Another genius post by our resident troll.

We have recruited transfers from big-time schools.  That SHOULD counter-balance the original premise that we don't recruit well.  Some work out - Armwood, Creek.  Our current ones are not stepping up effectively.

Yeah, it does make some logical sense - thinking of transfers as hired guns who can shore up weakness, fill gaps, and meet needs left by a consistent core makes sense to me. 

Think about why players transfer - pardon my wording here, i don't mean this in a bad or judgmental way - but unless your coach told you "you are no longer part of our plans," transferring is inherently "selfish."  Again, I dont mean to level this as any sort of criticism. I believe it is always players' right and prerogative to look out for themselves.

And while i dont think someone transferring should be branded as not a team player without real evidence to that effect, they have also self-selected to some extent as someone who will prioritize themself and is looking for their optimal situation as an individual.

There is some logic to a team of all hired guns having real trouble with cohesion and synchronicity.

At GW's level, we're not going to build a program around a series of transfers. They can and should augment a good HS recruiting core.

Only Bishop and Lindo have even played together prior to the year, and it was a partial pandemic season with a 3-5 record A10 slate of games.

How many very good seasons from a HS recruit have we gotten since the vaunted 2012 class?

I'd say Yuta. Battle, and maybe Freeman this year will be (a little premature there) 

There have been some pretty good players, but of course most of them transfered out. How many 4 year GW careers starting with the 2013 class have we produced?  Yuta. 

Uh, is that it? Serious question. Is he the only beginning with the GW arrival class of 13 that stayed 4 years?

Yikes. 

So maybe 2, Yuta & Juice 

All of this from Mayhem is correct and germane to our situation.
 Sadly will finally take the bait.
As for HS recruits, Sina (all big East rookie) and Mitola (strong Dartmouth performer) were better point guards than what we have, although Brayon has shown early, but interesting indications of being one of GW's better point guards one day. Steeves would be comparatively great at Center/PF for this team. Honestly, they could use Skylar's (a walkon) shooting.
   Tyler Cavanaugh, NBA and big money overseas played, NIT most valuable player was a transfer for ML, along with Zeke and Creek. Not too shabby. Quite the opposite.
 As far as 4 year HS recruits, how about KevLar, Joe Mac and Pato? All very good to top 4 year players. Two of which are earning big dollars overseas, with Pato having played his way into the NBA and the Olympics,  and Joe Mac became a coach here.
    Some of those recruited and transferring out: Jordan, PJ, Kethan, and Jair (MK's second choice at that slot) all played more consistently better than what we have seen in recent years, especially in a team game. ML recruit Marfo led the nation in rebounds (as Jordan nearly did in scoring) and would have been a great get to have back on this team. Would be invaluable for this non-rebounding, non-physical team, even with a couple of points a game.
   These are just off the top. Were there misses? Sure. Not as many as now.
       

Read before Barry tries to re-write GW history and keep us focused on next Summer's Kenner League prospects.

Joel Joseph wrote:

Lets not forget that GW had to be aware that Nero openly dated undergrad/graduate students at GW during his tenure. I was on campus at that time and everyone who followed GW basketball knew about it. I'm sure it was one of the many things Lonergan complained to the administration about. I still get the "creeps" thinking about a 50 year old school administrator preying on young twenty somethings. Any other school in America would have fired Nero immediately, instead of firing a successful coach and then having to pay Nero $1.3 million and a kick in the rear out the door. Gotta love GW. I always said it would take at least a decade to get over that bad decision. Here we are approaching the end of 6 years. Only 4 more to go!

 
Given the situation,the buyout does seem really odd and like it would open GW to liability.
   Yes,this is very relevant, as we are still suffering financially from this,witness our current buyout .
discussion.
And how the program is circling the drain.

GW's only NCAA trip, since Hobbs took us 3 straight years was 2013-14.  The Freshman recruits on that team:

Miguel Cartagena, Skylar White, Nick Griffin. 

That's really when things begin to slide, in terms of acquiring talent.  That's about the worst GW recruiting class of the last 30 years.  

