Alasketball

[Jake8005]

Recruit ranking updates

Brown #94 -> #93
Leep #342 -> #366
Forbes #362 - #499, 3 star -> 2 star
Kamouna #429 -> #450
Hunter #1121 -> 1084
Edwards #1123 -> 1340
Mason #1264 -> #1322
Walker #1336 -> #1491
#1672 Kent -> #1691
#1762 Dove -> #1763
#1771 Mintz -> #1790

Our offers so far are Brown, Kamouna, and Edwards. I will decide the fourth at a later date. Looking good on Edwards, not hopeful on Kamouna, and a long shot at Brown. I offered Brown because he's the best by far, Edwards as he's the best PG, and Kamouna as I like his size and scoring ability. My fourth offer will probably be either Hunter or Mason.

[Jake8005]

Schedule

Non-conference:
11/16 @ Colgate
11/19 Detroit Mercy
11/23 @ Georgia Southern
11/26 @ New Mexico
11/30 San Francisco
12/3 @ BC
12/7 @ LSU
12/14 @ TCU
12/21@ Denver

Conference:
12/26 @ UC-Irvine
12/30 UC-Davis
1/2 @ UC-Riverside
1/4 @ Long Beach State
1/6 Hawaii
1/11 @UC-Santa Barbara
1/13 @ Cal State Fullerton
1/20 Cal State Bakersfield
1/23 Long Beach State
1/27 Cal Poly
1/30 Cal State Northridge
2/1 @ Hawaii
2/3 @ UC-Davis
2/8 Cal State Fullerton
2/10 UC-Santa Barbara
2/15 @ Cal Poly
2/17 @ Cal State Northridge
2/22 UC-Riverside
2/24 UC-Irvine
3/1 @ Cal State Bakersfield

Not the toughest schedule. LSU, BC and TCU are obviously the hardest, but none are superpowers. The thing I did notice though is how tight the conference schedule is. Nine games in January and eight in February! Only one game in March. Hopefully that means extra rest for the postseason that month.

[Jake8005]

One problem with recruiting.

I'm having a hard time recruiting big men. While chasing the main recruits. I neglected Hunter and Mason who went elsewhere, which is bad when I could've probably gotten one if I tried harder. The only big men left are Brown and Kamouna, neither of which currently have interest, though it does look like they'll commit in the spring which gives me a chance. My tallest offer is Clint Kent at 6'8, but he is a SF, and only on cool interest right now. I think I have a good chance at getting Eric Edwards, but the problem is the other players I might get are 6'8 or shorter, so I doubt I'll be using all four scholarships, Maybe I get a good Alaska player in the transfer portal though, so I do like to have an open scholarship. Fortunately, both my centers will return next season as they are a junior and a sophomore, so it is not an urgent problem..... yet.

[Wayne23]

I offer on 8/21; then I make sure I've hit at least all the relevant categories, but better, ALL of the categories on the phone call list (which will become, more accurately, the "Message" list in 2022).
Then, on 9/11, 9/18, 9/25, and 10/2 I can make what are the most important, powerful pitches via Host Recruit. These often swing the deal or get your school to #1 or #2 on the recruit's Top 10 list.

[PointGuard]

With 4 scholarships to fill and just 11 possible recruits you've got a tough uphill battle to fill all your scholarships at the positions you need.

Out of the 11 recruits, it's likely 1 or 2 will have very low GPA's and possibly not meet SAT minimums (by the way, what's the Minimum SAT score for the U of A?). Then there are probably 1 or 2 who willl be heavily recruited by other colleges and are likely to bolt for the lower 48. And in some recruiting seasons there may be few guards from Alaska and othr recruiting seasons, few big men.

Hopefully when you edited UC San Diego to U of A, you were able to lower the SAT minimum (since all the Univ of Calif schools have high SAT minimums), otherwise that will cut out a higher number of the recruits.

Wayne's advice is good. I'd absolutely MAXIMUZE your recruiting activity each and every week. Since you're just recruiting in-state, you'll have plenty of $$, so don't miss any opportunity to scout, d campus visits, watch film, etc. And yeah, home visits are absolutely critical...and repeat home visits for those who show interest.

Re campus visits...if you can get recruits to have at last a cool level of interest BEFORE they visit you campus, then the likelihood of it being a positive experience for them is much greater than if they have no interest before they visit. Obviously, that's even more important when doing home visits. So contacting them each week to try to create at least a Cool level of interest is very important.

If you haven't already, I believe with this scenario (recruiting only within state and in a state with a very low number of recruits), having Recruiting Difficulty Levl at EASY is the way to go That way, recruits will be more likely to take your calls and developing interest and ultimate success will be enhanced.

Good luck...hope you get your guys. And hope there's a good transfer player from Alaska who wants to come home.

[Wayne23]

From PointGuard: and repeat home visits for those who show interest.-

As many as possible!

