Baylor Picks Up Some Massive Recruits

oSuJeff97 said:
Possibly.

But you have to understand how this looks from outside the program.

Baylor goes from nearly getting the program put on death penalty, to scoring some decent (but not elite) recruits in the first few years of Drew to - all of a sudden - beating out the best programs in the country for elite recruits the past few years?

And it's not like this is a tradition-rich program that just had a few down years... Baylor has no basketball history to speak of. They had accomplished virtually nothing on the court before they started landing elite recruts all of a sudden.

Surely you can see how this looks from the outside.

Add to the fact that it's not exactly a well-kept secret that Drew is disliked in the coaching community.

I'm not going to sit here and say that Drew and his staff are cheating - just to say that what has happened in the past few years looks very suspicious from the outside.
Click to expand...

Pretty much my thoughts on the subject. Could something be going on? Sure, but that could be said for a lot of programs.
 
oSuJeff97 said:
Possibly.

But you have to understand how this looks from outside the program.

Baylor goes from nearly getting the program put on death penalty, to scoring some decent (but not elite) recruits in the first few years of Drew to - all of a sudden - beating out the best programs in the country for elite recruits the past few years?

And it's not like this is a tradition-rich program that just had a few down years... Baylor has no basketball history to speak of. They had accomplished virtually nothing on the court before they started landing elite recruts all of a sudden.

Surely you can see how this looks from the outside.

Add to the fact that it's not exactly a well-kept secret that Drew is disliked in the coaching community.

I'm not going to sit here and say that Drew and his staff are cheating - just to say that what has happened in the past few years looks very suspicious from the outside.
Click to expand...

Ill say it Jeff. They are violating rules. They will get caught eventually.
 
OULad said:
Ill say it Jeff. They are violating rules. They will get caught eventually.
Click to expand...

I'm not going to flat out say they are violating rules because I have no proof of that. But I do agree with Jeff that something does not add up in the eyes of an outsider.
 
If all of these great recruits are a result of Drew being such a wonderful recruiter, it just seems odd that he never had this kind of recruiting success prior to coming to Baylor.
 
MsProudSooner- not true. Drew had landed a top 25 in the nation recruiting class at VALPO before he left to coach for Baylor. Not an easy task at Valpo. They had some tournament success but in terms of exposure, Valpo is a much harder sell than Baylor.

OSUJeff- it is not like Drew built this overnight like Lavin is doing at St John's. He went after the big fish immediately at Baylor when he took the job. But he missed on almost every big man recruit that he went after: Palacios, Randolph, Arthur, Morgan (1st time around), Griffin, James, Bryan Davis. All of these guys admitted that Baylor recruited them the hardest but all of them chose other schools.

This is year 8 in the Drew regime at Baylor. And he now has 2 NCAA appearances, an elite 8 and a lottery pick to sell. The players sell Baylor and not just the ones that play for him. I know for a fact that a player at OSU is not hurting Baylor's recruiting efforts. And so did a former player at Texas who told a high profile Texas recruit that if he had it to do over again he would play for Self (gag) or Drew.

Guys like Tweety Carter, Ekpe Udoh, Quincy Acy and Perry Jones are tremendous recruiting assets for the program. They all love Baylor and sell it at every chance to anyone who would listen. Any good program has that going for them. But I think Texas for example is hurt by players giving less than enthusiastic endorsements of Barnes.

I completely understand why someone unknowledgeable about Baylor would accuse them of cheating. No historical success and all of a sudden they are in the conversation for top 10 recruits each year.

But I've been watching this since the start. The first recruiting class was Aaron Bruce, Tim Bush, Roscoe Biggers, Mamadou Diene, Kevis Shipman and Patrick Fields. None of those guys were top 150 players in the nation. And all were role players at Baylor at best.

Now the next year, Drew signed a good class. But all had their flaws and were unwanted by "big" programs because of it: Dugat, Jerrells, Rogers and Jari Vanttaja. Dugat and Jerrells were top 150 players but undersized. Rogers was a top 150 player- athletic but soft and a reputation for a poor work ethic.

