OnMonday night I was going through Rex Chapmans tweets and saw him tweet a pic with Wes.  I thought, "Oh...  that's his 'source'".

Yeah, WWW is probably the weak link in Calipari's recruiting.  Hard to say how much he has to do with the success, but he is definitely part of if.  He doesn't seem like the most discreet person either...

Turns out, WW Wes was the source...rumor is bogus

http://www.forbes.com/sites/markheisler/2014/04/07/hail-to-ncaa-champions-uconn-gets-title-warren-buffet-gets-10-mill/
And, oh, yeah, it had this joke:

It’s like the old parable of the athletic director hiring the coach to ferry him across a roaring river. Half-way across, the coach dumps the AD and climbs into a waiting speedboat.

“Why did you do that?” asks the AD.

“I can’t help it,” says the coach. “I’m John Calipari.”   

Stick together? Why in the hell would we want to do that? Kentucky winning a national title does not help us one bit. The SEC is not like a family, where we compete and are hard on each other but love one another in the end . . . hell no. The SEC is a conference of common enemies. We don't like each other. We don't need to.

fizzle Kentucky.

Agree.  Having said that, I am glad that both UK and UF made deep runs in the tourney this year  (though I am much prouder of ours).   The thought is that this might help us secure a berth in the next couple years if we are on the bubble. 

Maybe it won't matter, but the perception that the SEC was weak was overdone IMO, compared to some of the teams that did get in.

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/if-the-lakers-call--john-calipari-should-and-likely-would-listen-071828510.html

Well they got one thing right...the Kentucky fan base is "special".  Special in a "Justified" kind of way.

Marshall Raylon:  "Well I'll give you one piece of advice:  Quit referring to yourself in the third person".

Dewey Crowe:  "What d'you mean?  Are you talkin' about that guy there?  Man, I can't even follow what you're sayin' half the time"

As much as I don't like KY  I can't stand Conn. being #1 in both men and womens bb.  and with Pat gone Geno will win every year from now on.      

 

Well hopefully they will lose tonight.  I think Notre Dame can take them.   

I hope he takes the job, gets out there, and discovers what we already know: the REAL coach of that team is Kobe Bryant.

Yeah...but for how long

If you're recruiting in the top 5 in the SEC consistently, then you're in great shape to compete for an SECC. Fulmer did that but I think the competition is much stiffer now.

In Butch's two classes we finished 10th (2013) and 5th (2014) in the SEC according to 247-- and you can't hold 2013 against him. Dooley had a horrible class and Butch merely salvaged it as best he could. His 2015 class is currently 4th, behind Alabama, Texas A&M, and LSU. So when it comes to classes fully recruited by the new staff, we're right where we need to be. Hopefully we'll keep this up.

Dam, I thought we were third...didn't notice Tamu.  I guess I'm still used to them NOT being in the SEC.  So that means 4 of the top 6 are SEC....

This can only mean one thing..."The Man" is one step behind him     (the NCAA man)

The Man is just out to get him...

but man was it close...

Although I don't care for UConn,after thinking about it,  I realized that part of my dislike was that a-hole coach they used to have...at least he's not around.  Still don't like em, but I can ratchet it down a bit

Another great pickup...currently #6 in Class of 2015, just behind LSU but (of course) much farther behind bammer.

We just need to keep recruiting at this clip.   At least top 10, hopefully top 5, and the talent coming in will at least be comparable to the better Fulmer years.  That's really all one can ask in terms of recruiting, the rest will be coaching ability, development of players and execution.

[is]

Anyone who picked UConn in the Final Four was either a UConn fan or played many brackets. Or both.

And, as a matter of fact, the leader in the ESPN Pickem is a UConn fan. But I'll give him or her credit, he or she picked the Final Four.

Of course, he or she picked UConn to win it all.

I hope that he or she is correct! 

 

Hilarious...

(a) Show the arrogance of the Florida fanbase circa 2008

(b)  Just what Florida needs, another mullet!

A thug for sure

congrats 

I do think Wisconsin is being overlooked to a degree.  IMO, they've looked the most impressive of them all in the tourney so far.

I think they can beat UK.  They have a rugged inside game and seem to have a good perimeter D.   UK won't be able to muscle them the way they did UM.

UF matches up better with Wisconsin, but we will see.

[The Vols will be better this season. No doubt. Whether that results in more wins against a brutal schedule remains to be seen. The Vols will be even better in 2015. That should result in more wins. However, if it doesn’t, cooler heads need to prevail.]

The end of the article I link above is worth a larger C&P:

Neal has average speed. He was thought of as fast because the other Vols he was being compared to were so, so slow.

Speed is a must in football. Ask the many slower teams that have faced SEC teams over the past decade. Dooley turned the Vols into a Big Ten team. A slow Big Ten team.

It wasn’t just recruiting where Dooley failed. He also didn’t develop UT’s players. Speed and strength can be enhanced through proper training. Again, there was no constant plan under Dooley even in the strength and conditioning department.

Learning just how bad Dooley was as a head football coach is like peeling an onion. One story is another layer. It must make UT fans want to cry.

Many already know how bad Dooley is. So why am I bringing it up now? Because it’s time to realize how important stability is. It’s important to realize that it’s far too easy to hire a Dooley if an athletic department isn’t careful.
I don’t expect UT to win more than six games this year. As a matter of fact, I’m thinking five. Many have said 2015 is the season to judge head coach Butch Jones. While I think that’s fair, I wouldn’t treat that notion as gospel. What if Jones just wins six or seven games in 2015? Is that a sign the Vols need to make a change? No way.
Jones has already recruited better prospects than the Vols showcased on pro day. Freshman tailback Jalen Hurd is bigger and very likely faster than Neal, the former Vol speedster.

