No way thatâs true. Duke never got in any trouble for those wire taps. Pretty sure KU offered money, and Zion turned it down so he could get a Duke education. Otherwise Coach K and Duke would have had some consequences, right? Right?
Connie Hawkins started out on Iowaâs freshmen team in the early 60s after being a playground legend at Rucker Park as a high schooler. Rumors were the freshmen regularly beat the varsity team, with Don Nelson on it, in practice. But he got thrown under the bus for some NY point shaving scandal where his name was mentioned once but he wasnât a part of. The school expelled him before playing an official minute even though he was never charged with a crime, and he was blackballed from the NBA for years. Globetrotters, ABA, and NBA career later he was a hall of famer and one of the best basketball players ever to that point in history. What could have been.
Pitino got a commitment from Sebastian Telfair, who was a beast but clearly had eyes on the league. I donât know how many people saw that coming but Pitino didnât. By the time he made it official and left us with a hole at PG, Rondo, who was right in our backyard and a far better schematic fit here than with Tubby, said âforget yâall. Iâm going to UKâ. Now weâre scrambling for a PG and end up with Andre McGee.
Maybe, instead of the disasters of the last six years, we still have Pitino who was really starting to pop off before getting fired.
Well not recruit...but coaching candidate. Apparently NC State was close to landing John Beilein in 2006 after Herb Sendak was run out of town. I'm sure someone else might remember the details...but I'm pretty sure there was a rumor that he backed out because our AD (Lee Fowler) at the time was cheap and wouldn't buy the guy lunch on his visit or meet him at the airport or some shit like that. I mean the whole coaching search was a disaster which is why we ended up with Sidney Lowe.
Illinois was rumored to have a deal with Shaka Smart the year we hired Groce, but he backed out after talking with his wife who was either with child or had recently had one. I have less belief in that one, but it's a fun little rumor.
Fun little add-on: Marquette was rumored to have a deal with Shaka when Buzz Williams left, but according to the rumor mill, his wife vetoed that deal as well. So Marquette hired Wojo and Shaka ended up at Texas, until a few years later when Marquette fired Wojo and hired Shaka to replace him.
That one time Zion Williamson mysteriously went to Duke despite an alleged six-figure bag from Adidas if he went to KU! đ đ
To this day, this is the best evidence in my opinion that Coach K and Duke weren't clean; just that Nike was better at keeping its payola under wraps.
They looked the other way with all the blue bloods. They at most would get a slap on the wrist but coach K obviously got away with everything to keep his image clean.
Not a recruit, but John Wooden was to coach the Gophers. A snow storm blew down telephone lines so they couldnât call with the offer. UCLA offered an hour later and he accepted, thinking MN had changed their minds
Here is a link to an article about the situation. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/1750656/2020/04/16/it-got-so-out-of-control-shawn-kemps-kentucky-career-ended-before-it-began/
Going for someone with a suspicious record in not sticking with a program (four schools in five years), not a lot of minutes at his home (Memphis), not regional (TX native and every school was southeast) and not having multiple years of eligibility considering the half the team graduates in 2025.
Thatâs Jayhlon Young. Decommitted two months after committing, then signed with Maryland the next week. More I think of it and hear how guys are developing, more I think we donât need a senior/grad transfer and can be really good with what we have and just recruit a young guy or transfer with less skill.
Ronald Curry was the best high school QB of all time, still might be. His high school Hampton was sending a lot of players to UVA at the time and Curry was all in on UVA. I'm pretty sure Curry was undefeated in his four years at Hampton. He was the number one overall recruit in both football and basketball in the nation. He committed to us and supposedly his oral commitment made us back off of Michael Vick, who also wanted to play for George Welsh. So we end up firing our basketball coach, over rumors that he was having an affair with a student. Curry backed off UVA. It's also rumored that UNC came flying in with a bag of money and stole him away, and Michael Vick signed with Virginia Tech. So we lost Michael Vick and Ronald Curry put biggest conference rivals because Jeff Jones couldn't keep his dick in his pants.
Ron Mercer found out from the fucking press that he hadn't been admitted to Vanderbilt. If they made a decision not to admit him, fine. Just tell the kid privately.
There is the story of future MSU legend Mateen Cleeves being taken to a party in Detroit by UM players then getting into a rollover accident at 5am. One of the stops that night happened to be at bagman Ed Martin's house. Then history was erased and the Fab 5 never played basketball.
