April 1, 2009. The day that may soon become a state-wide holiday. The day the University of Kentucky hired their new head men's basketball coach, John Calipari.
What has Coach John Calipari accomplished in his first 8 weeks as coach at UK (since the season doesn't start until November)? Not much... just the recruitment of the #1 incoming class in college basketball (and maybe the #1 class in the recent history of college basketball). (Oh, that and over 95,000 followers on twitter.)
Consider the two classes that have been talked about at the top of the all-time recruiting list: Michigan's 1991 class, "the Fab Five," and Ohio State's 2006 class, "the Thad 5" (named after their coach, Thad Matta). Here are their rankings when they signed with their schools--
* A few things to note about this comparison. First, Raymar Morgan, although offered a scholarship by Ohio State, ended up at Michigan State. They instead signed Junior College (JUCO) transfer, Othello Hunter. Also, the rankings are a little difficult because the major recruiting services (Rivals and Scouts) weren't around in 1991, so Michigan's rankings are based on Bob Gibbons' rankings. Also, this chart uses Scout.com; if you look at Rivals.com, they listed OSU's 4 freshman as #1, #13, #18, and #36 (three 5-star recruits and one 4-star). Either way, these were two amazing recruiting classes, both as prospects and, as we learned from watching them, in actual performance. Four of Michigan's recruits eventually made their way to the NBA, and three of the Buckeyes' recruits were selected in the first round of the 2007 NBA draft.Both these recruiting classes ended up getting their teams to the championship game of the NCAA tournament in their first year (and Michigan got there again as Sophmores)... though each time they lost in the finals. Michigan lost by 20 points in the 1992 championship game to the Duke team that beat UK in the final four (you know, the game with "the shot" that CBS shows over and over again every year during March Madness). Then Michigan lost in 1993 to North Carolina, with Chris Weber's infamous time-out technical. Then, more recently, the Buckeyes lost in the 2007 championship game to Florida.
Now to Kentucky's 2009 recruiting class. Calipari has signed 6 players for the upcoming basketball season. (I wish I had a creative name for this class, sort of like "the Fab Five"... maybe "the Cal Six"?)
Name- position/ rivals.com ranking (& stars)/ scout.com ranking
John Wall- Point Guard/ #1 (5-stars)/ #2
DeMarcus Cousins- Power Forward/ #2 (5-stars)/ #3
Daniel Orton- Center/ #22 (5-stars)/#17
Eric Bledsoe- Point Guard/ #23 (5-stars)/ #37
John Hood- Shooting Guard/ #40 (4-stars)/ #45
(who recently won the Kentucky high school high jump championship... reminds me of Jeff Shepherd who was a high jump champ)
Darnell Dodson (JUCO transfer)- Small Forward/ nr (4-stars)/ nr
Now, granted, we don't know how this recruiting class will turn out yet, how they'll perform as a team during the game. But the reason I say this might be the best ever is because there are three things that have never happened before (at least since the modern era of recruiting services): one team recruits the #1 and #2 top freshmen in the country, one team recruits four 5-star freshman, and one team has 5 freshman recruits in the top 40 in the country.
Don't forget that this goes along with some strong returning talent. If Jodie Meeks (last year's leading scorer in the SEC), who currently has his name in the NBA draft, decides to come back for his senior year, we will have two returning first team all-SEC players with him and Patrick Patterson. On top of that, we have a leading shot-blocker in Perry Stevenson and a maturing scorer in Darius Miller (who looks like he was made for Calipari's "dribble-drive motion offense").
The only problem UK has is too many players for not enough scholarships. Here's where we stand now.
13 scholarships=
6 new recruits +
Patrick Patterson (Jr.) +
Darius Miller (So.) +
Perry Stevenson (Sr.) +
Ramon Harris (Sr.) +
maybe Jodie Meeks (Sr.) ???
maybe Jodie Meeks (Sr.) ???
So far we've already said goodbye to Jared Carter and Michael Porter (who graduated) and Donald Williams and AJ Stewart (who are transferring out). So, if Meeks returns and all the new players qualify academically, this leaves only two scholarships for these four remaining players:
Kevin Galloway (Sr.)
Matt Pilgrim (Sr.)
DeAndre Liggins (So.)
Josh Harrellson (Jr.)-- who, according to his facebook status, is officially coming back next year :)
All of this is translating into an amazing turn around in the Kentucky program. At the end of last season, all of the Wildcat fans were bemoaning our poor performance in the NIT, looking at the probable loss of Patterson and Meeks to the NBA, worried about our anemic recruiting, staring at the looming loss of "winningest program" status, and annoyed that we had a coach that didn't even seem to care. Now with the arrival of John Calipari and his recruiting class, we are projected to be a preseason top 5 team, a final four contender, an SEC favorite, and optimistic about remaining the all-time winningest program (and beating UNC to 2000 wins... by the way, it's currently 1988 to 1984, with Kansas at 1970 and Duke at 1876). The future looks bright.
Go Cats!
By the way, here are some good blogs for lots of UK basketball updates and links to news stories:
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2 comments:
Obsessive, but ALL TRUE!
Great job Tim! They should put you on staff!
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