We've just has too many total whiffs since 2013 whether its, Cimino, Miguel, Shandon Brown, Mezie or Goss.  The HS recruiting year after year has put us at the bottom of the A10.  You are your talent and we have bottom of the A10 talent.  We have 1 Freshman and 2-3 transfers that are above that level, that's not enough

Why is a team heading to the NCAA tournament bringing in a recruiting class of Miguel, Nick Griffin and Skylar?  We've had at least a dozen players here who looked totally incapable of playing at this level, starting with that class.

Even those last 4 Hobbs years, where the talent did slide, it was never guys like that.  There was talent, Hollis, Pellom, Lasan, Tony Taylor, Rob Digg, and that was a big drop from the core of those tourney teams.

In 15 years we've gone from Pops, Mike Hall, Carl Elliott, Mo Rice, JR Pinnock, to levels of players just nowhere near the top of the A10.  






 

Last edited by The Dude (1/13/2022 3:16 am)

Gwmayhem wrote:

Yes, what a shock.  The head coach who had just led his team to the NIT Championship gets fired after spending the better part of two years whistleblowing the actions of his obviously disturbed athletic director.  An athletic director who regularly paid at least one of his players, wanting to have a sexual relationship with him.  The athletic director is shown on video behaving very much like an individual who could not possibly hold the title of Athletic Director.  Meanwhile, the AD schemes to retaliate, rallying a former disgruntled assistant and several players who either barely played or who played far less than they expected to speak out to the Washington Post against the coach.  What comes out are fairly ridiculous examples of "abuse", like referring to an openly LGBT player as the gay kid,  a player who was recruited by the coach and who the player indicated he had great respect for.   Or, citing that a player who wants to play professionally one day will likely end up on welfare, a throwaway, not to be taken literally joke that if considered to be crossing a line, is a line likely crossed by most every Division 1 basketball coach in America.   Nevertheless, he is fired, sues for wrongful termination,  and is awarded a huge settlement.  His replacement, his former assistant who surely would have witnessed and been privy to many acts of the former coach's "abuse" without blowing a whistle on this,  is in way over his head.  He lasts three seasons, leaving us with the conclusion that he couldn't recruit well, be it because of his experience, the cloud surrounding the program, or both.  The current coach is in his third season, has turned over the entire roster he inherited including some of his original recruits, and the program continues to greatly disappoint.

100% of this.
Also remember that Mojo's hire (by TV) was likely in exchange for never speaking about ML's tenure (to my knowledge, he never did), especially to exonerate him.
Also remember GW (TV?) has erased ML from retrospective tributes to the NIT team he coached, in a year the school set an all-time record for wins in a season.
When you consider these completely non-basketball (if not anti-basketball) moves, you then start to realize that yes, TV (who was PN's second in command) remains here for non basketball reasons.
Despite witnessing, if not presiding over, the ML-PN affair, our current AD also was party to an EEOC action alleging bias in promotions within the department, and has presided over historically bad seasons in its flagship program.
If you wonder why she would still be here, realize that not only are GW's coaching decisions made completely outside the lines of the basketball court, so are its decisions about leadership in the athletic department.
As long as it remains political... and Men's Basketball is the 115th most important thing to the admin ... nothing substantive will happen and the vector remains downward. At least in terms of basketball.
It should be pretty obvious to most of us that, as with Mojo, TV should be let go, just based on team results and how closely tied she is to the disgraced admin. Then a new AD should hire a new coach. (Yes it's 2011 again.) The process could take two to three years, we would continue bottoming throughout that period as we did during Mojo, but it would at least show an awareness that on-court success is important.
But will these things happen? Does GW think on-court success is important?
Do we make basketball decisions or do we continue with a coach who talks nice to players above all else and an AD who, as incompetent and even responsible for the mayhem as she may be, is part of a protected class and probably would not be let go without some other termination package we likely "cannot afford," for most of the same reasons we made PN a millionaire?
GW doesn't have the money to buy out JC or TV, but it had $3M to buy out ML and $1.3M to buy out Nero.
Looks like we've maxed out on expensive decisions.
We fans of GW Basketball will stop talking about this willful self-destruction the second it stops.

Last edited by Mentzinger (1/13/2022 9:52 am)