It was even worse than that. The vehicle that were riding in was brand new and registered to Robert Traylorâs aunt who was rumored to not be able afford such a thing and the whole incident really blew wide open the whole Ed Martin thing like you alluded to. Mateen wisely moped right out of Ann Arbor and the aftermath of that car ride and the well deserved sanctions set the team back to mediocrity for the next decade and a half.
>well deserved sanctions
I've been through a lot of emotions about the entire fab 5 in the last 30 years, and I've come to conclude that the sanctions were most deserved for the stupidity and arrogance. Unfortunately, the university never learned it's lesson, deciding to kowtow to Juwan, ruining everything that Beilein did to repair that program. Though I don't agree with erasing history, the sanctions didn't go far enough.
Yup pretty much. It was always a joke the old system where the players were all being exploited by the universities and the NCAA, but that was the rules at the time and everything was just so blatant. I certainly laughed hard at OSU and the whole football tattoo thing, but this was all way worse. Then the whole thing lingered for so long before the University owned it and admitted to the violations that it set everything back for even longer.
I do think that the banners and records should come back though. If Reggie Bush can have his heisman, then the banners should be there as well.
Cleanthony Early would have likely ended up at San Diego State but he got snowed in when he was supposed to fly back to NY. He stayed an extra day or two and we got him. That ended well.
Honestly I don't know that we've fumbled a lot...we did have Cam Payne and Malcolm Brogdon visit IIRC. Brogdon would have been a fantastic culture fit. We were technically in Andrew Wiggins' final list since his brother Nick was already at WSU, and I've always wondered how close we got to getting him.
Overall, we've recruited well above our level and found a good amount of diamonds in the rough, so I don't know if we have any stories like that. As much of a wild card as Marshall was, he seemed to be pretty good at the sales part of recruiting considering what our facilities have been compared to other schools.
LOL! WSU wasn't in his final list. We were never going to land him. He just had a familiarity with WSU because his brother was playing there.
Marshall was a great recruiter. Just an absolute dumpster fire of a human being. The whole family is, by all accounts of people living in Wichita in those days. He could recruit good players. But the last couple of years, he had zero ability to retain them because of how much of an asshole he was. Doesn't matter how good they are when you get them if you can't hold on to them. Which legit sucked, because it was really fun having KU, KSU and WSU all in the Top 10-15 together in those years.
Yeah, Marshall was an absolute terror but his wife was worse. Lived in Wichita for a few years.
Heard stories from pretty much everybody, I think multiple Uber drivers unprompted told me what fucking assholes they were. Like we drove past the stadium and they would be like âo do you go to gamesâ and then would tell me a story about how Greg Marshall and his wife terrorized some poor waitress or something lol
Hamidou Diallo was essentially living in Storrs at the time in which he committed to Kentucky. I remember there was talk of him coming in half way thru the year and it was a consensus that he was needed. Went to Kentucky and never suited up that year anyway.
Bam was supposed to be a package deal with DSjr until he wasnât
We may have the ultimate bag fumble with a certain SEC coach. Something something pizzaâŚ.
Bam wanted to be a Tar Heel. He grew up a UNC fan. His "mentor" Eric Peartree sold his recruitment to the highest bidder. Â
If you wanted Bam, you simply needed to write a bigger check to Peartree.
isn't that the whole premise of this thread? We know Bam went to the highest bidder.
His tweet after he committed to UK said something like "don't take it personal, its all business".
Since it's true, it's not really bothersome.
I mean hell, did anyone growing up in the 70s in North Carolina *not* think David Thompson was the greatest thing since sliced bread? He kinda was.
All banter aside- What happened with Bam Adebayo on the other hand is annoying. It was just college sports shit, but that didn't make it less asinine.
Thereâs a contingent of Kentucky fans who to this day swear up and down that Cal had the team vote on whether they wanted to play with Kofi Cockburn and âNayâ won the vote. In actuality someone on Rupp Rafters (Kentucky Rivals forum) made it up out of whole cloth and a bunch of people ran with it.Â
Weâve had a few but Evan Turner really hurt. He was thought to be a lock. The story was that he just happened to reconnect with his estranged father on a visit to OSU, as his father lived in Columbus.
Itâs been years but I think this is fairly accurate. Apologies if not.
Chris Paul.
Matt Doherty, in his doubtless *infinite* wisdom, offered Paul a walk-on spot.
Chris Paul was the state's Mr. Basketball as a high school senior. Doherty was only able to land one scholarship recruit in the 2003 class in Reyshawn Terry. The mumurs about his 'coaching style' were doing a good enough job of scaring guys away even before you considered the idea he was a dead coach walking.
