of Division I transfers. This is less risky, but still not certain. A lot of the players are there for a reason — ie, they didn’t fit with DI programs, coaches, competition, etc. Others are there because they believe or have proved they can cut it at a higher level against better competition. Many are the victims of coaching changes. So all these players have pluses or minuses attached to their transfers and you have to take some time to see who is who. This is a far more familiar environment for coaches who may be looking for a player for the future because they either saw, got to know or recruited the player in the past.
3) WVU may benefit from the “grant-in-aid” exception. Long story short, a high school player signing with a college inks one of two documents. The first is a National Letter-of-Intent. It’s binding. Rock solid. A player owes the school — not a coach — his services in the future in exchange for a scholarship and all the academic and athletic benefits. This is the most common route. Nowadays, though, a lot of kids are signing a “grant-in-aid agreement,” kids like WVU signee Darrious Curry. It’s a lot like a NLI, except, in short, the school owes the kid a scholarship and the kid owes the school nothing. It’s not binding.
And how does this pertain to WVU? It’s a tricky and convoluted story and it could grow to inolve a lot of different characters beyond even college and high school basketball, but let’s say WVU was recruiting a kid and was a finalist for his signature only to lose him to another school. Now say the school that won the kid’s services lost that coach to an NBA job or another college or some other profession. Suddenly you learn that player signed a grant-in-aid and not a NLI. That player, if he wants to be, is off the hook and can sign with anyone who can offer a scholarship.
Back to reality: It’s hard to track who signed GIAs and NLIs because GIAs are commonly — and inaccurately — reported as NLIs, but if there are some late coaching changes, it’s possible players WVU recruited and once liked might come available.
All of that said, my money’s on nothing happening.
Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, don’t take thy Lord’s name in vain … or with a Monte Carlo.
Michael said:
I am really mystified ( some of my friends say that is my default state of mind) about our tournament run not producing some immediate benefit relative to high profile recruits- read: Doron Lamb et al.
I do not understand how a 3 or 4 would not want to learn under Huggins given his track record & the fact that Ebanks is gone in 2010-11. I guess Tobias Harris was the most disappointing miss this year for me. I don’t get how he could select Tenn. over us. Oh callow youth!
Perhaps next year, we will translate our Final Four run into big time recruiting success.
General rule of thumb: A big season pays off in the recruiting year after the big season. Maybe WVU was a good team throughout the season, and I think the top-10 success from start to finish probably raised recruiting expectations, but the exposure and positivity from the Big East and NCAA tournament runs came after a lot of kids were signed/committed. Right after the Final Four, WVU went out and sold the run to the the sophomore and junior classes.
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