<a href="http://theinsidershoops.theinsiders.com/2/39796.html" target="_blank"> </font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Last year, we started the tradition of surveying college assistant coaches around the country. We asked them to questions ranging from national coach of the year to whom the best assistants in the business are. This week, we'll release the results from a survey of over 40 coaches. Here are the results for the top recruiter in the head coach category. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"></a>

I am surprised Matt Doherty isn't listed anywhere...

Well, we all know Billy has very deep pockets! Give Matt time, he will be up there with the best of them.

<small>[ March 12, 2002, 11:37 AM: Message edited by: rickheel ]</small>

Hopefully, that omission just comes from a lack of proven experience in recruiting. He has only pulled in two of the top classes in the country since he's been coach at UNC. Maybe some people think that happens by luck... I've heard many say that UNC recruits for itself. If so, then why did Coach K did voted second in that poll? Shouldn't Duke recruit for itself too?

-JD

It takes nothing to be able to recruit to Gainesville. Try recruiting to Tucson!

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Liquid Karma:
It takes nothing to be able to recruit to Gainesville. Try recruiting to Tucson!</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Gainesville: babes & beach within driving distance beat out being in the middle of nowhere

Tucson: warm weather, golf courses...okay, no beach, but guys will flock there for the golf & the chicks will follow the guys, as well as to catch some good rays.

Poor Doh...what does Chapel Hill have as a draw? Uh, we're 2 hours from the beach and 4 hours from not-so-great ski country. But there are pencil-neck geeks in Durham, agricultural engineers in Raleighwood, and lotsa of baby-blue to be had in Hell...what more could an athlete want? <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" /> <img border="0" alt="[Laughing]" title="" src="graemlins/laughing.gif" />

Saying Tucson has warm weather is like saying it drizzles in Seattle. Tucson is scorching hot. I am impressed they can get anyone to come and play football or basketball there just because of the intense heat combined with intense physical activity of their respective sports.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Poor Doh...what does Chapel Hill have as a draw? Uh, we're 2 hours from the beach and 4 hours from not-so-great ski country. But there are pencil-neck geeks in Durham, agricultural engineers in Raleighwood, and lotsa of baby-blue to be had in Hell...what more could an athlete want? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">So, the coach can't recruit and the school doesn't have any draw. Pray tell, how does he keep stumbling upon top-ten recruiting classes?

-JD

The question is how does he stumble across these classes, yet still sucks?

Donovan is a great recruiter. Why can't Steve Robinson get the same talent? Or the guy at Miami of Fla?

The guy does have some def. advantages, but don't sell him short.

Steve Robinson brought in some great talent, but he is a pathetic coach and failed to use the talent properly.

Robinson's players are not nearly at the level of Donovan's players. FSU might even have the better advantages with all of the hot girls they have. They still have the sunshine and the fairly close beaches, but man, oh man, they have some hot girls!

Doherty has had one good recruiting year. I dont think that should merit him being one of the best recruiters at the nation.

Even though he's had a great recruiting year this year...it could have been, and should have been much better. He got one good inside player. He should have gotten 3. He had immediate playing time to offer and one of the greatest college basketball programs EVER...and he struck out on numerous targets. He's luck he got May (thanks to the help of Knight). May was a lock for Indiana until the last minute.

Last year's UNC, which was suppose to be a "great" one...has so far turned out only one really good player in Williams. Scott had done alright, and Manuel's performance has been very subpar.

Doherty has a ways to go before he can cement himself as one of the nation's best recruiters.

Doherty has had two good recruiting years, according to the *gurus*. I agree that there is more to being a recruiter -- it's also about finding the right players to fit your team. Still, I think Doherty has done a fairly good job of that.

Manuel and Scott are two players who struggled a lot this year, but I think will be better with more talent around them. Most freshmen aren't thrown into the fire quite like they were this past year. Some freshmen take a little more time to find themselves -- it just so happened that Carolina ended up with three like that off the bat. Yet, I still have confidence in both Manuel and Scott.

Degrading this past year's class in just plain ludicrous. Raymond Felton is arguably the best point guard in high school. Rashaad McCants has been rated by many as the highest shooting guard prospect. Sean May was top ten all of this past year.

So, Doherty had nothing to do with getting May, a player who was all but locked into going to Indiana since he was born? Even if Knight helped sway him away from Bloomington, why do you think Carolina was the place that he ended up going? Because no other schools wanted him? Please do tell....

Which three big men should UNC have gotten this past year? Francis? Fraser? Buckman? Does it mean you aren't a good recruiter if you don't get all the players you go after? Billy Donovan wanted Jackie Manuel, but he lost him to Doherty. Does that make him a bad recruiter? Does it make him a bad recruiter that he was going after Manuel in the first place?

Are you really criticizing Doherty for not pulling in a class loaded at every position in one year. He got three of the top players at their positions. He got Damion Grant, a top 100 prospect at the center position, and Byron Sanders, another big man who will surprise many this upcoming season.

