Evaluating Prospects
August 14, 2009 03:17 PM | General
(3:17 pm)
Post your comments
 |
|
| Doc Holliday |
As far as most football coaches are concerned, accepting information about a prospect is a lot like working for the Bomb Squad – you can only make one mistake.
Tell a coach that you know about a player down in so-and-so who is 6-foot-1 and runs a 4.4 forty - but he’s actually 5-11 and runs a 5 flat - and there is a good chance that will be the last time your advice will be taken seriously. With roughly 25 scholarships a year to offer, there is simply little room for error.
“I think as a coach what you have to do is in your area there are certain people that you can lean on and you can trust,” said Associate Head Coach Doc Holliday. “You have to be able to pick up the phone and call someone that you have a lot of faith in and say, ‘Hey, how tall is that guy?’
“Recruiting has accelerated so much now that when you go in there looking for a senior … chances are you’ve seen him as a sophomore or a junior somewhere down the road.”
Holliday has recruited the state of Florida for nearly 30 years as an assistant coach for West Virginia, North Carolina State, Florida and now once again for West Virginia. When Holliday first started recruiting the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale area back in the early 1980s, WVU’s recruiting budget was much smaller than what he is working with today. Consequently, he spent a lot of time down there in his pickup truck.
Back then, recruiting South Florida was as much about guts as it was having the effervescent personality needed to get good players. In other words, you had to have the guts to go into some of the roughest neighborhoods around to find the good players that other recruiters weren’t so willing to go into.
Through the years, Holliday admits the process has gotten much easier.
“If I’ve got a guy I’m recruiting in Ft. Lauderdale then I can call five or six guys in that area and find out exactly how tall he is without having to get on a plane and go see him myself,” Holliday said.
The trick to being a top-notch recruiter is having a good set of eyes. The other stuff – the 5-star ratings and the All-America lists – those are meaningless to the really good ones.
“I don’t care much about their 40 time – I care about how fast they play,” Holliday said. “I’ve seen a lot of explosive 4.3s out there and they don’t play very fast. Years ago, the fastest Major Harris ran was 4.7, and nobody ever caught him. The important thing to me is how fast they play when they put the pads on.”
When a coach does their homework – evaluates the film, sees the prospect in person, talks to their teachers, guidance counselors and coaches, and takes advantage of all of their contact periods, there are plenty of good players out there to be gotten. In the two signing periods since he has been back, Holliday lists several examples of good players the coaching staff has managed to discover through hard work.
“Curtis Feigt is a guy we took this year who may not be a great player on film, but here in camp he ran a 4.7, he’s 6-6, 280 pounds, and he is going to be a good player for us. Renaldo Turnbull years ago never even played high school football and he ended up being a first-round draft pick here.”
Holliday remembers sticking on Robert Sands when he left Florida two years ago to return to WVU.
“We were close to taking Robert Sands and I knew Urban (Meyer) liked him and I liked him,” Holliday said. “He was a 6-6 guy and we weren’t sure if he was a linebacker or a safety, or where he fit in? Then, all it came down to was us and Pitt. Now, he can play for anybody.”
Despite the deluge of information, Holliday says it is still possible to pick up a rock and find a good football player underneath it.
“They’re still out there,” he said. “I’ve been in certain areas for a long time, and you can find one every now and then. A lot of people just go off the recruiting services, they go off the Rivals or the other things and they don’t do their homework – they don’t dig and work and they don’t get up early and go to bed late to find the guys.
“There are enough guys out there where if we have nine guys busting their tails that we’re going to get 18 to 20 that can play. It boils down to doing your work and when you’re out there, getting the job done.”
Weekly Word
 |
|
| Bob Huggins |
Katz also quoted Huggins in today’s blog about embattled Louisville coach Rick Pitino.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?name=katz_andy
West Virginia, Villanova and Georgetown are expected to be the top three teams in the Big East this year. Dick Vitale has the Mountaineers ranked ninth in his preseason top 40, and it is very likely they will be a preseason top 10 pick when the polls come out in a couple of months.
You have to go all the way back to the late 1950s when Jerry West played to find a Mountaineer team ranked this highly during the preseason.
ESPN Insider also recently had a favorable write up of Bob Huggins’ WVU program in its weekly Summer Buzz series. The Mountaineers were listed as one of five programs on the rise.
If you haven’t already joined, we would love to have you.
http://www.facebook.com/wvumountaineers
http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/story/12031579
“To me, everyone puts it on the head coach to recruit good character and quality people, but kids are committing back into their junior years and you haven’t even had a chance to get them on campus, meet their parents or get into their homes,” he explained. “I think every now and then you have to be very careful about early commits because you may not know enough about them as far as people.”
At the top of the list was Texas, generating $120 million last year. Ohio State was second at $117 million, followed by Florida, Michigan and Wisconsin in the top five.
West Virginia’s $54 million generated in 2008 was ranked 40th in the nation. That was ½ million below the Big East’s top revenue generator, Connecticut.
Here is the 2008 dollar-to-dollar revenue comparison of West Virginia’s Bowl division opponents for this season:
 |
|
| Pat White |
http://www.espn760.com/blogs/ken.php?action=blog&post_id=1834
This note comes from our graduate assistant Ira Green, who used to work at ESPN 760, and closely follows the Florida sports scene.
Vic Peelish, a standout football player for Bill Kern in the mid-1940s, died in Beckley earlier this month at age 88.
And Jerome Anderson, a Mountaineer basketball standout for Coach Sonny Moran and a member of the world champion Boston Celtics in 1975, died in Sweden earlier this month at age 56 after a length illness.
Our condolences go out to their families.
 |
|
| Devin Ebanks |
First Team is a year-round education and mentoring program designed to promote education and the proper role of athletics in the educational process. It helps prospective basketball student-athletes and their parents navigate the collegiate recruiting process and understand initial eligibility requirements.
Since 2005, the conference has had at least two teams in the preseason coaches’ poll each year.
This year, Cincinnati (90 votes), Pitt (64 votes), West Virginia (55 votes) and Rutgers (51) votes are ranked 29th through 32nd. South Florida also received preseason votes.
Live audio of all 12 regular season games as well as a video replay on Tuesdays will be offered for football, in addition to 14 episodes of Mountaineer Magazine, 14 weekly coaches’ press conferences, and 12 Bill Stewart Statewide Sportslines.
There will be eight women’s soccer, seven men’s soccer, and 10 volleyball events streamed this year. Soccer and volleyball matches will be offered for free.
Click the link below to watch free on-demand video of Doc Holliday talking about the tight ends and fullbacks and to learn more about MountaineerTV’s subscription service.
http://all-access.cbssports.com/player.html?code=wvir&media=132425
You will be required to download Microsoft’s Silverlight player to watch the videos. A monthly subscription for MountaineerTV is just $9.95.
Be sure to catch tomorrow’s scrimmage recap on MSNsportsNET.com and, most importantly, have a great weekend!