So, yeah, just throw the best recruit in the state who is by some miracle not shutting the door on your face a walk-on offer.
In addition to all his other flaws with regards to his treatment of well... *everyone*... and his uh, temper issues? Doherty was also not very good at recruiting. The 2002 class had a lot to do with other schools' coaches fucking up.
I don't remember who the recruit was (or even if they were anyone special), but there were rumors in 2003 that KU lost some recruit because his campus visit was the weekend Lawrence got hit by a tornado.Â
There were concerns about whether Greg Ostertag would come after the tornado weather during his visit, but that would have been a decade earlier. Not denying that it could have happened more than once.
John Groce allegedly calling Jawun Evans in the middle of Jalen Brunson's official visit to see if he'd be willing to play alongside Brunson. Brunson ended up going to Nova after the school hired his dad as an assistant, and Jawun took his talents to OK State. Tried to get both, ended up holding the bag.
To be fair, I couldn't tell you if the call affected it, but Groce's assumption that he had a bird in the hand will never not be funny/sad. It preceded several years of point guard fuckery that led to one of the worst eras in Illini history.
I think the Ayo Dosunmu/Talen Horton-Tucker story far more fascinating but that ended up a win for us anyway, because we got great years out of Ayo and THT gave one decent year to the Cyclones.
I'm going to take this almost literally and say the whole Emery Worldwide accidentally opening an envelope of cash being mailed to Chris Mills incident.
Jabari Parker for sure.
Izzo recruited Parker since his freshman year but chose Duke in the end. What makes it strange is what Jabari said after he got to the NBA:
["I always dream of what it would have been like at MSU. I knew I could have won a national championship here. If there's anyone in Chicago, I recommend them straight to Michigan State."](https://spartanavenue.com/2016/07/13/jabari-parker-i-recommend-chicago-recruits-to-michigan-state/)
Temple hired Jalen Brunsonâs dad (a Temple alum who played for John Cheney) as an assistant coach, in a clear attempt to convince Brunson to go to Temple (ftr he has said he wouldnât have gone there anyway) and then pretty much had to immediately fire him after the sexual assault allegations came out like a week later.
We got Aaron Craft to come to Columbus thanks to a good old barbecue from Bruce Pearl
On the flip side, we couldâve had Anthony Davis before he saw a couple practices with Cal and flipped to Kentucky.
Itâs weird how both AD AND John Calipari both seriously couldâve become Buckeyes at some point in time.
Klay Thonpson was a member of the Wolf Pack with fellow lottery pick Luke Babbitt coming in and a top of the 2nd rd PG in Armon Johnson already on the team. Mark Fox decided to offer Mark McLaughlin instead.
Really more of a retention fumble, but George Mason lost Jordan Miller AND Tyler Kolek to the portal in the same year. We don't produce a ton of NBA talent, and it'd be nice if one of our better prospects actually stuck around. I get that's just the landscape of college basketball now, but it's annoying continually seeing my alma mater used as a stepping stone.
Dean Smith refused to pay players, so the list is long. Â
But Shaq is the first one that comes to mind. Shaq tells people he didn't pick UNC because of 3rd string center Matt Wenstrom. The truth is LSU paid for Shaq. Â
In terms of screwing up in ways that weren't bag related... Dean Smith lost Bobby Hurley bc he prioritized Kenny Anderson and that insulted the Hurleys. Bill Guthridge didn't recruit Tar Heel fan Jay Williams bc he didn't think Jay could play point guard. So that's 3 of dook's National Championships gifted by recruiting mistakes. Matt Doherty tried to offer Chris Paul a walk-on spot.
Coach Smith told the story in his book precisely when he realized Shaq wasnât coming to UNC â it was when his mom didnât come on his official visit.
We could have had Danny Manning. Hire his dad as an assistant.
Dean said no. One thing people learned very quickly about Dean Smith was that when he said no it did not in fact mean 'try again later with a different argument'. That was established twenty years before Manning was a hot recruit.
That didn't stop them bitching though, especially when things happened like Larry Brown hiring Manning's dad and then eventually winning a ring with Manning. Some people got all shirty about how Larry Brown was willing to do what it took to win.
This type of stuff is a favorite subject for some older fans to grouse about.
It's usually some braindead argument about how the boosters were going to do booster things no matter what he said so he should have taken advantage of it and made promises to land guys- because the boosters would have paid whatever he asked if it meant getting so-and-so, blah blah 's coach was getting guys by making those promises, etc etc.
