Is there an OSU basketball message board?

[elmocarp]

The quality of the insiders on any given team's board(s) is, IMO, a reflection of what the coach intends to get out there.

I know very little about the insiders here or how Capel runs his program (although I will admit, it's a very nice site... the only non-Mizzou college sports site I ever visit), but I don't doubt for a second that he's very aware of this place and has a pretty good handle on what information gets out and when. The fact that there are "good" insiders here, to me, just means Capel wants Sooner fans talking.

To me, it makes a ton of sense for a coach to "leak" information in a way that it gets out to the fans. However, Mike Anderson doesn't operate that way.... thus, the MU insiders are pretty darn weak (the few "insiders" we have, IMO, don't have a clue what they're talking about). For example, Anderson has been recruiting Pressey for the better part of three years. But early this spring, a lot of the information out there was about Baylor, LSU, Arizona, UConn, OU, etc. Almost no mention of Mizzou. But Anderson had Pressey in for an unofficial visit in the spring completely under the radar. No one knew about it until well after the fact. And now Pressey's a Tiger.

Another example: right now MU has two open scholarships. None of our "insiders" seem to have a clue what Anderson intends to do with them. Now that Scott and Cobbins are off the board, no one even knows if Anderson intends to take a guard and a big, two bigs, or just use one scholarship. And whatever he does plan on doing, the only name we really have right now is Ricardo Ratliffe (apparently our top target right now, and possibly was higher on our list than Cobbins).

Anderson's made a habit over his three+ years at Mizzou of pulling recruits out of nowhere. Two years ago, Mizzou was recruiting Suggs and Releford. Both chose elsewhere, and almost immediately after that we find out we've been recruiting Kim English for some time. No one even knew who Kim English was (he wasn't even in the databases at rivals or scout), but as it turns out he was being recruited just as heavily as the other two (and so far he looks to be better than both).

Anderson and Capel seem to have very different philosophies when it comes to recruiting and team building, and the quality of "inside information" available for either team is, in my opinion, a reflection of that.

Or maybe not. Just a random observation I had, perhaps not necessarily a valid one (but I think it is).

Sawyer, I enjoyed reading this and I think there is some validity to it, if not for the actual content then for the line of thinking that enabled you to come to your conclusions. However, there is pretty much no one that has any "inside" info around here when it comes to recruiting. The guys we have here that are close to the program have access to the players, pick-up games, open practices...things like that. Other than that, its just a bunch of well informed (and not-so-well informed) posters that follow recruiting.

No one had any inside scoop on Cameron Clark or T.J. Taylor committing. People were able to read the terrain, that's all. Heck, I have been cautioning people lately from counting Clark as a commit because I felt we were reading too much into his recruitment without having anything really concrete. Last year, almost everyone was surprised by the commitments of Tiny Gallon, Andrew Fitzgerald and Steven Pledger. In fact, since Capel has been at OU, I would say the only recruits we really saw coming were Kyle Hardrick, Blake Griffin, Cade Davis, Willie Warren and Tommie Mason-Griffin. The rest have been surprises, and many of them were guys we had almost no idea Capel was in on.

And Henzo, well he is just good at what he does. But part of his credibility comes from the fact that I have probably never heard him suggest or refer to "inside sources." He just knows recruiting really well. And he does a great job of putting stuff together and pointing us in the right direction. But I've never gotten the sense from him that he has a special level of access to Coach Capel's "War Room" or whatever.

I can easily forgive the mistake, as I assume it comes from a general unfamiliarity with this board. I don't think Capel and Anderson (or many other coaches, for that matter) are very different at all when it comes to how they handle privileged information. No one on this board has special access to what Capel's plan is for this or any other class. We're just a bunch of guys that know and love hoops and hoops recruiting.

 

[Seymore Cox]

I think it's a great point. The Sutton regime had a multitude of "insiders", while Ford seems to have very few.

How much of that is Ford still being relatively new, and people haven't been able to "infiltrate" yet, I don't know.

Last year when Karron Johnson committed, I don't think ANYONE had heard the name.

The Sutton regime only had 1 insider as far as recruiting went and that was Greg Swaim and he was good. Partly because Greg helped organize fan participation and got first hand info from Sean. Now do I think BT and Henzo get first hand info? That's pretty obvious. Capel is a guy that wants to use every avenue whether it be social networking or message boards to be proactive in recruiting. Ford doesn't seem to be that type of guy. He is very close vest with recruiting. Roger Franklin's cousin and and PawneeHoops, the friend of David Page, can only get so close to the progrm. Roger Franklin's guy is the one that had OSU fans thinking that they led for Cam.