Originally Posted by
Billy Dat
This recruiting run is hard to believe. Can someone assure me that we haven't made a true deal with the Devil and the other shoe will drop at some point? I say that considering the Bagley reclassification/frequent school switching and the Reddish lunch with Lebron and Rich Paul. Can we assume K goes nowhere near those kids if there was something that could get the program in hot water? It just feels too good to be true, but one has to assume that if anyone could find any dirt on the program, they'd be happy to share it with the world, and that hasn't happened yet.
Aside from K's stature and the the recruiting prowess of the staff, is it simply K's full embrace of the 1 and done and enough kids being interested in that path that there was demand for programs outside of Kentucky? Obviously, Arizona and Kansas still pull their share. Whatever - it is so exciting, I just want to have my eyes wide open.
WE have done a deal with the Devil, but not the Blue Devil: it's called one-and-done. we get an reasonable number of the top 5-10 players but they rarely stay more than one season.
With respect to dodging the the bullets of recruits with problems or recruit violations, I believe (imagine, but what the hay!) (a) we have a clear cut set of rules and a constant debate about how to stay within the lines. I also believe (b) we are in constant contact with NCAA compliance, are open about our questions, and open about the problems with certain recruits. We then agree on how to proceed. NCAA is our business partner. Together we make a ton of money in basketball. There is every reason to openly work together on troublesome issues. And, of course, lying about something, is often ten times as bad as the violation itself (Bruce Pearl lied about a BBQ that cost a few hundred dollars at most and cost himself millions. Martha Stewart, in a different context, lied to the FBI over a stock trade that never would have resulted in criminal penalties and spent a couple of years in jail as a result.)
Maggette was received unallowed travel money BEFORE Duke was recruiting him and the problem was found out after he had left Duke. Lance Thomas appears to be a bizarre choice by a player without draft possibilities to use his own money, or family money, to make some purchases of jewelry,(which to me looked like polished coal) from a NYC store run an a Ukrainian national in the diamond district. The idea that some future agent coughed up the dough for such an wanted NBA prospect is ludicrous. Sometime later, while Lance was playing in the D league, there was a lawsuit filed to collect $100,000. It was settled -- presumably for much less. Inasmuch as personal money was used (unspent money from his college fund, which he gets legal control of), there was no NCAA issue.
Sage Grouse
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'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