The Vols will be better this season. No doubt. Whether that results in more wins against a brutal schedule remains to be seen. The Vols will be even better in 2015. That should result in more wins. However, if it doesn’t, cooler heads need to prevail.

Jones has proven he can recruit. If he proves he’s a great coach, the Vols are set. If not, UT needs to be patient. Because of Dooley, this rebuilding effort is going to take time.

The Vols hired and had to endure the worst head coach in the modern era of the SEC. I realize that sounds like hyperbole but it’s not. Sure, other coaches have lost more games, but not at one of the top programs in the nation. It should be much easier to win at UT than Vanderbilt. It wasn’t for Dooley.

Given the resources around him, Dooley couldn’t win on the field, couldn’t recruit and didn’t know how to lead a program. Well, at least he signed a fast kicker.

It was no more evident than in the Auburn game of this past season.  I remember before halftime I was just looking at the clock, wanting it to end.  It was shocking and embarrassing.

Yes...my reactions exactly.  It was made worse by the fact that I had TWO overweight Auburn fans crowding me from the left...a mother and her daughter, the mother kept waving her pom pom RIGHT IN my face (though not on purpose she was just clueless lol) and there was a belligerent drunk "vol fan" right behind me that kept complaining that we weren't 12-0.  Pirate and I had some words with him, in fact.   
 

The problem is that Rajon was touted as the fastest guy on the team.  The 4.5/4.6 range is not that bad for a RB, but fastest on the team--that is bad.

Fastest on the team, really?  Hard to believe.  Definitely the fastest in that group, or fastest senior, but surely Marquez North and Cam Sutton are faster than Raj.

Sounds like something Ainge said started that talk (quote from link below):

The scary thing, as pointed out by Erik Ainge of Tennessee Sports Radio, is that former players thought Neal was incredibly fast, that he was perhaps the fastest player on the team, that he was a burner. He’s not.


"Perhaps the fastest player..."  I wonder how many believed that.  But I have no doubt he was or is one of the fastest.  

The article below does say that Raj was the only skill player.   I can believe that he, unfortunately was one of the fastest on the team, no doubt, but the sample at Pro Day was skewed to linemen as the article indicates.

http://www.tnsportsradio.com/2014/04/03/pro-day-said-state-program/

Did Smith even play DE, or was he interior?  I can't recall.  Heck, 4.9 is pretty good for an interior guy....

Yes, Palardy was the second fastest guy.  But of the 14, the breakdown is 10 linemen, 1 linebacker, 1 RB, 1 long snapper and 1 kicker.

So I would definitely expect the RB to be fastest...but a bit faster.  We all knew Rajion was not a burner (though Lane is more so).

I would also expect the LBs to be faster than the kicker...in Sapp was at least close at 4.69.  

What about DEs...I would think they would be faster than a kicker...Marlon Walls did not turn in a time at all, but Jaques Smith pulled a 4.9...slow for a DE, for sure.

But really the only two players I would expect to be fast at all would be the LB and RB, and speed is obviously less important there than at DB or WR...you can have an RB that is big and/or shifty who doesn't need as much speed...see Travis Henry.

Still bad, but not as bad as some earlier posts led me to believe.

But....I wonder what Hurd runs in the 40?  

Ah ha ha...I get your point, but no way, no how. 

Of the four, the one I don't mind so much is Wisconsin.

My order of preference is...

1. Wisky
2. Crocs
3. UConn
4. UK

Yes, I do hate Uconn enough to put the crocs ahead of them.

And I am on record as saying I don't mind the crocs winning because it helps my brackets.

Take a 1 iron with you ...

I actually have one of those...used to drive with it occasionally.

[the sophomore and junior classes do have significant (at the 90% confidence level, at least) positive effects on F/+.]

Below is a link to an article evaluating the effect of recruiting on college football teams, specifically addressing the question "how long does it take for recruiting to have an effect".  Here is a quote:

This model shows a clear lagged effect for high school recruiting. The freshman recruiting class has no statistically significant relationship with F/+, but the sophomore and junior classes do have significant (at the 90% confidence level, at least) positive effects on F/+.

"F/+" is a rating of college football teams (link in the article describes if anyone is really interested).  He is just saying what we probably all instinctively know...that one good recruiting year is not going to make a huge difference right away.  The reasons why are fairly obvious...most freshman football players have to have time to develop, though this is true than it used to be.  More important, there are 22 starting positions on a football team and you can't just have frosh, even a class as large and deep as ours, just step into all those positions. 

It's interesting because I don't know anyone who expects us to suddenly have a good season next year due to this one recruiting class, but most say 2015 should be better....here is some statistical analysis that says that confirms it using a mathematical/statistical model.  Again, I don't think anyone expects us to be so great next year, but here is at least one indication that we are right to have higher expectations for 2015.

And while I am at it, Butch is off to a great on the 2015 class as well...if he just keeps that up, good things are coming. 


http://harvardsportsanalysis.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/analyzing-the-lagged-effect-of-college-football-recruiting/

I will be leaving the office at 11:30 today as usual on Friday. I will not rest until I can post the usual Thursday reminder. Or even better, no reminder at all.

Thank you. That is all. Carry on.

I'm not going in to the office at all today...so BITE ME!