Needless to say, I hope his first team with Lively at center flops.
Mackenzie Mgbako picks Duke. Duke has now beaten us for 17/20 top 10 guys since 2015.
- Thread starter Son_Of_Saul
- Start date
Triple C is worthless now that he can’t get the best recruits anymore.
He has proven he can’t make the FF with the 2nd ranked recruiting class. Which is very sad!!
Now we will be lucky to get a top 5 recruiting class. That equates to round of 32 loss most seasons under Triple C.
He has proven he can’t make the FF with the 2nd ranked recruiting class. Which is very sad!!
Now we will be lucky to get a top 5 recruiting class. That equates to round of 32 loss most seasons under Triple C.
Vince Taylor, more recently, played for Lexington Tates Creek and starred at Duke.
His Father was a professor at UK.
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The point is that Kentucky does not wade through the same waters of commonality with those other 350 programs. Calipari has specifically and intentionally placed our program on a pedestal, and used very specific terminology to do it. With such sentiments being shared on a public setting, about how UK is the "gold standard", and how he's here because he can "recruit the best of the best", you'd actually think that we'd beat Duke more than 15% of the time for elite recruits, right?
Cal's getting owned by a kid half his age, who has yet to actually coach his own team.
Goodman is right. It's beach time.
Nice spin as usual. Dude, it's Nike & other connections. Duke staff literally doesn't have to do hardly a thing. You forget Duke's recruiting was very mediocre until a sudden change. The sudden change was Nike going all in for Coach K. Now that Coach K is retired, at Coach K's request they've pulled out all the stops to make sure Sheyer has a banging first couple of classes to get him going.
If you think it's simply about a pitch you're totally gullible & completely subjective, blinded by you're anti-Cal rants. Cal deserves his criticisms but not on this. His hands are tied.
BTW, since Nolan Smith was the lead recruiter Louisville will be a test if it's just about how great of a recruiter he is. Jeff Caple not having very good success recruiting. We'll see if Smith pulls 3-4, 5-stars per year at UL. And all he has to do is replicate the same approach....BUT, BUT one thing will be missing that he has at Duke: Daddy Nike
EDIT: BTW, all that Elite talent since 2015 & zero championships...finally first final 4 since Nike funneling the elites to Duke.
If you think it's simply about a pitch you're totally gullible & completely subjective, blinded by you're anti-Cal rants. Cal deserves his criticisms but not on this. His hands are tied.
BTW, since Nolan Smith was the lead recruiter Louisville will be a test if it's just about how great of a recruiter he is. Jeff Caple not having very good success recruiting. We'll see if Smith pulls 3-4, 5-stars per year at UL. And all he has to do is replicate the same approach....BUT, BUT one thing will be missing that he has at Duke: Daddy Nike
EDIT: BTW, all that Elite talent since 2015 & zero championships...finally first final 4 since Nike funneling the elites to Duke.
Nice post! Better than a lot of pieces by paid journalists.
My questions are: Does Cal have the flexibility to change the pitch at this point? Do the new assistants help enough to cut into the Duke advantage?
You and some others keep screeching, "It's Nike!" What other school has a contract with Nike? What other coach was having players funneled to him while at Memphis and early on at Kentucky through individuals like World Wide Wes?
Who burned that bridge with Nike?
I still expect them to fall apart even with all that talent….did anybody watch the Wake Forest game this year where K got sick at half time? Scheyer was a disaster and the players openly ignored his coaching.
If anything, Cal has proved that if you throw enough talent at it, you don’t have to be much of an in-game coach. But I expect them to struggle in the tourney unless they return guys. You’re just not winning a championship with 1&done freshmen.
The last part is fair, but I don't think there's anything Cal can do now to compete with Duke and Nike.
Of course Nolan Smith isn't going to do as well at Louisville, they have all kinds of internal, financial problems. I'm so sick of people blaming our recruiting problems on Nike. The problem is, these top recruits see what kind of abysmal 1990's style BB we play and don't want to come here. We rarely beat good teams, and have a screaming Psychopath on the sidelines that screams at his players, assistant coaches and referees the whole game. I think those are the REAL problems.