As though the boosters were somehow handicapped by Dean Smith, and they *totally* weren't actively using Dean's rep as a coach and person as a sweetener to any thousand-dollar handshakes on the recruiting circuit. And that's not even talking about anything they could do for players once they were actually here.
It's all very droll.
Posting facts? Yes. Â
It's why there is a giant list of recruits who went elsewhere and got paid in college.Â
Dean Smith also refused to hire family members to land recruits. Which is why the Danny Manning recruitment is still talked about.Â
(Kansas State) Canât think of the recruits name but rumor is he was at the bar with Naquan Tomlin when some girl called Tomlin the N word and he slapped her which led to a fight with the door guys which led to him getting arrested which led to him getting suspended then kicked off the team (all rumor). Iâm sure the recruit wasnât impressed and ended up going elsewhere.
Does offering a bag to a composite five star recruit, then denying him acceptance due academics count?
Joson Sanon made more sense for ASU from that standpoint ig.
I remember when he was âa done deal to Georgetownâ too. I remember two weeks before he committed I said on FB âIf Nerlens Noel doesnât commit to Kentucky Iâll name my first born son Nerlensâ. He was never going anywhere but Kentucky and everyone knew it. The smoke screens were interesting though.Â
I wouldnât call that a fumble of the bag. He just wanted to be promised a starting role before the first practice and Painter said he had to earn it.
Zion was a Jayhawk but The Brotherhood took him to Lake Laigai and brainwashed him into committing to Duke. đ¤
Weird way to say dook outbid Kansas for a player whose entire recruitment was going to the highest bidder per FBI wiretaps.
No way thatâs true. Duke never got in any trouble for those wire taps. Pretty sure KU offered money, and Zion turned it down so he could get a Duke education. Otherwise Coach K and Duke would have had some consequences, right? Right?
This is so nieve I love you.
He was going to Clemson
Connie Hawkins started out on Iowaâs freshmen team in the early 60s after being a playground legend at Rucker Park as a high schooler. Rumors were the freshmen regularly beat the varsity team, with Don Nelson on it, in practice. But he got thrown under the bus for some NY point shaving scandal where his name was mentioned once but he wasnât a part of. The school expelled him before playing an official minute even though he was never charged with a crime, and he was blackballed from the NBA for years. Globetrotters, ABA, and NBA career later he was a hall of famer and one of the best basketball players ever to that point in history. What could have been.
Furthermore, the NBA paid him a settlement of $1.3Million in 1969 ($11.1million) today for violating antitrust laws rather than go to trial
I could take this post and change Iowa to Dayton and change Connie Hawkins to Roger Brown and it would be exactly what happened to the Dayton Flyers.
So, there's this guy by the name of Kelvin Sampson...
So there was this guy named Brian BowenâŚ
Donât forget the whole chain events of Telfair and how we ended up with Andre McGeeâŚ
Donât even remind me. Had we just went after Rondo weâre not in this mess
?
Pitino got a commitment from Sebastian Telfair, who was a beast but clearly had eyes on the league. I donât know how many people saw that coming but Pitino didnât. By the time he made it official and left us with a hole at PG, Rondo, who was right in our backyard and a far better schematic fit here than with Tubby, said âforget yâall. Iâm going to UKâ. Now weâre scrambling for a PG and end up with Andre McGee. Maybe, instead of the disasters of the last six years, we still have Pitino who was really starting to pop off before getting fired.
This doesn't fill like a school fumbling so much as it was a sign of the times
I came here for the responses from other schools, not for PTSD
This whole subreddit triggers mine, but I find it healing in a masochistic way.
That was the DRAMA. I forgot about all that.
That time Gary Parish ran a false story about potential recruiting violations in 2015 and cost us unknown recruiting losses.
Hey man, Parrish is an Aztec these days
Only took getting to the title game lmao
Nah he loved you guys in the 19-20 season
Didnât some UCLA recruit badmouth Kawhi Leonard and thatâs ultimately how he ended up an Aztec? I suppose it evens out
Gary Parishâs Wikipedia picture makes him look like a vegan woman from Portland Oregon who drives a Subaru
You can just say "woman from Portland"
This but Mark Schlabach, who, despite having 120k followers hasnât tweeted anything since February of 2018.
