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Illini to Lose their Best Recruiter

tornado

tornado

New member
Sort of an oxymoron, I suppose, but Illini assistant Tracy Webster has been known as possibly the single strong point among the Illinois coaching staff when it comes to recruiting.
He is supposedly responsible for wrapping up the Jereme Richmond committment.
Presently Illinois is in a heated recruiting battle for Darius Miller, going nose to nose with University of Kentucky.
And one way Kentucky head coach Billy Gillispie has figured that might give him the advantage for Miller, is to lure away the Illini's best recruiter with an offer to move to UK.

Champaign News-Gazette writer Paul Klee is reporting just that, and says Gillispie has spoken with Webster about hiring him, and (according to Klee)
"This is obviously a great opportunity for any assistant coach. It is my belief that it will happen. That is just my opinion. Webster is a fine recruiter, and it would be a blow to the Illinois program and would give Kentucky more inroads in Chicago and throughout the Midwest."
http://www.news-gazette.com/chats/2007/09/05/chat_with_paul_klee__bob_asmussen/#submitform

So what do people think will happen if Illinois' best recruiter leaves?
More meltdown........
http://mbd.scout.com/mb.aspx?S=169&F=2616#s=169&f=2616&t=955847
 
I have heard strong rumor that Webster is simply jumping ship.
A sinking ship at that, and no matter what, he wasn't going to at Illinois beyond the end of this season, anyway.
 
I have an ILLINI friend who seriously wants the whole crew gone now
all it takes is some people with clout
 
meth said:
I have heard strong rumor that Webster is simply jumping ship.
A sinking ship at that, and no matter what, he wasn't going to at Illinois beyond the end of this season, anyway.
Click to expand...

With a ship sinking this fast, one can't jump soon enough. He should consider himself very lucky to get the opportunity he did. The other coaches on that staff won't be so fortunate. Book it.
 
Webber can coach PERIOD!!!!! He came close to winning it all not too long ago. So he has trouble recruiting but so do most coaches who recruit within the rules. What he needs to do is clean house and get some assistants that know how to recruit 2-3 star recruits and find diamonds in the rough type players. Believe it or not recruiting in the mid-west is not easy. (weather sucks, not to many national games, not urban enoough etc..) If he finds a top recruit every other year and surrounds them with role players, they should stay competitive. Patience is what the Illini fans need. If I was a young basketball stud I'd take a look at Florida and UCLA. Why? Great programs, warm weather and fantastic looking women. Then again the mid-west has the best fans and the people are great.
 
SanFranciscoPete said:
Webber can coach PERIOD!!!!! He came close to winning it all not too long ago. So he has trouble recruiting but so do most coaches who recruit within the rules. What he needs to do is clean house and get some assistants that know how to recruit 2-3 star recruits and find diamonds in the rough type players. Believe it or not recruiting in the mid-west is not easy. (weather sucks, not to many national games, not urban enoough etc..) If he finds a top recruit every other year and surrounds them with role players, they should stay competitive. Patience is what the Illini fans need. If I was a young basketball stud I'd take a look at Florida and UCLA. Why? Great programs, warm weather and fantastic looking women. Then again the mid-west has the best fans and the people are great.
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Well said Pete. I agree with most of what you say. However, Weber MUST recruit big, wide bodies in order to compete in the Big 10. The top B-10 schools not only have this, but also quick and talented 4 & 5 star athletes - both big and small.

There are some good coaches in the B-10 that are equal in ability to Weber, but have better athletes -- Sampson (though I can't stand him), Izzo, Tubby, Matta, to name a few.

I'm afraid another "good coach" and good guy (Weber) is about to be fired. Illini fans are used to seeing talented and exciting players; they don't have the patience, nor basketball IQ to watch a game played the mid-major way.
 