Correct on Mullins father getting transferred to Lexington by IBM so Jeff did not grow up there. There’s a little more to that, Rupp really wanted him and even arranged a meeting with the Governor. (Nothing underhanded, an actually a smart move.)
Mullins HS teammate was a guy named Jon Speaks who was a year ahead of Mullins. Rupp offered Speaks a scholarship. Speaks asked for some time to think about it. Rupp was not happy and withdrew the Speaks offer.
Mullins was bothered by what happened there with his teammate and Speaks ended up at NC State. Primarily recruited by Everette Case's top assistant, Vic Bubas. Mullins and Bubas got to know each other during the Speaks recruitment. Bubas ended up being hired as Duke’s head Coach and Mullins went there. He got to play that 1962/63 season with Art Heyman and they went undefeated in the ACC and went to the Final Four. A year later Mullins was anchoring another great Duke team that lost in the National Championship game in 1964 to John Woden’s UCLA Bruins. Wooden’s first title. Jeff turns 80 this year, hard to believe. In the early 90’s he coached some pretty good squads at UNC-Charlotte.
Vince Taylor’s decision was more slanted towards academics at the time (late 70’s) and he had a great College career. I heard one time that he had said many years later that he wished he had stayed in-State. But I’ve not officially seen the quote anywhere. Ironically he had two good games against the Wildcats as they played Duke twice in 1979/1980. Both very close games. An overtime W for Duke at the beginning of the season at the HOF tip off classic in a battle of #2 vs #3 and then in the NCAA Tournament, a one point thriller in Rupp Arena in the sweet 16. Duke lost the regional final to Purdue after that and that was Bill Foster’s final game coaching the Blue Devils.
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It's not a secret. Nike has never gone out of their way for a school like they are with Duke currently. WWW is not Nike. He's a very influential person that was certainly with Nike. He's a friend of Cal's who ever since Wagner begin recommending Cal to recruits because he put the recruits above his own personal interests.
That's a far cry from the powers that be with Nike going all out for Coach K. For Pete's sake they built a building a few years ago at their headquarters in honor of & named after Coach K.
At this point it's not about pitches or evidences. Duke cannot compete with all the 2nd big contracts & success in NBA of Cal's players. But it's irrelevant...like it's ignored & why? Because of Nike. The deck is stacked. Even some of Duke insiders know this & do not even deny.
It's not blaming. It's reality! Some of our fans on this forum are so angry at Cal that you deny reality.
You can criticize Cal & the loss this year etc. But you're going down a path in recruiting that is unjustifiable.
This is a really good article about what has happened. It is very obvious that Calipari is mostly about getting players to the league than caring about what’s best for UK basketball. I dare say that every player that comes to UK has going to the NBA after only one year on their mind. Many players do leave even though they don’t appear ready. (However, some do better as pros than they did with Calipari coaching them.). Now several leave after only one year and go elsewhere. Why? Some think it’s great that Duke gets all of these five star players, but how many championships have their freshmen won? Zion’s team? This year’s team? We also know that none of these players will stay longer than a year just like past years. Duke will need to go through building a new roster every year. Freshman teams don’t win national titles. I’d rather get one or two top players and some others that will be foundation players for 2 or 3 years. Experience wins championships, not freshmen by themselves.
Hard to do that when idiots through out half the damn data. Only fools do that.
Cal normally plays 7-8 in his rotation each year. So ideally you’ve got 2 top 15 ranked freshmen….2 big time experienced transfers and 4 players already in the program each year.
So my statement is wrong or you just like a truthful statement for your own reasons?
You very well may have a point about Cal burning the bridge with Nike by not attending their event. I agree that is a big mistake. But imo, his post is spot on as far as the real reason Duke is beating UK for so many recruits. It’s not UK’s pitch, the 2015 loss, or most of the other reasons being thrown out here.