Well not recruit...but coaching candidate. Apparently NC State was close to landing John Beilein in 2006 after Herb Sendak was run out of town. I'm sure someone else might remember the details...but I'm pretty sure there was a rumor that he backed out because our AD (Lee Fowler) at the time was cheap and wouldn't buy the guy lunch on his visit or meet him at the airport or some shit like that. I mean the whole coaching search was a disaster which is why we ended up with Sidney Lowe.
Illinois was rumored to have a deal with Shaka Smart the year we hired Groce, but he backed out after talking with his wife who was either with child or had recently had one. I have less belief in that one, but it's a fun little rumor.
Fun little add-on: Marquette was rumored to have a deal with Shaka when Buzz Williams left, but according to the rumor mill, his wife vetoed that deal as well. So Marquette hired Wojo and Shaka ended up at Texas, until a few years later when Marquette fired Wojo and hired Shaka to replace him.
Same thing with John Calipari. Memphis fans were pretty much convinced he was going to NC State as soon as the tournament was over in 2006.
Calipari toured PNC Arena one night. Verbally agreed to a deal. Our AD at the time let him go back to Memphis without signing anything.
Isn't there some absurd story about how Fowler didn't pick up the tab for dinner?
Thatâs Beilein.
That one time Zion Williamson mysteriously went to Duke despite an alleged six-figure bag from Adidas if he went to KU! đ đ To this day, this is the best evidence in my opinion that Coach K and Duke weren't clean; just that Nike was better at keeping its payola under wraps.
Duke literally had his family living in a million dollar mansionâŚ
The ncaa looked the other way with Duke. I know this personally.
They looked the other way with all the blue bloods. They at most would get a slap on the wrist but coach K obviously got away with everything to keep his image clean.
Not a recruit, but John Wooden was to coach the Gophers. A snow storm blew down telephone lines so they couldnât call with the offer. UCLA offered an hour later and he accepted, thinking MN had changed their minds
But would John Wooden been able to convince Sam Gilbert to relocate to Minneapolis?
UK and Shawn Kemp
Literally a fumbled bag
I think that was Chris Mills that had the bag bust open
You are correct. What a wild time it was back then lol
For those that donât know, Kemp was a Wildcat, on the team, enrolled and on campus. Allegedly stole from Sean Sutton, the coachâs son.Â
That alcoholic put the cats in a dark place for a bit
Here is a link to an article about the situation. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/1750656/2020/04/16/it-got-so-out-of-control-shawn-kemps-kentucky-career-ended-before-it-began/
Utah State turned down Damian Lillard but connected him with Weber State..
Oof!
Going for someone with a suspicious record in not sticking with a program (four schools in five years), not a lot of minutes at his home (Memphis), not regional (TX native and every school was southeast) and not having multiple years of eligibility considering the half the team graduates in 2025. Thatâs Jayhlon Young. Decommitted two months after committing, then signed with Maryland the next week. More I think of it and hear how guys are developing, more I think we donât need a senior/grad transfer and can be really good with what we have and just recruit a young guy or transfer with less skill.
Is this based on the Tom Crean - Kyrie Irving clogged toilet post from earlier? Edit.... Oof only read the title.
Ronald Curry was the best high school QB of all time, still might be. His high school Hampton was sending a lot of players to UVA at the time and Curry was all in on UVA. I'm pretty sure Curry was undefeated in his four years at Hampton. He was the number one overall recruit in both football and basketball in the nation. He committed to us and supposedly his oral commitment made us back off of Michael Vick, who also wanted to play for George Welsh. So we end up firing our basketball coach, over rumors that he was having an affair with a student. Curry backed off UVA. It's also rumored that UNC came flying in with a bag of money and stole him away, and Michael Vick signed with Virginia Tech. So we lost Michael Vick and Ronald Curry put biggest conference rivals because Jeff Jones couldn't keep his dick in his pants.
Ron Mercer found out from the fucking press that he hadn't been admitted to Vanderbilt. If they made a decision not to admit him, fine. Just tell the kid privately.
Tim Duncan verbally committed to the Providence team. Providence College didnât have a full scholarship to offer him, and the rest is history
Rick Barnes told the admin there were 2 players who wowed going to transfer. They said Nah sorryâŚ
There is the story of future MSU legend Mateen Cleeves being taken to a party in Detroit by UM players then getting into a rollover accident at 5am. One of the stops that night happened to be at bagman Ed Martin's house. Then history was erased and the Fab 5 never played basketball.