Doherty also has some of the future stars of high school basketball singing his praises and Carolina's. Not bad, for someone who can't recruit....

-JD

I'm not saying Doherty did a bad job with this past year's recruiting class. He did a good job. Could he have done a better job?? I think so.

He did get the best player in the nation in Felton (screw big guys, Felton is the best). He seems to have gotten a great shooting guard in McCants. May also seems like a great big man.

What I was trying to say was...that he had a lot to offer to those other big men, and I (along with many other UNC fans) was very suprised when he didn't land a couple of them. I wont say he didn't have anything to do with the recruitment of May. He recruited May hard...so when Bobby Knight told May not to go to Bloomington, Doherty was there to scoop him up. There's nothing wrong with that at all.

But there's Fraser, Buckman, Randolph, even Kane. Kane is/was rated higher than both Grand and Sanders.

These are the things that Doherty could offer to all those top big men:

-Immediate playing time. No Lang, Capel, or Bersticker to take up their minutes. Even Jawad is more suited to the small forward position. All of those guys were power forwards or possible centers. When all of these high school kids are looking at the shortest possible route to the NBA, immediate playing time in the most televised conference in the nation is the best way to get there. That alone should have gotten a recruit or two for UNC.

-Playing for UNC. When these kids were growing up (and up until this year), UNC has been one of the best programs in the country. I'm sure that most of these kids at one time thought about playing in the Dean Dome with all the jerseys and banners hanging down. Playing against Duke at Cameron Indoo with Vitale going crazy in the background. Playing at the same place the greatest basketball player every played at. UNC in itself is a huge recruiting tool.

-Playing with the best point guard in the nation. Having Raymond Felton drive and draw a double team to create wide open layups and dunks would be very appealing to me. Kind of like a Jason Williams/Carlos Boozer relationship.

Then you throw in the fact that Doherty is suppose to be a "great recruiter"...then these kids should have been in the bag. I'm not trying to down Grant or Sanders, but better recruits have come into other ACC schools and have gotten no playing time at all. Now these guys are going to be pushed to have a decent amount of production if UNC is to be successful next year.

I think Doherty is a decent recruiter...but this class doesn't impress me. I sat behind Felton's family and friends at the Beachball Classic when Felton was a junior. All they could talk about was how Felton has been a UNC fan since he was a little kid and that's where he was going to go. That's not a great recruiting job to me. That's just a good job of wrapping up a lifelong UNC fan. I'll give him McCants and I'll give him May..even though he got some help with him. But he missed out on some MAJOR recruits that he NEEDED. That's all I have to say about that.

I admit that I was disappointed with the decisions of some of our prospects this past year, particularly Fraser and Francis. But, I really don't think Doherty could have done anything else to get some of these guys to come. He gave all the effort he could give -- they just chose to go somewhere else. I don't see anything changing their minds.

Doherty's biggest problem (and I'm not sure it's his doing) is that he come in late on the recruiting for some of these guys. For many, the senior year is much to late to join the game -- you have to make an impression early. This is a mistake that Doherty is working to correct with future prospects.

A byproduct of that is the fact that he's gotten stuck with putting all his eggs in one basket the past two years. Last year, he had limited prospects: all our top options ended up going to the NBA, so he was basically left with David Harrison go to recruit. Harrison chose to attend school with his brother -- I don't think that could be helped. This year, Doherty had a little more to work with. But, he still came in too late on some of these guys. Francis and Fraser were our big "misses", the ones that he gave the most effort. Most of the others (Buckman, etc.) were guys that showed up on the radar out of the blue. I think many of them knew where they were going by then, but they threw out the Carolina name just so they could say that UNC went after them.

I think Doherty learned from all of this and is working to make sure it never happens again (just like this past season, I hope).

-JD

<small>[ March 13, 2002, 03:43 AM: Message edited by: JD Heel ]</small>

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> I sat behind Felton's family and friends at the Beachball Classic when Felton was a junior. All they could talk about was how Felton has been a UNC fan since he was a little kid and that's where he was going to go. That's not a great recruiting job to me. That's just a good job of wrapping up a lifelong UNC fan. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Jason Williams was a UNC fan as well but he went elsewhere because of recruiting mistakes made by Carolina during their recruitment of him. Even though a player is a fan of a certain school, that doesn't make it a lock.

Doesn't make it a lock...but it sure as hell makes it easier.

Besides...you can't use Jason Williams because Guthridge decided not to recruit him because that would be recruiting over Curry.

Jason was more of a Rutgers fan than anything else. He was going to go there before his mom made him visit Duke.

This year's freshman class might not have been great, but they were better than what we had gotten the previous few years. Not to mention that they were recruited in a limited time frame too. I'll be happy to keep all of them, thank you.

Robinson could coach, but couldn't recruit worth the damn. He didn't even try to recruit in his own backyard. That's why he's gone.