Here is a clip from the Spain vs US U17 Championship[ game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL0Jp...ature=youtu.be
According to Swish Appeal
http://www.swishappeal.com/2014/9/14...ommits-to-duke
Angela Salvadores has committed to Duke. This is a pretty big deal.
Here is a clip from the Spain vs US U17 Championship[ game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL0Jp...ature=youtu.be
She looks like a heck of a get. Go Coach P and Duke!
Excellent. She will be fun to watch.
"This is the best of all possible worlds."
Dr. Pangloss - Candide
write up from Prospects Nation
http://www.prospectsnation.com/story...d-durham-bound
I guess now I get to do updates on a committed player too in addition to all of our former ones. Last season Angela was one of the top players in the second division in Spain. This year she has joined the defending Spanish champions, although financial issues have limited what they will be able to do this season. Good thing they added a player who they won't have to pay.
Her game looks a lot like Rubio's. Oderah and Kendall must be salivating, thinking about all the easy finishes they're going to get at the basket as juniors and seniors, and Becca's new mantra must be "run to the corner and square up."
One wonders whether P will turn her loose to do her thing.
And it's interesting that our two top-ten recruits in the class of 2015 are both PGs. Feast to famine and back to feast?
Why start now? There is no evidence that McCallie will alter the offense to take advantage of highly talented and skilled players, but will demand that players alter their game to fit her schemes. Abby Waner.
Don't mean to take the luster off this excellent recruit, who does seem to be "all that." Just felt the need to temper expectations with the reality of the great recruits that came before.
Sage Grouse
---------------------------------------
'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
Why start now? Let's see ... (1) to win, (2) because it's for the good of the program, (3) (speculation) to honor representations made in the recruiting process.
BTW, mentioning Abby Waner and Salvadores in the same paragraph, as though they were comparable talents, is laughable. Help me out here, what year was it that Abby was MVP of the U-17 world championships and rang up 40 against a superior team in the final?
Last edited by burnspbesq; 09-18-2014 at 04:53 PM.
1)"Why start now" refers to McCallie starting to take better advantage of the very talented players she recruits to the program so the program can finally win the big games against other teams with elite talent. 2)I agree it would be good for the program for the coaching staff to devise, teach and implement schemes to take best advantage of the talents of the players on the team and finding ways to hide their weaknesses. It would have been good to start doing this 7 years ago or any time since then. (one example is the use of Krystal Thomas who did not develop much of a "back to the basket" game, but was one of the only posts to do a decent job defending Brittney Griner, but spent almost all of her time on the floor posting up) 3) I know a bunch of players who have felt representations during recruiting were not honored. Some stuck with the program and some didn't. When she arrived at Duke, McCallie told returning players she would watch film, study the players and take advantage of the strengths they've already displayed at the Div.1 college level. You can look at player stats of returning players and easily see that several players decreased in effectiveness, in some cases, with severe drops in their season stats.
Due to my lapse in response time, I see that another person has posted that Abby Waner entered Duke after winning at least one NPOY award coming out of high school, which is true. My experience with foreign players coming to the US is that the stats don't transfer easily - especially extraordinary stats from one tournament. Basically I'm saying that I see the honors of these two players as being comparable, with Abby being named the best in the country over an entire season and Angela being the MVP at an elite international tournament. Abby's name appears on several lists in DWB record books, with a majority of her numbers being put up in her first two seasons.
By the way, I wasn't posting here when I started every season hoping that this would be the year McCallie takes full advantage of the players she's got. Lots of optimism, focus on the excellent players, speculating on how McCallie would fit the players together. I wasn't always as critical of the coaching as I am now. I've had all my hope and optimism dashed one too many times. I'd love to see some sign that it's time to rekindle that spirit but it's clear to me that it will take more than recruiting great players to win the big games. It would be hard to find many people who've spent as much time and energy into following this program for many, many years as I have.