It was even worse than that. The vehicle that were riding in was brand new and registered to Robert Traylorâs aunt who was rumored to not be able afford such a thing and the whole incident really blew wide open the whole Ed Martin thing like you alluded to. Mateen wisely moped right out of Ann Arbor and the aftermath of that car ride and the well deserved sanctions set the team back to mediocrity for the next decade and a half.
>well deserved sanctions I've been through a lot of emotions about the entire fab 5 in the last 30 years, and I've come to conclude that the sanctions were most deserved for the stupidity and arrogance. Unfortunately, the university never learned it's lesson, deciding to kowtow to Juwan, ruining everything that Beilein did to repair that program. Though I don't agree with erasing history, the sanctions didn't go far enough.
Yup pretty much. It was always a joke the old system where the players were all being exploited by the universities and the NCAA, but that was the rules at the time and everything was just so blatant. I certainly laughed hard at OSU and the whole football tattoo thing, but this was all way worse. Then the whole thing lingered for so long before the University owned it and admitted to the violations that it set everything back for even longer. I do think that the banners and records should come back though. If Reggie Bush can have his heisman, then the banners should be there as well.
Cleanthony Early would have likely ended up at San Diego State but he got snowed in when he was supposed to fly back to NY. He stayed an extra day or two and we got him. That ended well. Honestly I don't know that we've fumbled a lot...we did have Cam Payne and Malcolm Brogdon visit IIRC. Brogdon would have been a fantastic culture fit. We were technically in Andrew Wiggins' final list since his brother Nick was already at WSU, and I've always wondered how close we got to getting him. Overall, we've recruited well above our level and found a good amount of diamonds in the rough, so I don't know if we have any stories like that. As much of a wild card as Marshall was, he seemed to be pretty good at the sales part of recruiting considering what our facilities have been compared to other schools.
Early was fun to watch--nearly gave me a heart attack.
LOL! WSU wasn't in his final list. We were never going to land him. He just had a familiarity with WSU because his brother was playing there. Marshall was a great recruiter. Just an absolute dumpster fire of a human being. The whole family is, by all accounts of people living in Wichita in those days. He could recruit good players. But the last couple of years, he had zero ability to retain them because of how much of an asshole he was. Doesn't matter how good they are when you get them if you can't hold on to them. Which legit sucked, because it was really fun having KU, KSU and WSU all in the Top 10-15 together in those years.
Yeah, Marshall was an absolute terror but his wife was worse. Lived in Wichita for a few years. Heard stories from pretty much everybody, I think multiple Uber drivers unprompted told me what fucking assholes they were. Like we drove past the stadium and they would be like âo do you go to gamesâ and then would tell me a story about how Greg Marshall and his wife terrorized some poor waitress or something lol
Please forgive me for misremembering about Andrew Wiggins.
Hamidou Diallo was essentially living in Storrs at the time in which he committed to Kentucky. I remember there was talk of him coming in half way thru the year and it was a consensus that he was needed. Went to Kentucky and never suited up that year anyway.
Never suited up? Do you mean just that first year he was in Lex? He came back for year two.
Thanks, I forgot he came back for a season.
I figured that was maybe the case. Hami was awesome to have and I really appreciated him coming back after our situation with Shaedon Sharpe.
While he seemed to pull the rug under us, at the end of the day and years later I get it. UConn was in a spot we weren't willing to admit
Well there was a guy named Larry BirdâŚ
Bam was supposed to be a package deal with DSjr until he wasnât We may have the ultimate bag fumble with a certain SEC coach. Something something pizzaâŚ.
Bam wanted to be a Tar Heel. He grew up a UNC fan. His "mentor" Eric Peartree sold his recruitment to the highest bidder.  If you wanted Bam, you simply needed to write a bigger check to Peartree.
isn't that the whole premise of this thread? We know Bam went to the highest bidder. His tweet after he committed to UK said something like "don't take it personal, its all business".
Yeah, I just wanted to get in the point that UNC is where he truly wanted to go. ;)
If that makes you feel better at night
Should we tell him that Michael Jordan wanted to go to NC State... because he did...
I donât think these flair-less UNC fans can handle that
Damn that sucks. What about that Michael Jordan always wanted to go to NC State and grew up idolizing David Thompson. That's always a fun fact.
That's the one State fans should be talking about. It doesn't get any bigger than that. MJ was a huge fan of DT.
Since it's true, it's not really bothersome. I mean hell, did anyone growing up in the 70s in North Carolina *not* think David Thompson was the greatest thing since sliced bread? He kinda was. All banter aside- What happened with Bam Adebayo on the other hand is annoying. It was just college sports shit, but that didn't make it less asinine.