Guenther will not be the AD to fire Weber and Guenther is not leaving until he has the football program turned around. And that is what we call in other circles a 'book it'.
 
bert notorius said:
Guenther will not be the AD to fire Weber and Guenther is not leaving until he has the football program turned around. And that is what we call in other circles a 'book it'.
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So does this mean Illinois is making the push to become KNOWN as a football school under Guenther (and basketball can take a back seat, worry about that later so long as it doesn't get too terribly bad which it shouldn't under the helm of such a "great guy" who everyone agrees has great coaching skills)?
 
SanFranciscoPete said:
Webber can coach PERIOD!!!!! He came close to winning it all not too long ago.
Click to expand...



Weber did all that with five starters, all of whom were NBA draft picks, and four of whom were solid NBA players, and one will be an all star. All those players fell in his lap, he didn't recruit a single one of them.
The caliber of recruits he has now is light years away from that. He is basically playing with about the same talent level that most midmajors get. That showed last year, when BU played them even with a team picked in the middle-of-the-pack in the MVC.
His coaching might help him get by Minnesota and Savannah State, but note in 2006-2007, they LOST to nearly every single sub-100 RPI team they played.
 
As quickly as Tracy Webster jumped at this job offer, I guess it's fair to say that the lowest assistant position at Kentucky is a more desirable job than the top recruiting position at Illinois?

This doesn't say much for Illinois.
 
Rumor is that Weber will dip into the Chicago Public League and try to hire a coach from there.
Problem is that he has such a lousy reputation in the CPL, he might just have a hard time finding anyone of significance who'll take his offer,
especially since many of the top Chicago Public League coaches are already making good money by also working the AAU circuit, and doing high profile "clinics" where they can accept money for very little work as long as they sell some influence in the recruiting.

But then, everyone else is doing this kind of hiring, just to gain influence in recruiting the area.
 
tornado said:
Rumor is that Weber will dip into the Chicago Public League and try to hire a coach from there.
Problem is that he has such a lousy reputation in the CPL, he might just have a hard time finding anyone of significance who'll take his offer,
especially since many of the top Chicago Public League coaches are already making good money by also working the AAU circuit, and doing high profile "clinics" where they can accept money for very little work as long as they sell some influence in the recruiting.

But then, everyone else is doing this kind of hiring, just to gain influence in recruiting the area.
Click to expand...

They sure are and it's smart. Why not? This is what Weber should have done as soon as he got the job at Illinois. His reputation in the CPL is at best 'cool'. The best thing he could do at this point is look to hire a well connected CPL coach who could help serve as conduit to repair his repuation in the city as well as increase his odds of actually getting a couple decent players from the city. As you said though, it's slim pickens at this point.

We all know Chicago is one of the most fertile recruiting grounds for basketball in the entire country. Why not do whatever you can within reason to help mine some of that talent? The best teams Illinois has ever had always had a couple key guys from the city area or were completely loaded with kids from city as the '89 team was. Who is there now from Chicago? Pruitt and Carlwell are from suburban schools.
 
Here is another interesting article about Tracy Webster and this latest switch to Kentucky. It sounds from this article as if Tracy Webster was one fantastic recruiter!
It also quotes Simeon head coach Robert Smith as saying--
"I think it is probably a good move for himself to coach at Kentucky. I think it will be bad move for Illinois," said Chicago Simeon coach Robert Smith, whose program has long had ties to Illinois. "I think that Tracy took a lot of heat for the things that happened for Illinois in Chicago, and I don't think he deserved it. People want to blame it on somebody, but for whatever reason it was (that) they weren't getting kids out of Chicago, it wasn't because of Tracy."

If it wasn't because of Tracy, what was the reason Illinois couldn't get the best Chicago players?

http://www.news-gazette.com/blogs/basketblog/2007/09/06/illinois_lose_webster_chicago_ties

A lot of Illinois fans want to bring Jerrance Howard back as an assistant. He is currently Kentucky's director of basketball operations. But that is not likely to happen. Bruce Weber knows he needs someone who has strong connections to the Chicago area and to the Chicago prep coaches.
 
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