Re campus visits...if you can get recruits to have at last a cool level of interest BEFORE they visit you campus, then the likelihood of it being a positive experience for them is much greater than if they have no interest before they visit. Obviously, that's even more important when doing home visits. So contacting them each week to try to create at least a Cool level of interest is very important.-

All true but not always. Sometimes, but rarely, a guy with no interest will develop interest after being scouted, after you Host them (if they allow it, which they almost always do in-state) or even after a Visit Recruit, which is again, the most powerful tool. I've actually wound up successfully recruiting these on rare occasions. As PG said, since you're only recruiting in-state, your money will go a LONG way. Spend it! But save some for Spring recruiting, which is a time when you can grab guys who were offered to by the schools they really wanted.

[Jake8005]

hey guys, thanks for the tips. i did try to film scout them all every week, hosted all, visited probably half, live scouted when I could. I think my problem was 1- only offering 3. and 2- not being realistic in who I could get. I did not know to get their interest up BEFORE they visit, that's very useful advice. And yes, my SAT minimum is at 860. I'll try my best to get Brown or Kamouna, typically I have better luck getting recruits in the spring than in the fall.

[Jake8005]

Irvine, California. (AP) - Here at the Big West Conference media day, University of Alaska Anchorage basketball's head coach Carlos Boozer answered questions about his team's upcoming season

Reporter: So Carlos, how do you feel about your preparation for the season.

Boozer: We feel good. They've been practicing hard and learning our system. On offense we plan to play mainly the triange and the princeton, but will use a bit of the high post too. On defense we've been practicing man to man and the 3-2 zone. We also have to learn how to handle opposing zones and how to full-court press if necessary.

Reporter: What do you think of the group of players you have

Boozer: I like who we have. Right now we feel great at guard with Pengelly Omara, and Crosby all playing roughly equal minutes, and Fleming as a great option to step in if one is injured. We like our 3rd string guards too, Strong and Rowell are good players who I wish we had minutes for. We may have to go very small in order to get them and Fleming some playing time. At forward we feel good too, Smiley and Gaither are our likely starters, and Michael Blake is probably going to be the one spelling them off the bench, John Haymon we see being a useful player down the road that may get minutes too if we need him. At center, we're not very deep. If one of Louis or Geyer goes down, I'm not sure who we would play there with the healthy one. Gaither has the skills to play there, but is short for a center at 6'6. However, Matt Louis is 7'1 which is always useful and is a fantastic inside scorer. We have walk-ons at forward, Jacob Cox and Adam Finneman who will be helpful in pushing our scholarship forwards in practice and hopefully can see the floor for a bit this season. We've decided to redshirt our freshman Travis Stokes as we just don't have minutes to give him this season, so we'd rather save his years of eligibility for the future as we really like his potential.

Reporter: So would you say you feel confident the season.

Boozer: We feel good. Everybody knows the challenges associated with transitioning to Division I, but we wouldn't be trying if we didn't think we had a chance. We're gonna go out there on the court and try our best. If we fail, it won't be because we didn't give any effort to succeed.

[Jake8005]

Before the season starts, we will play two exhibition games to get an idea of what the team is like.

First, Seattle University makes the trip up north to play the Seawolves.

Game doesn't end well. Seattle wins the first half 43-21 and ended up winning 93-68.

Gaither shot 4-5 for 11 points, crosby shot 2-4 for 10 points, blake was 3-5 for 6 points off the bench and encouragingly, Geyer was 2-3 with 3 rebounds in 15 minutes off the bench.

Next, "ahead of" the season opening opener against Colgate, the Seawolves travel to New York to play Binghamton.

This one wasn't much better. Binghamton won the first half 55-35 and won 83-60. Gaither had the only good game as he went 3-6 for 9 points and 6 rebounds. Ouch. If this is how the transition to D1 is gonna go, it'll be a long season. But these are only exhibition games.

[Jake8005]

Nov. 16 our season started. After the short trip from Binghamton, we played the Colgate Raiders. We got off to a good start, leading 36-30 after 18 minutes. However, Colgate made an 8-0 run to lead at halftime. Late in the second half, we were tied 71-71 with under two minutes left and took a 73-71 lead with 30 seconds left, but Colgate could not score and we ended up winning 77-71 for our first Division I victory! Guard Lee Crosby was the player of the game for us, scoring 18 points on 7-12 shooting. Center Matt Louis also had a great game, shooting 7-10 for 14 points and getting 10 rebounds. Gaither had 11 points and 5 assists, Michael Blake only scored 5 points but got 7 rebounds, and John Pengelly led the team with 7 assists.

Post-game press conference

Reporter: Carlos, congratulations on win number one! How does this feel?

Boozer: It feels great, I'm so happy for the guys. We have to prove that we belong here and we did it today. It was close, but we won, and that's what I'm proudest of.

The players congratulated Boozer in the locker room, all coming over to him to hype him up as he came into the locker room. No Gatorade bath though...... yet!