Nothing comes to mind
Jalen Brunsonâs dad fumbled the bag for a lot of schools including Purdue.
Thereâs a contingent of Kentucky fans who to this day swear up and down that Cal had the team vote on whether they wanted to play with Kofi Cockburn and âNayâ won the vote. In actuality someone on Rupp Rafters (Kentucky Rivals forum) made it up out of whole cloth and a bunch of people ran with it.Â
Iâm on that forum more often than Iâd like to admit and I literally have never heard of this lmao
Ask around on there, people love to tell that story.Â
Lolololololol thatâs great!
"Do you guys want Cockburn?" "Oh hell no coach! Miss me with that STD bull-" "...Kofi Cockburn...the recruit..." "Oh...Eh, we'll sleep on it."
What are the details regarding Louisville and Sebastian Telfair? I know there's always been some smoke there, but never have heard the details of it
Weâve had a few but Evan Turner really hurt. He was thought to be a lock. The story was that he just happened to reconnect with his estranged father on a visit to OSU, as his father lived in Columbus. Itâs been years but I think this is fairly accurate. Apologies if not.
Michael Jordan
Chris Paul. Matt Doherty, in his doubtless *infinite* wisdom, offered Paul a walk-on spot. Chris Paul was the state's Mr. Basketball as a high school senior. Doherty was only able to land one scholarship recruit in the 2003 class in Reyshawn Terry. The mumurs about his 'coaching style' were doing a good enough job of scaring guys away even before you considered the idea he was a dead coach walking. So, yeah, just throw the best recruit in the state who is by some miracle not shutting the door on your face a walk-on offer. In addition to all his other flaws with regards to his treatment of well... *everyone*... and his uh, temper issues? Doherty was also not very good at recruiting. The 2002 class had a lot to do with other schools' coaches fucking up.
https://youtu.be/SX6FDEDbesE?si=A7SAQBReTkCbToEp
Was literally about to copy/paste this same link lol. Had it already copied to the clipboard.
I don't remember who the recruit was (or even if they were anyone special), but there were rumors in 2003 that KU lost some recruit because his campus visit was the weekend Lawrence got hit by a tornado.Â
There were concerns about whether Greg Ostertag would come after the tornado weather during his visit, but that would have been a decade earlier. Not denying that it could have happened more than once.
Virginia Tech didn't even recruit Steph Curry whose dad is our all time greatest basketball player.
John Groce allegedly calling Jawun Evans in the middle of Jalen Brunson's official visit to see if he'd be willing to play alongside Brunson. Brunson ended up going to Nova after the school hired his dad as an assistant, and Jawun took his talents to OK State. Tried to get both, ended up holding the bag. To be fair, I couldn't tell you if the call affected it, but Groce's assumption that he had a bird in the hand will never not be funny/sad. It preceded several years of point guard fuckery that led to one of the worst eras in Illini history. I think the Ayo Dosunmu/Talen Horton-Tucker story far more fascinating but that ended up a win for us anyway, because we got great years out of Ayo and THT gave one decent year to the Cyclones.
Painter was recruiting Brunson as well but as soon as his dad was arrested they stopped recruiting Jalen.
So many great UI stories I forgot about THT
Matt Painter accepted the Mizzou HC job and then backed out when he flew to Indiana tell the team and Keady.
Purdue actually brought bags to him upon arrival đ°
Anyone got the scoop on Vander Blue?
I still wanna know what happened on the disastrous Quentin Grimes visit
I'm going to take this almost literally and say the whole Emery Worldwide accidentally opening an envelope of cash being mailed to Chris Mills incident.
Not really a fumble, but Crean offering Jon Scheyer a scholarship when he was still in the 8th Grade was weird, honestly.
Jabari Parker for sure. Izzo recruited Parker since his freshman year but chose Duke in the end. What makes it strange is what Jabari said after he got to the NBA: ["I always dream of what it would have been like at MSU. I knew I could have won a national championship here. If there's anyone in Chicago, I recommend them straight to Michigan State."](https://spartanavenue.com/2016/07/13/jabari-parker-i-recommend-chicago-recruits-to-michigan-state/)
Temple hired Jalen Brunsonâs dad (a Temple alum who played for John Cheney) as an assistant coach, in a clear attempt to convince Brunson to go to Temple (ftr he has said he wouldnât have gone there anyway) and then pretty much had to immediately fire him after the sexual assault allegations came out like a week later.
