Tuesday Thoughts

Big News From DePaul University

Seems DePaul wants to make some serious moves in basketball and Jerry Wainwright, a very nice and somewhat popular man, is not a part of them. Though he will be back for another season or two based on his contract, all of his assistants are gone. Were they forced out? Did they resign? What difference does it make because the bottom line is they will have new guys on the recruitment trail this summer.

Now the interesting stuff. Chicago is a tough town and the area HS and AAU coaches control the talent pool there better than any other area in the entire country. There will never be outside influences controlling Chicago kids. This is why you see Mack Irvin's kid Lance being mentioned as a possible assistant. Who ever they hire will have to be unofficially approved by the Chicago power brokers.

DePaul is the way they are right now because when The Legendary Ray Meyers retired and left the program to his son Joey a rift occurred because the area HS and AAU guys felt left out and slighted for some reason. The result was they closed DePaul down and area kids did not attend. They even hired Lance Irving, Mack Irving's son as an assistant. But when those guys close you down you are closed down. Brooklyn was like this years ago. So was most of NYC. Now a coach can come in a mess over a kid and no one cares and they continue to send and approve of kids attending that coach's school. If Derrick Charactor had attended HS in Chicago you would not had seen a chi town kid at Louisville for many years based on the perception of how he was treated.

Yes Chicago is a tough town but they tend to stick together in most cases. As far as Gary DeCaeser is concerned he will be able to get something based on his connections. I still love him as a HS coach who ran a tight ship. I would love to see him back on the HS level. If that happened my Grand Son would have a difficult time choosing between Gary and Danny Hurley lol. Unfortunately as a college assistant he will be less effective because in NYC alot of folks are anti Gary from his days at St. Raymond's where they looked at him as arrogant and very anti local AAU and travel team basketball. In fact to keep his players away from various programs he started his own called the Bronx Ravens and had Adidas fund them.

SJU Information

Nice to hear Norm Roberts found time to attend Winston Nicholas funeral. Folks can say what they want but this guy is a classy guy! He also is really working hard to get the job done on and off the court. I just hope folks will be patient with him. Because with or without Lance Stephenson I feel he will have an improved team next season and an even better team the following season.

Does anyone actually understand this NCAA Clearing House stuff?

Called the office for two kids last week concerning eligibility and two different people gave two different interpretations of what they needed to be eligible for D1 participation. Unbelievable system. Now I have to call in my specialist, Russel Shular from Youth Education Through Sports. I know he will have the correct answers.