He's talking about the Groce staff being slow to offer Smith.
Illinois Hoops Recruiting Thread (March 2017)
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He's talking about the Groce staff being slow to offer Smith.
He's talking about the old staff, who probably could have had Smith committed already if they hadn't "evaluated" him far longer than was needed and after he blew up nationally
Serious Late
- Peoria via Denver via Ann Arbor via Albuquerque vi
I understand his poor point. Mark Smith was never committing here with Groce on a boiling hot seat and no reason to commit early seeing as how his recruitment had barely even begun during the early signing period. The few weeks it took Groce to offer has zero impact on anything to do with the current situation Illinois is facing regarding this recruitment.
The current staff made Smith a big priority. Talking nonsensically about the difference in the few extra days it might have taken a coach that was never going to coach Mark Smith to offer is worth poking fun at.
The kid is big time. WOW.
Yeah, I don't think offering Smith a week or two earlier would have made any difference. He would still haven't wanted to explore all of his options.
Serious Late
- Peoria via Denver via Ann Arbor via Albuquerque vi
What excuses? I am not making excuses for anything, simply pointing out that meaningless comments about non-events that have no bearing on the current situation in any way, shape or form are ridiculous.
Every week matters when a kid goes from a baseball player to the top basketball player in the state (and IMHO a Top 20 guy) over the course of 3 months. Smith would have committed to Illinois in a heartbeat if we had offered him after it was already obvious he was going to blow up but before he actually did. Dropped ball if you ask me. Hopefully, Underwood and Walker can reel him in
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Last winter he verbally committed to Missouri as a baseball player and all of his junior basketball season he was a Missouri commit. I'm not sure when he blew his arm out and decommitted from Mizzou but I would imagine sometime in the spring or summer. He played some on Javon Pickett's AAU team this summer and the only schools who offered him were NIU and SIU-Edwardsville. He himself said he didn't focus on basketball or think about playing college basketball until this season started. Nobody was saying anything about him until December of this season. We were probably the third major school to offer, after Loyola and DePaul, certainly among the first five, so it's not like we were slow to the party. Groce offered him right after seeing him for the first time this fall on Jamall's recommendation.
This is not an example of "terrible recruiting" but a baseball player who was forced to switch to basketball as his primary sport and blew up late in the process.
http://www.bnd.com/sports/high-school/prep-baseball-softball/article48370170.html
http://www.news-gazette.com/sports/...-12-28/edwardsville-guard-draws-interest.html
Serious Late
- Peoria via Denver via Ann Arbor via Albuquerque vi
We are going to have to agree that I strenuously disagree here.
1) I don't believe for 1 second that Mark Smith was ready to commit on the spot or that the difference in a few weeks is somehow the difference between him waiting 6+ months to commit anywhere and having committed on the spot without taking stock of his options. To a coach on a boiling hot seat no less.
2) I don't believe that without an instantaneous offer, Mark Smith wasn't still developing a relationship with not just Groce, but the University of Illinois as a whole and the players and recruits coming into the program.
3) I don't believe that any timeline of Groce offering has any bearing on how Mark Smith currently perceives the University of Illinois and Brad Underwood, or our chances to obtain him in March, 2017.
This sounds comically familiar
With all respect, I don't know how you can think those things. Smith has been over the top in flirtation with Illinois and we only started returning the love recently. Here, and at other places around the web, people were screaming for the Illini to get more involved as far back as November. I'm not trying to bag on Groce, but he was a guy that was slow to the recruitment of Ulis - which so many of us couldn't believe - and Jalen freakin Brunson (how is that even possible?). IMHO he dropped the ball on Smith, but it's not terminal yet
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Ha, good point. While true, Smith doesn't fit the profile of others who have skipped the state for UK, Memphis, Kansas or Duke recently. For one, he is from downstate
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Serious Late
- Peoria via Denver via Ann Arbor via Albuquerque vi
And none of that has anything to do with whether Mark Smith commits to Brad Underwood now.
The only point I suppose we are arguing is whether Groce offering in late November/Early December instead of early January would have been enough for Mark Smith to verbally commit to a coach (couldn't have signed a LOI) and stuck to said verbal commitment through the turmoil and ultimate firing of Groce at the end of the season.
We are sitting here fretting over the commits that had developed relationships with Illinois over the course of YEARS and had signed letters of intent to play at Illinois. But somehow offering Smith a couple weeks after the early signing period instead of 1.5 months after the early season is going to prevent him from committing to a different coach 5 months later...
No. Never going to agree that is a reasonable standpoint.
Are you sure you're remembering that correctly? I recall Groce going all-in on him, so much so that many here speculated it turned off Evans.
He was late on Brunson for whatever reason. I have no idea why but we were not actively involved while Nova built a huge edge in relationship. Then Brunson really blew up and we came back and made one last push. It's always been my opinion that lost us Evans since they didn't want to play together, but others have speculated other reasons
Smith was an amazing athlete who had chosen baseball. People in the area knew he could be a high end baseball, football or basketball player depending on what he chose to do. Once he announced he was focusing on basketball we should have been all over him. After the first 10-12 games this year we should have offered (if not sooner). I'm just a dummy on a couch and I saw Smith play one time in December and said he was a 4-5* talent. It was obvious - some guys just have it
This just sounds like revisionist history to me. We already had DMW and Pickett so there would be no reason to offer Smith unless the coaches were really sure that he was that good. Keep in mind that DMW was a top 50 player at one point before his injury so I don't blame the staff if they werern't actively looking for a combo guard in a class where we already had one.
As far as Brunson goes, we were in on him early, but then backed off if I recall correctly only once we got Snider. We started recruiting him again once Snider decommitted, but Brunson didn't like that. It probably ended up being the reason he chose Nova
That's just not true. Brunson was on campus as early as 2013, before Nova was even being mentioned in his recruitment.
https://twitter.com/coryhat/status/351399740782555136/photo/1
That's how I remember it too. Groce was one of the first on the scene for Brunson, but chatter around his camp was that he was no longer considering UI at some point. Groce forced his way back into the conversation his senior season. It wasn't a matter of being late to the party.
Kramer116
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That's correct
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:deadhorse:
Took the words right out of my mouth
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