Philly Gym Rat (The Perry “QM” McMullin Story)

[PointGuard]

SG Jerell Brown was nominated for the Norton Award. Not only is this an honor for our incoming freshman guard, but also a big deal for CSU Bakersfield because it’s the first time a player from this school has been nominated for this award.

[Wayne23]

Awesome. That's always a thrill when coaching at a small school.

[CoachC]

It'll help get more people in the building too.

[PointGuard]

This year’s schedule presents some challenges. 9 of our 13 pre-conference games are on the road. Additionally, the quality of our pre-conference game opponents is a little higher than last year.

Pre-Conference
KENT ST.
@ New Orleans
@ McNeese St.
@ Vermont
@ South Florida
@ Idaho
EASTERN MICHIGAN
VIRGINIA TECH
@ Evansville
@ Nebraska
@ Murray St.
CENTRAL FLORIDA
@ Iowa St.

[I]Conference[I]
CHICAGO ST.
@ North Dakota
TX PAN AMERICAN
@ Utah Valley
HOUSTON BAPTIST
@ Seattle
NEW JERSEY TECH
@ Chicago St.
NORTH DAKOTA
@ TX Pan American
UTAH VALLEY
@ Houston Baptist
SEATTLE
@ New Jersey Tech

[PointGuard]

We have 3 scholarships to fill. I’m hoping to land 2 big inside players and 1 point guard.

Rats! Our initial evaluation of recruits from California is that NONE are in the Top 100 in the nation. Rather hard to believe.

We totally focus on PG’s, PF’s, and C’s. We have difficulty building interest in high school recruits in the western region and even California, so expand our search to JC players both from within and outside California. As the summer ends we’ve created interest in a number of recruits, but the level of interest is warm rather than hot.

Since we haven’t been able to generate deep interest in recruits, we withhold making any scholarship offers until the time of my first home visits in mid-September.

On September 11th, I visited 4 recruits and made offers to a PG and two big men. Only two of the 4 visits went well, so we needed to refocus our efforts.

The next week’s home visits went much better and interest levels increased significantly, but we yet aren’t #1 in any of their hearts. We revisited each one the next week and landed two recruits:

PG Darius Dunn, 6-4, JC So, 2.4 GPA, Guernsy, WY: 16.6 ppg, 6.2 apg, 4.8 rpg, 1.4 spg, 1.0 bpg last year; Excellent passer and strong ball handler, good scorer with good outside shooting skills, very strong defensively, hard worker, and very athletic. Ranked as the 47th best recruit in the nation. Our overall rating: B.

C Marcelle Pastner, 6-10, HS Sr, 2.9 GPA, San Diego, CA: 15.1 ppg, 1.7 apg, 9.5 rpg, 1.6 spg, 1.6 bpg last year; Very good scorer with excellent inside shooting skills, average rebounder and defender, not athletic. Ranked as the 97th best recruit in the nation. (Later he dropped to being the 642nd best recruit in the nation.) Our overall rating: B.

I then re-visited the 3rd player to whom we’ve offered a scholarship and 3 other players as well in the final week of home visits. While we jumped up to #1 on the 3rd players list, we still didn’t land him. So we will continue to keep in contact with him but try to build interest in other players as well. At this point it’s likely we won’t land our 3rd and final recruit until spring 2013.

Then in late October we got a call that our 3rd scholarship offer had been accepted:

PF Ali Lyde, 6-7, JC So, 2.5 GPA, Lund, NV: 18.3 ppg, 1.6 apg, 7.1 rpg, 1.5 spg, 1.5 bpg last year; Excellent scorer with great inside shooting skills, very strong rebounder and defender, very athletic. Ranked as the 38th best recruit in the nation. Our overall rating: A.

[Wayne23]

One big guy down, one to go. #38 is FINE!

[PointGuard]

Yeah, happy with the 3 guys we got this year.

The 2 JC transfer players (Dunn and Lyde) should be able to slip right into the starting lineup next year. Nice to have 2 out-of-state players on the team.

I'm really interested to see what the incoming ratings will be for Marcelle Pastner, the HS recruit. Since he was ranked as high as #97 and as low as #642, it's hard to know if he will be able to play right away or if we will need to redshirt him as a freshman.

[jksander]

This should be a great season ... gonna have to keep an eye on this team!

[PointGuard]

I decide to redshirt two sophomores:

SG Jason Nurse
C Josh Brown

Both played minor roles for us last year but neither was very productive. Since their development has been slow, I decided to see if an extra year of development and maturity might give us some future productivity from these two.

[OOC: While I really considered NOT redshirting anyone to get these 2 guys graduated as soon as possible to get good recruits that would replace their spots on the roster, I wanted to see how they MAY develop with redshirting. I don't hold any unrealistic hopes for them though.]

[PointGuard]

Overall practices went smoothly. But some of the guys got a little testy just before the season began. Most were insignificant, but I brought Johnny Chase in to talk with him since he was the center of a couple of incidents. He agreed that he was off-base and admitted he just loves to needle guys at times. Fortunately others on the team seem to understand his personality, and he has a good relationship with the team and with me.