Again, my opinion.
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I’ll give you the fact that Cal needs to update his offensive philosophy, but the screaming has always been there.
You think UK/Nike doesnt offer/give some recruits "benefits" on the side? They certainly do, and for your argument to hold serve, Dukes "benefits" would have to be so extraordinary that they outweigh the "the 2nd big contracts & success in NBA of Cal's players" as you said. Which if that were the case, it would be outed in public very easily as there are still a good portion of the media that hates Duke.
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I suspect one reason is Duke is in that range of schools right under Ivy League. If you want feel good about yourself you could say, "I could have gone there even if I wasn't a jock."
The one with a Sr captain who was the 2nd leading scorer on the team and with other JR & Soph contributors. 9 guys who regularly played and 3 One and Done fresh. Similar to the 2012 UK team it had some great freshman mixed with experience. Duke literally had a monster of a team with Zion, Barret, Reddish, & Jones and couldn’t do it. UK had Wall, Cousins, & Bledsoe and couldn’t.
Honestly the portal and NIL has changed my thinking. I would gladly let other teams have 5 freshmen in one class. No doubt K has killed Cal lately though. It is K as well. He has been there throughout the whole recruitment of every kid currently committed. Won't know what Sheyer is made of until a few years down the road when he has to sell his own results and performance.
Get a mix of top transfers and a few elite stars like Sharpe would be the best model anyway now imo. We can use the free agent market to put a better team together than recruiting alone.
That's assuming you get that right mix though and the jury is still out on whether Cal can do that consistently. He did a great job piecing a roster together quickly after last years disaster and they were the best team in the country for a time before injuries threw them off somehow and Cal just couldn't figure it out and get them back on track. That's on him. This was a great team with the consensus NPOY though.
Again though, we'll see if he can keep it up and figure it out again.
Get a mix of top transfers and a few elite stars like Sharpe would be the best model anyway now imo. We can use the free agent market to put a better team together than recruiting alone.
That's assuming you get that right mix though and the jury is still out on whether Cal can do that consistently. He did a great job piecing a roster together quickly after last years disaster and they were the best team in the country for a time before injuries threw them off somehow and Cal just couldn't figure it out and get them back on track. That's on him. This was a great team with the consensus NPOY though.
Again though, we'll see if he can keep it up and figure it out again.
2015 killed the program. its never been or felt the same since.
UK looses a game to St Peter and it's all of a sudden Nike's fault by a couple, lol... What a joke, I never saw a Nike guy on the sideline calling shot's.. I saw an over bloated maniac there screaming to the top of his lungs...
Just who coaches here?? Cal or someone else, I always thought the buck stops at the top of the pile... And at the top of this pile of crap at UK is coach Cal... I have had enough crap for a life time..
GBB
Just who coaches here?? Cal or someone else, I always thought the buck stops at the top of the pile... And at the top of this pile of crap at UK is coach Cal... I have had enough crap for a life time..
GBB
As bad as this is for Cal, this makes K look even worse. All that top 10 talent, and only one final four. One that was practically gifted to you this year. Plus he missed the tourney in 21 too. Duke fans should be doing backflips to watch K walk out the door
The Mackenzie Mgbako Blog: This is Why I Committed to Duke...
Mgbako said he ultimately picked the Blue Devils because of his connection with coach Jon Scheyer.
www.si.com
you really need to get a life away from this message board.... it's a big world go explore it
nice come back....I know for a fact you didn't think of that one by yourself... does your mommy know you are up past your bed time?
Must be nice to have a program that has two years of studs locked up. I remember those days it was very fun and nice to never worry. Now we are chasing dudes from SW Missouri state. 🤦♂️
So you're in the process of moving to the Gulf coast as you said last night but you are going to be driving six hours from the Gulf Coast to UK for grad school?? How does that work? Did they build a new superhighway just for you?
@Rockfly78 ??
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