New Thoughts

First of all I need to say my thoughts are with Jim Carr of Rutgers and his Son. I really hope everything turns out well. My prayers are with him.

My Thoughts for Today

Lets start with a funny thing that happened to me on Saturday. As I have said in the past, and continue to say almost daily, you never know who knows who when it comes to recruiting basketball players. Many of the top kids in the area have parents who played or were affiliated with basketball years ago. They all are part of a basketball community that talks to each other all the time. If it is not a Duke, NC, UCLA, Kansas situation, alot of what happens is influenced by this network. And even those mentioned are impacted by the network. Somebody knows somebody who can be of assistance or can hurt a school during the recruitment process. This is why the best recruiters work so hard to find out the true people involved or those who can make a difference in the recruiting of a young man.

Now back to Saturday. I received a call from a man who would not tell me his name initially. But he did say alot of parents love reading my blog. Especially those who have kids being recruited by local schools. He said he knows me well but wanted to play a game. I had to guess who it was. Well after talking to him a minute or so I realized it was one of MY BEST FRIENDS from High School. A guy named "RED." He said he was trying to find me for a long time and got my number from a mutual friend who actually told him I was "LFBALL." We laughed and almost cried talking about the great times we had together. That's when HS basketball came up again. He wanted my thoughts on some things. He had a lot of respect for certain guys and seemed to know way too much about local HS basketball. He loves Bob Hurley, really knew all about New Heights and the staff there. Even knew the local Big East Teams. That's when he hit me with the big surprise. His son is Devon Collier, the big PF from St. Anthony's HS in Jersey City. He and I talked recruiting and the schools trying to get his son. I laughed as I told him how pissed some might be that we are lifetime friends. Looks like a few BE teams are very involved and many more trying to get in the door. Oh before I forget, the Dad is Roger "Red" Collier and he was a HECK of A Player for my HS team. He was a year behind the rest of us and although he was the 2nd best player on the team to Bruce "Sky" King, he did not start based on a coaching decision. Great for me because I was the one who would have sat the bench lol. But despite this, he always had a smile on his face, the prettiest girl, and was loved by EVERYONE!

Lots of great FDU feedback to my FDU comments from last week. Read the comment section to see some interesting thoughts.

A Great Coaching Staff Make-up

If I was a Head Coach of a local team and wanted to really do well in the recruiting wars why would I hire a bunch of coaches who all know the same people? What does that do? All the coaches stepping on each other trying to talk to mutual friends is almost a waste of a position. I honestly would not even want my coaches to be friendly before they are hired and definitely not from the same area or know the same people.

I think a staff locally should have the following:

Head Coach From NY, NJ, Pa., Conn
Asst. Coach From NYC with NYC based connections
Asst. Coach From Philly with Philly based connections
Asst. Coach From DC or Conn. with Coaching Connections
DBO From Conn or DC with Connections

These guys should not even know the same people. They should have great contacts that will get them into the doors of the better players from Conn to Washington, DC.