I'll Be a Son of a Shark

[CoachC]

July 7: The nation's top recruit who paid us a visit, won the MVP of the east coast jam. If we still had any chance of landing him, it's probably gone now. His stock skyrocketed even further.

[CoachC]

July 9: Have spent the last couple of days at the Las Vegas revue. One of our recruits wins MVP of the camp. The "Shark" Jerry Tarkanian happened to show up at the camp which delighted everyone. I was a bit taken aback when Jerry actually sought me out and introduced himself. He said he'd been watching my career with some interest which I found even stranger. He quickly added that it was because of the Amoeba Zone, and he even offered me a few pointers. What an honor. I thanked him very much for his input, but I'm not sure what to make of all the strange looks he kept giving me. Stranger still, Ma actually came to Las Vegas with us (at her own expense of course) to do a little playing at the slots, and showed up at camp the last day to ask me how things were going. At one point, I glanced across the gym and I'll be damned if she wasn't talking to Jerry! I asked her what the heck that was all about, and she just smiled and said she always though he was a colorful character and just wanted to get her picture taken with him. Who would have figured Ma as a basketball groupie! It wasn't til later that I remembered she had given me her cellphone to hold on for her. Not sure how she managed to get that picture taken with him. Oh well, I gave up long ago trying to figure out Ma. She's a colorful figure in her own right.

[CoachC]

July 31: Recruiting is going well. We're getting strong interest from a lot of guys with the potential to help us. Nobody in the top 10 or even top 25, but it's more important that they fit our system and a lot of these guys do. It should be a very interesting next couple of months.

[Wayne23]

I'll take just a teeny, tiny bit of cred for the distance vs. region thing working. During beta for this version I did a lot of leg work figuring the distances from place to place so that Gary could get the distance thing right. He chose to use at least some of it and yeah, what you said about distance vs. region is true for the game. I think it makes a whole lot of sense.

[CoachC]

Sep 4: We've made a short list of the recruits we are hoping to land. The next couple of weeks will be very busy.

While most of our returnees haven't done badly in the class room we do arrange tutoring for the handful who have the potential to be at risk now that classes have begun.

[CoachC]

Yep, Wayne, you did good! It costs me about the same to go to Colorado Oklahoma or Texas or as it does to go to Arizona or Utah, but a lot more to go to California or most of the other states in the west or to Missouri or Iowa in the plains which is as it should be.

[CoachC]

this is the first school i've coached that wasn't pretty much in the middle of a region, so the first time I've really had a chance to witness that.

[CoachC]

Sep 11: Before we have a chance to visit him we lose one of our top choices to Notre Dame. We had offered and he was interested, but we couldn't match the Irish in the thing that mattered to him most....staying closer to home.

[CoachC]

Sep 18: All of our home visits have been going very well and we are keeping our fingers crossed.

And just today we got our first verbal commitment from:

6'6 218 lb Juco Soph forward Vernon Johnson from Seligman, AZ. A bit too undersized to play the 5, he is nevertheless very strong and athletic with excellent defensive and rebounding skills ranked number 49 over-all, he'll be a nice piece of the puzzle. We win out over Pac 10 schools Stanford and Washington because of his desire to stay a bit closer to home.

[CoachC]

Sep 25: It's a red letter day to be sure! We get verbal commitments from the top 2 recruits on our shopping list.

First:
6'9 264 lb HS Sr Center Martin Ray out of Middletown HS in Middletown, Deleware.

Athletic, strong, mobile, with terrific rebounding, defensive and shotblocking skill sets, he also has a lot of scoring moves inside and is capable of becoming a franchise-type player for us. He also shows a great ability to pass out of the post. In other words, a perfect fit for our system. Ranked 35th overall, he was highly recruited. This time we were able to win out over schools in the east because of our position to offer him a lot more playing time.

And:

6'7 217 lb. HS SR. Forward Jon Angell out of Lakeland HS in Lakeland, Florida. With a nice outside stroke at the 3 and a fine passer, he's also a strong defender and rebounder for his size, and could probably play a little 4. He also has the ball handling and passing abilities to even play some at the 2 in a pinch. Ranked 41st overall by the national scouting service, we were able to beat out several teams from the SEC, again because of our ability to offer him more playing time.

That fills our final scholarship. Ray and Angell are both very good students so our recruiting for this year has essentially come to a close, although we will continue to look at a number of college juniors for next season. All in all, I have to say this was a wonderful recruitment year for us. No one in the top 10, but 3 very very good fits to our system all of whom were top 50 recruits leaves me very happy.