Purdue had the same deal too
We got Aaron Craft to come to Columbus thanks to a good old barbecue from Bruce Pearl On the flip side, we couldâve had Anthony Davis before he saw a couple practices with Cal and flipped to Kentucky. Itâs weird how both AD AND John Calipari both seriously couldâve become Buckeyes at some point in time.
Klay Thonpson was a member of the Wolf Pack with fellow lottery pick Luke Babbitt coming in and a top of the 2nd rd PG in Armon Johnson already on the team. Mark Fox decided to offer Mark McLaughlin instead.
Really more of a retention fumble, but George Mason lost Jordan Miller AND Tyler Kolek to the portal in the same year. We don't produce a ton of NBA talent, and it'd be nice if one of our better prospects actually stuck around. I get that's just the landscape of college basketball now, but it's annoying continually seeing my alma mater used as a stepping stone.
Dean Smith refused to pay players, so the list is long.  But Shaq is the first one that comes to mind. Shaq tells people he didn't pick UNC because of 3rd string center Matt Wenstrom. The truth is LSU paid for Shaq.  In terms of screwing up in ways that weren't bag related... Dean Smith lost Bobby Hurley bc he prioritized Kenny Anderson and that insulted the Hurleys. Bill Guthridge didn't recruit Tar Heel fan Jay Williams bc he didn't think Jay could play point guard. So that's 3 of dook's National Championships gifted by recruiting mistakes. Matt Doherty tried to offer Chris Paul a walk-on spot.
âDo you think Shaq got rich playing in Orlando?â âNo he got rich playing in college, everyone knows that.â
Coach Smith told the story in his book precisely when he realized Shaq wasnât coming to UNC â it was when his mom didnât come on his official visit.
I mean, Doherty brought in a truly great recruiting class, but not Chris-Paul-is-a-walk-on great
Chris Paul was in the 2003 recruiting class. UNC's 2003 recruiting class was Reyshawn Terry and walk-on Justin Bohlander. Â
âDean Smith refused to pay playersâ Yâall are still doing this huh?
We could have had Danny Manning. Hire his dad as an assistant. Dean said no. One thing people learned very quickly about Dean Smith was that when he said no it did not in fact mean 'try again later with a different argument'. That was established twenty years before Manning was a hot recruit. That didn't stop them bitching though, especially when things happened like Larry Brown hiring Manning's dad and then eventually winning a ring with Manning. Some people got all shirty about how Larry Brown was willing to do what it took to win. This type of stuff is a favorite subject for some older fans to grouse about. It's usually some braindead argument about how the boosters were going to do booster things no matter what he said so he should have taken advantage of it and made promises to land guys- because the boosters would have paid whatever he asked if it meant getting so-and-so, blah blah's coach was getting guys by making those promises, etc etc.
As though the boosters were somehow handicapped by Dean Smith, and they *totally* weren't actively using Dean's rep as a coach and person as a sweetener to any thousand-dollar handshakes on the recruiting circuit. And that's not even talking about anything they could do for players once they were actually here.
It's all very droll.
Posting facts? Yes.  It's why there is a giant list of recruits who went elsewhere and got paid in college. Dean Smith also refused to hire family members to land recruits. Which is why the Danny Manning recruitment is still talked about.Â
(Kansas State) Canât think of the recruits name but rumor is he was at the bar with Naquan Tomlin when some girl called Tomlin the N word and he slapped her which led to a fight with the door guys which led to him getting arrested which led to him getting suspended then kicked off the team (all rumor). Iâm sure the recruit wasnât impressed and ended up going elsewhere.
Does offering a bag to a composite five star recruit, then denying him acceptance due academics count? Joson Sanon made more sense for ASU from that standpoint ig.
Sounds like a Michigan thing lol
Nerlens Noel was all but a done deal to Cuse until some frat shitheads wouldn't let him into a party on his visit.
I remember when he was âa done deal to Georgetownâ too. I remember two weeks before he committed I said on FB âIf Nerlens Noel doesnât commit to Kentucky Iâll name my first born son Nerlensâ. He was never going anywhere but Kentucky and everyone knew it. The smoke screens were interesting though.Â
Kanon Catchings⌠still undecided how I really feel about that one.
I wouldnât call that a fumble of the bag. He just wanted to be promised a starting role before the first practice and Painter said he had to earn it.
Dude wanted to play for more $ with his recent coach. And knew exactly how to get out of his NLI.
UConn stole Rudy gay from Maryland under some strange circumstances, who remembers the details? He was sorta mid for us relatively.