March 16 Notebook
March 16, 2005 04:37 PM | General
March 16, 2005
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MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – I was having a discussion with someone in our department the other day and they made a great point I hadn't really considered -- next year’s recruiting class is going to be huge for the men’s basketball program. The person correctly pointed out that after next year West Virginia is going to have to find replacements for Joe Herber, J.D. Collins, Patrick Beilein, Mike Gansey and Kevin Pittsnogle.
Coach John Beilein said as much following his team’s loss to Syracuse in the Big East championship game Saturday night. Beilein also said he wanted to see if the coaching philosophy that he had so successfully crafted at the mid-major level could work at the high-major level.
“What I wanted was the opportunity to coach at this level and the opportunity to build another program and see what we could do and to try to do it with kids like we recruited (at Richmond),” Beilein said. “And if it didn’t work, it didn’t work. But I was hell-bent on doing it the way I had done it in the other programs I’ve been in.
“My staff has done it, not just me,” he added. “There are a lot of people involved in this whole deal, from the secretary to the strength coach to everybody. They do what they’re trying to do right away.”
Beilein mentioned too that one of his biggest obstacles has been convincing recruits that he could lead West Virginia University back to the NCAA tournament.
“It really hit me a couple of weeks ago when I was recruiting a kid, he said, ‘Coach, can you get West Virginia to the NCAA tournament?’ I responded very positive right away, “Yes, we can.’ But you have to do that. You can only say it so many times; you have to show that you can get it done.
“Yes, whether the philosophy or the system: West Virginia University can win. And the more we win the more that we’re going to be able to be successful in recruiting.”
The more I thought about it the more I came to realize that if Beilein was able to recruit the nucleus of the team that made this year's NCAA tournament off an 8-20 season surely his coaching staff should have a much easier time talking to recruits coming off back-to-back seasons in post-season play.
That Big East tournament runner-up trophy sitting down in the player’s locker room is instant validation for the tremendous coaching job Beilein's staff has done already.
If you can steal someone away from another Big East or ACC program, great. But as Don Nehlen always said, it doesn’t do any good coming in second in recruiting. He always said he’d rather come in fourth or fifth so he could move on to the next prospect and not waste the time.
And I know that John Beilein won’t let that happen at WVU. He’s a coach that has a proven track record of evaluating and developing talent and he doesn’t need a Bob Gibbons or a Rivals.com web site to validate his recruiting efforts.
From past experience, the coaches that usually excessively blow up their recruits and seek publicity and attention are the ones that aren’t sure what they’ve got and aren’t entirely confident in their own evaluation systems.
Not always, but usually.
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| West Virginia senior D'or Fischer signs an autograph before getting on the team bus for Cleveland and the Mountaineer's NCAA tournament first round game against Creighton.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
“Beilein has a passing game,” said the former Los Angeles Lakers coach and general manager. “I think he’s doing a great, great job and I like his system. I like his defense, too. We used a 3-2 defense and the 1-3-1. That 1-3-1 is something he uses occasionally right now and he does a great job of covering the passing lanes.
“I don’t think there is a great difference in our two philosophies, just a difference in eras,” Schaus said. “You’re talking about 40 or 50 year’s difference and there are going to be some changes.”
That’s about as good as it gets as far as coaching endorsements go.
It just goes to show you that even the best and most profitable athletic programs in the country sometimes have a tough time getting the right guy.
It’s a tough life being a college coach, I’ll tell you that.
Hundley, now 70, says he is having the procedure done on the knee he injured chasing girls around the pool when he was in high school – not the knee he hurt during his illegal tryout with the Harlem Globetrotters before his sophomore season at WVU in 1955.
Of course Hundley to this day remains one of the most popular athletes in West Virginia University history.
Hot Rod recently signed a five-year contract extension to broadcast Jazz games through 2010.
“Don’t tell Eddie Pastilong or he might charge me interest and I can’t afford that,” Furfari laughed.
Let’s see … 25 cents adjusted for inflation over 73 years … yeah, Mickey, better let that one go.
Catlett entered the story when in 1997 he drew attention to the problems of a 13-team league when his Mountaineer program was on the bubble for the NCAA tournament despite having good enough credentials to get in.
In a post-game news conference Catlett unsuccessfully campaigned to get into the tournament while criticizing the credentials of two other Big East schools also trying to get in. At that point, according to the article, the Big East administration realized the conference was no longer a close-knit group of Catholic schools.
“Once you go beyond 10, the conference ceases to become a conference,” said former commissioner Dave Gavitt. “It becomes an association, and you end up losing some of that (camaraderie).”
A special thanks to Jill Zundell from Fairmont for coming up with the idea in the first place.
All of those emails just reaffirms that West Virginia University has the greatest fans in all of college sports!
Have a great week!
Note: The views and opinions expressed here do not neccessarily reflect those of West Virginia University or the Mountaineer Sports Network