Really not all that surprising that Baylor is having recruiting success now. Drew has the second longest tenure of any coach in the big 12 (Barnes- longest). There has been very little turnover on the staff- Driscoll took the head job at North Florida two years ago but the main recruiters have been there a while (Morefield, Tang and Mills).

BigTime and Soonersam will tell you that a Baylor coach is almost always present at every big AAU event. Players and coaches notice that stuff. Of course there is a big agenda with every big 12 rival to squash Baylor's success. You can guarantee that Texas and Barnes hate it.

Baylor if they get Miller will have commitments/signings from potentially 4 straight lottery picks at the forward position:

Ekpe Udoh- 2010
Perry Jones- 2011
Quincy Miller- 2012
Isaiah Austin- 2013

That is a lot of momentum for the program. I expect the accusations of cheating to get louder and louder before people throw in the towel and say, "Dang- Baylor is a force to be reckoned with in basketball."

I've seen it before- Boeheim at Syracuse, John Thompson at Georgetown, even Coach K at Duke to some extent. I played basketball at a high school that sent 6 guys to D1 in the DC area. I know what went on in the recruiting game back then (mid 80s). The only difference between now and then is that there is less cheating now and I bet rarely is a player paid. Too much 24/7 media to get away with it like you could in the 80s. But there was plenty of *****ing about cheating back then with the names I mentioned. Just not a blog or message board comment about it every day since that stuff didn't exist.
 
Man i don't know. This is kind of like Brady Anderson hitting 50 jacks. I won't rush to judgment, but something is starting to not smell right. I find it hard to believe that Baylor is just "outworking" everybody else. I remember a certain coach that we all know very well saying he was just "outworking" everyone too.
 
seniorsooner said:
Man i don't know. This is kind of like Brady Anderson hitting 50 jacks. I won't rush to judgment, but something is starting to not smell right. I find it hard to believe that Baylor is just "outworking" everybody else. I remember a certain coach that we all know very well saying he was just "outworking" everyone too.
Click to expand...


And he still didn't sign a top ranked, blue chip recruit every year for several years.

In case these articles hadn't been linked already:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/14/sports/ncaabasketball/14baylor.html?_r=2&emc=eta1

http://msn.foxsports.com/collegebasketball/story/sources-ncaa-investigating-baylor-mens-basketball-101210
 
The fact that Drew is so disliked by so many coaches actually leads me to be more inclined to believe he's clean. If coaches don't like a guy and have evidence that he's cheating, it's getting to the NCAA. And if the NCAA has the ability to put the hammer to a program like Baylor, they're going to do it.

One of the things that brought all the trouble on Quin with the NCAA was that he ran afoul of Tom Izzo (recruitment of several Michigan players, some we got and some we didn't) and Roy Williams (because he's a hypocritical piece of **** who didn't like seeing a young coach winning recruiting battles at Mizzou). Those coaches turned the NCAA on Quin (they didn't find a whole lot, but it was enough).

If a coach is despised by other coaches and still isn't getting in trouble with the NCAA, he's either not cheating or he's damn good at it.
 
Sawyer- I agree with you. Richard Justice (Texas grad) of the Houston Chronicle did a long article about this very thing in March. If Indiana turned Baylor in over this text to a coach, they didn't leak the least damaging thing to the press. They brought the thing that they thought would put baylor in the worst possible light to win Perea's commit. Just like two years ago when the Aggies accused Baylor of cheating to get Anthony Jones. The NCAA investigated both schools and found no evidence of wrongdoing. Same thing will happen here.
 
If Drew is so good and respected why is he still at Baylor?
 
I bet Nash goes to OSU or KU, Baylor would surpise me. I would rather have Miller over nash anyway.
 
Bringing up Valpo recruiting is very interesting. Most Indiana (where he grew up and learned to coach) HS and college basketball coaches despise Scott Drew and have for a long time. He has a horrible reputation among the coaches for unethical, if not rule-breaking, recruiting methods from the time he spent at Valpo (only 1 year as HC).

Here's the thing for me- when your peers, at all levels, can't stand you and the way you conduct yourself professionally, there's a problem.
 
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